Charn 626876 219669932 2008-06-16T09:59:55Z 75.61.107.67 1955 date '''Charn''' is a fictional realm in [[C. S. Lewis]]'s 1955 book ''[[The Magician's Nephew]]'', one of the Chronicles of [[Narnia]]. In the book, two children from Earth travel by magic to Charn, where they find themselves in the royal palace of a very large and completely deserted city that is in a semi-ruined state. There is no presence of any life in this city, not even weeds or insects, which is odd. However, there is mention of a vine existing in one of the courtyards, but according to the book it had died long ago. The river that had once flowed through Charn was completely dried up, and there was no free water to be found anywhere. The only living person in Charn at the time of the stories is [[White Witch|Jadis]], its last Empress. According to her account, she and her sister had fought a long war for the throne. Finally, defeated and facing capture and execution, Jadis spoke the ''[[Deplorable Word]]'' which killed all living things under the Sun apart from herself. After this she put herself into an enchanted sleep which was broken when [[Digory Kirke]] - who had arrived in Charn with [[Polly Plummer]] - succumbed to temptation and rang a bell in the hall where Jadis slumbered along with her ancestors, after reading a verse which hinted that he would be driven mad by curiosity if he did not do so. Charn's Sun is red, large, and cold; it also has a solitary companion (either a [[planet]] or a blue dwarf star). When Digory asks Jadis about the sun's appearance, she asks him to compare it to our world's Sun. When informed that it is yellow, brighter, smaller, and "gives off a good deal more heat", she remarks, "Ah, so yours is a younger world." This is a reference to "[[red giant]] stars", which are older and colder than our Sun, and are almost ready to die, and, as the name implies, big and red. Charn was described as being completely destroyed after Jadis and the children left; later, when Aslan and the children are in the [[Wood between the Worlds]], Aslan shows them that the puddle leading to Charn is dried up, meaning that the empty world is completely destroyed. Jadis entered Narnia with the other humans from our world and after nine hundred years, became the [[White Witch]] in ''[[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]''. ==Other places== Jadis refers to a number of other places she has conquered, and presumably destroyed: :''"Scum! You shall pay dearly for this when I have conquered your world. Not one stone of your city will be left. I will make it as Charn, as Felinda, as Sorlois, as Bramandin." However, it not clear whether these places are cities in the same [[world]] as Charn, or are other Worlds in their own right. The former explanation seems the more likely, as "Charn" is used by Jadis to refer to the huge ruined city itself, described as the "greatest in the world, perhaps of all worlds", rather than the world of Charn, and the Deplorable Word would have presumably depopulated all the other great cities in that world along with Charn. ==Commentary== {{unreferenced|date=August 2006}} Some believe that Charn stands for the natural progression of human depravity; there is a striking similarity between Jadis's description of the life and death of her city and the text of the prophetic book of [[Nahum]] concerning the [[Bible|biblical]] city of [[Nineveh]]. Judging from the expressions of the waxwork images of Jadis' ancestors, it is apparent that while her race started out being gentle and wise, they later became corrupt. This has a parallel in [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s depictions of the [[List of rulers of NĂºmenor|Kings]] of [[NĂºmenor]] (Lewis and Tolkien were friends). The hall of waxworks may also be inspired by the underground grotto of mummies in [[King Solomon's Mines]], an image which Lewis found very powerful.<ref>See his essay "The Mythopoeic Gift of H. Rider Haggard", in ''Of This and Other Worlds''.</ref> == References == <references/> {{Portalpar | Narnia | Narnia_aslan.jpg | 50}} {{Narnia}} [[Category:The Chronicles of Narnia locations]] [[Category:Fictional lost cities and towns]] [[Category:Fictional countries in other worlds]] [[es:Charn]] [[nl:Charn]] [[no:Charn]] [[pl:Charn]]