The Horse and His Boy: Chapter 6 “Shasta Among the Tombs”
C.S. Lewis Read-Along, Vol. 5, Issue 7
This is one of those classic Narnia chapters where the action summary would be short, but the story atmosphere, childhood comforts, and theological ramifications are limitless.
He was just going to run for it when suddenly, between him and the desert, a huge animal bounded into view. As the moon was behind it, it looked quite black, and Shasta did not know what it was, except that it had a very big, shaggy head and went on four legs. It did not seem to have noticed Shasta, for it suddenly stopped, turned its head toward the desert, and let out a roar which re-echoed through the tombs and seemed to shake the sand under Shasta’s feet.
Chapter 6 “Shasta Among the Tombs”
You could sum up everything that happens by saying: Shasta left Tashbaan and waited near the tombs until Bree and Hwin arrived. It’s a chapter of waiting. But as most of us know from personal experience, much of life is waiting, and much often happens in those moments and seasons of waiting.
Shasta follows Prince Corin’s instructions to climb down and reach the street. He scrambled out of the city and to the tombs standing just beyond the edge of the grass and at the beginning of the desert.
Walking around each individual structure, he realized the others weren’t there. Shasta becomes more irrational and jumpy as his situation begins to dawn on him. He worries Aravis would leave him, but tries to reassure himself that Bree wouldn’t. The narrator assures us that Aravis may have been proud, but she was true and would never leave someone behind.
Whether he would be left or not, Shasta now finds himself alone near the potentially haunted tombs with night fast approaching. When he felt something touch him, Shasta, unsurprisingly, jumped. He looked down, however, and saw only a cat.
Though Lewis had pet dogs and other animals, he describes himself as a cat person.1 In one letter, he says he is “cat-minded.” He references multiple pet cats over the years.
But he also understood the aloofness that cats seem to carry. He compared them to Pharisees who thank God they are not like others. He said, “No creature can give such a crushing ‘snub’ as a cat!”
He often discussed cats with Mary Willis Shelburne, who also had a love of cats. He told her, “Yes, it is strange that anyone should dislike cats. But cats themselves are the worst offenders in this respect. They very seldom seem to like one another.”
Still, later in life, he told Arthur Greeves, “Get a cat. They’re more suitable to us old people than dogs, and a cat makes a house into a home.”
With his lifelong love of cats, it’s no wonder that Lewis had Shasta be comforted by a feline friend near the tombs. But what we have in this chapter is not the original version. One of the only revisions Lewis made from his draft to the final story involved this cat, according to David Downing.2
