Aslan’s rule about personal stories

Aslan’s rule about personal stories is his answer to a question about whether another person will suffer because of the questioner’s actions: he will tell each child their own story, not someone else’s. The rule makes the boundary of personal knowledge explicit, refusing to turn another person’s experience into an answer one is entitled to receive.

The Rule and Its Immediate Context

A child asks whether any more harm will come to her because of what the child did. Aslan responds that he is telling the questioner’s story, not hers, and states that no one is told any story but their own. His reply does not disclose what will happen to the other person; it redirects the exchange to the limits of what he will reveal.

Knowledge and Responsibility

The question is framed as concern about the consequences of one’s own action for someone else. Aslan recognizes the question but does not satisfy the desire to know another person’s fate. Instead, the rule preserves that person’s story as distinct from the questioner’s, setting a limit on knowledge even within a conversation with Aslan.

Narrative Function

The declaration arrives at a moment of questioning, so it works both as a principle and as a restraint on disclosure. The story supplies no further answer about the other person’s fate in this exchange. Aslan then shifts to a lighter tone, tells the children that they will meet again and that another visitor will come first, and leaves by leaping to the top of the wall. After he vanishes, the children feel no inclination to discuss him together; they go to different parts of the quiet grass and pace alone, thinking. The rule’s insistence on separate stories is thus followed by a scene of separation and individual reflection.