The enmity between Aslan and Jadis

Aslan and Jadis are adversaries defined by a conflict over the meaning and use of power. Jadis takes the life-giving apple for herself and seeks to make its power serve her rule; Aslan appoints the Tree grown from that fruit as Narnia’s shield, explaining that its life-giving fragrance repels her. Their opposition is therefore not only a contest of force: it turns on whether a gift is received and used in accordance with its nature, or seized for private desire.

The conflict made visible

At Narnia’s creation, Aslan’s song calls the new land and its creatures into life. Later, at the eastern gold gates of the garden, Digory reads the warning that its fruit must be taken for others, not stolen or reached by climbing the wall. The inscription makes the moral terms of the encounter explicit before Jadis tries to overturn them: the apple is not simply a source of power, but a test of what its bearer intends to do with it.

Jadis knows Digory’s errand because she overheard the council in the woods. She identifies the fruit he carries as the apple of youth and life, then urges him to eat it and share its power with her. Her proposed reward is rule over Narnia, or over Digory’s own world if they return there, along with eternal life. In this offer, the opposition between her and Aslan takes the form of competing claims on the fruit: Jadis would turn it into a means of personal dominion, while Aslan’s command is that Digory bring it back untasted for another’s benefit.

The tree as protection

After Digory sows the apple, a tree rises beside the assembled crowd. Aslan tells the Narnians to make guarding it their first care, naming it their shield. Jadis has fled far to the north and will grow stronger in dark Magic, but she cannot approach within a hundred miles while the Tree flourishes. Its scent, which brings joy, life, and health to Narnia, means death, horror, and despair to her. The protection is thus both physical and symbolic: the fruit Jadis appropriated becomes the source of a barrier against her return.

The tree’s power does not depend on Jadis being deprived of the apple’s effect. When Polly points out that Jadis has already eaten one, Aslan explains that this is precisely why the remaining apples have become horrifying to her. The fruit works according to its nature, but taking it at the wrong time and in the wrong way makes its goodness loathsome to the eater. Jadis has gained what she wanted; the gift itself has not failed, but her relation to it has been corrupted.

Power, desire, and consequence

Aslan confirms that Jadis’s apple has given her unwearying strength and endless days. Her immortality is real, not an illusion or a promise that will later be withdrawn. Yet a long life joined to an evil heart becomes a prolonged misery, and she is already beginning to know the cost. Aslan’s maxim, “All get what they want: they do not always like it,” gives their antagonism its sharpest moral formulation: desire can be fulfilled without bringing happiness or goodness.

Aslan also clarifies that even an apparently protective use of the fruit would have had a destructive consequence if chosen without authorization. Had a Narnian stolen an apple and planted it to defend the country, the Tree would still have protected Narnia—but it would have made the land into another strong, cruel empire like Charn, not the kindly country Aslan intends. The contrast places Jadis’s self-serving theft within a broader opposition between power imposed by will and power ordered toward a good beyond the wielder.

The temptation’s other cost

Jadis’s appeal to Digory also exploits his love for his ill mother. Aslan acknowledges that taking an apple home would have healed her, but warns that the healing would not have ended happily: a day would have come when both mother and son would have thought it better for her to have died of the illness. This counterfactual extends the conflict beyond Narnia. Jadis presents desire as an immediate solution; Aslan insists that the fruit’s effect cannot be separated from the conditions and purpose of its use.

Digory refuses Jadis’s offer and carries out the errand for which he was sent. The opposition between Aslan and Jadis is consequently expressed through his choice as well as through the Tree’s defense of Narnia. Jadis retains the power she sought, but the life she wins becomes a burden; Aslan’s order protects the new kingdom without making it cruel. Their conflict remains embodied in the Tree: a source of life to Narnia and an enduring warning of what stolen power costs its possessor.