Bullying and C.S. Lewis

There is a strong modern emphasis today on stopping bullying in the schools. Sadly, there are those who behave as though this is wrong and we ought to allow kids to “suffer hardship” in order to “build their character.” But, as Christians we would tend to say that there is a difference between self-imposed discipline–such as the monk who willingly undertakes the novitiate–and harassment, violence, and persecution of various types. While it is true that in rare cases bullying may build character, the reality is that in the majority of cases it leaves much damage in its wake. It appears that C.S. Lewis was also quite in favor of stopping bullying by schoolchildren. Where is this found? It is found in the Chronicles of Narnia book called “The Silver Chair.” The book begins in a bullying situation and ends in a bullying situation.

At the beginning of the book, we find Eustace Scrubb and Jill Pole at a very modern school, one in which freedom of expression is valued. There we read:

“It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym. She was crying because they had been bullying her. This is not going to be a school story, so I shall say as little as possible about Jill’s school, which is not a pleasant subject. It was “Co-educational”, a school for both boys and girls, what used to be called a “mixed” school; some said it was not nearly so mixed as the minds of the people who ran it. These people had the idea that boys and girls should be allowed to do what they liked. And unfortunately what ten or fifteen of the biggest boys and girls liked best was bullying the others. … That was why Jill Pole was crying on that dull autumn day on the damp little path which runs between the back of the gym and the shrubbery.”

If you were to read that beginning, it would be crystal clear that bullying is not building any type of character in either Jill or Eustace. Rather, it has left Jill crying and in hiding while Eustace has been trying to avoid “Them.” The only reason that Eustace is not in despair is that–as he explains–he has been to another world where he learned things that changed his character. That book was “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” in which Eustace changes from one of Them to the brave boy that he is in his other appearances in the Chronicles. But, Jill is not yet changed, and her change also will not come through the bullying of Them but rather through the hardships and challenges she encounters under the guidance of Aslan. Like Eustace, her changed character comes through what–in this world–we would know as an encounter with Jesus and the guidance of his Holy Spirit. Nowhere in the book is there any hint that simply bullying and mistreatment produce much of anything except long-lasting depression and pain.

But, it is at the end of the book that one realizes how much C.S. Lewis despises bullying, and how much he thinks that bullying needs to be stopped. Because there is a final scene dealing with the bullying in which C.S. Lewis makes it clear that bullying must be stopped and discipline must be applied. At the end of the book, one of the characters from Narnia is allowed to cross into our world in order to represent Aslan in applying discipline in order to stop the bullying. At the end of the book we read:

“He led them rapidly through the wood, and before they had gone many paces, the wall of Experiment House appeared before them. Then Aslan roared so that the sun shook in the sky and thirty feet of the wall fell down before them. They looked through the gap, down into the school shrubbery and onto the roof of the gym, all under the same dull autumn sky which they had seen before their adventures began. Aslan turned to Jill and Eustace and breathed upon them and touched their foreheads with his tongue. Then he lay down amid the gap he had made in the wall and turned his golden back to England, and his lordly face towards his own lands. At the same moment Jill saw figures whom she knew only too well running up through the laurels towards them. Most of the gang were there—Adela Pennyfather and Cholmondely Major, Edith Winterblott, ‘Spotty’ Sorner, big Bannister, and the two loathsome Garrett twins. But suddenly they stopped. Their faces changed, and all the meanness, conceit, cruelty, and sneakishness almost disappeared in one single expression of terror. For they saw the wall fallen down, and a lion as large as a young elephant lying in the gap, and three figures in glittering clothes with weapons in their hands rushing down upon them. For, with the strength of Aslan in them, Jill plied her crop on the girls and Caspian and Eustace plied the flats of their swords on the boys so well that in two minutes all the bullies were running like mad, crying out, ‘Murder! Fascists! Lions! It isn’t fair.'”

The book begins and ends with bullying. But, the character changes in both children are not brought about by the bullying, but in spite of the bullying. C.S. Lewis makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the school (read the paragraph after the one above) to stop bullying, to prevent it, not to allow it. The Head of the school, who has permitted the bullying is fired and a new regime is brought in who is willing to keep the children under appropriate control. Lewis expresses some of the same views at the beginning and end of the book as those who are mounting anti-bullying campaigns today.

So, please put away the idea that bullying builds character. That is not how character is built. Bullying only damages people and schools need to stand against it.