Aslan's Resurrection

Aslan's Resurrection is the central miracle of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the moment when the deepest law of Narnia overturns the apparent victory of the White Witch and transforms the story from tragedy into triumph. After being shaved, mocked, bound, and killed on the Stone Table as a willing substitute for the traitor Edmund, Aslan returns to life at dawn, having satisfied the Deep Magic of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea and activated a still-older magic that the Witch had never fathomed. The event shatters the Stone Table, restores Aslan's mane, and launches the final liberation of Narnia.

The Night of the Sacrifice

Aslan had walked slowly and heavily to the hill of the Stone Table on the night of his death, his head drooping and his steps faltering, accompanied by Susan and Lucy, who had followed him unbidden. He allowed the Witch's hags and ogres to bind him without resistance, to shave his golden mane with shears, and to muzzle him, enduring kicks, spits, and jeers from the rabble who called him "Puss" and "Poor Pussy." The Witch herself, after whetting a stone knife of strange and evil shape, stood over him and taunted him, declaring that his death would not save Edmund but would instead give her Narnia forever. Then she killed him. The children, watching from the bushes, covered their eyes and did not see the actual blow.

The Vigil and the Mice

After the Witch and her army had swept away to finish the war, Susan and Lucy crept out to the hilltop. They knelt in the wet grass, kissed Aslan's cold face, and stroked his fur, then managed to remove the muzzle and wipe away the blood and foam. The ropes were too tight for them to untie. As the night wore on into the darkest hour, hundreds of little field mice crept onto the Stone Table and began to nibble through the cords, one by one, until all the ropes were gnawed through. The girls cleared away the remains, and Aslan's dead face looked nobler as the light grew.

The Dawn and the Deeper Magic

At sunrise, as the girls stood on the eastern edge of the hill looking out toward the sea, they heard a great cracking noise behind them, as if a giant had broken a giant's plate. The Stone Table had split in two from end to end, and Aslan's body was gone. Then, larger than they had ever seen him, shaking his mane (which had grown again), Aslan himself stood before them, shining in the sunrise. He explained that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic that gave her the right to kill every traitor, there was a magic deeper still, from before the dawn of Time, which she did not know: when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. He was not a ghost; he was alive, warm, and real.

The Romp and the Ride

Aslan's resurrection was immediately followed by a joyful, mad romp around the hilltop, in which he leaped, chased, and tumbled with the girls until all three lay panting in the sun, no longer tired or hungry or thirsty. Then, with a roar that bent the trees before it, he carried Susan and Lucy on his back on a breathtaking ride across Narnia, faster than any horse, through forests and over mountains, straight to the Witch's castle. There he leaped over the wall, breathed life into the stone statues, and led the liberated army to the final battle, where he himself flung upon the White Witch and killed her.

Narrative Role and Significance

Aslan's Resurrection is the story's supreme reversal, transforming apparent defeat into absolute victory and revealing that the Witch's knowledge of magic was incomplete. It is the moment when the prophecy of the old rhymes—"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight"—is fulfilled not by force but by a deeper law of self-sacrifice. The event also completes Edmund's redemption, for Aslan died in his place, and the children are never told the full truth of the arrangement, sparing Edmund the weight of that knowledge. The broken Stone Table remains as a permanent sign that the old order of death and treachery has been overthrown by a love that predates time itself.