Tammy’s Reviews > The Horse and His Boy > Status Update

Aravis thinks a fear of death has caused her to lose her reason, and she must be hallucinating. She makes a second attempt, but Hwin puts her head between the dagger and Aravis. Beheading? This part reminds me of the Gospel. Both horses preach the wonders of Narnia and convince them to go! They must have forgotten Aslan, but they remember Narnia. She invokes a Calormen trinity and begs to go.

Ch. 3 This has a Biblical feeling in Aravis's recitation of her genealogy. I love the high storytelling here. Her family structure mirrors that of Shasta later in the book except that she is the victim of a wicked stepmother's whose child crowds out Aravis. Her mother died. Her brother died in battle, fighting people from the west. Death is black, and the sun is dark in her stepmother's eyes while she lives at home.

I wonder if the beheading is being separated from the head of the household at the beginning. Also, in stories and the Bible, the weak relies on deception in order to survive. They meet danger when between chaos (the sea) and danger (the forest). In this moment, Bree is humbled for the second time because lions terrify him. I love the wisecrack about nobody wanting to read student essays, and this is pre-5-paragraph.

They do cross water. So crossing water is the end of his old life as someone from the North and crossing water is the end of his old life as a Calormen.

Shasta asks for answers in a stable and a miracle happens. Already there are doubles: fake father and real father (we don’t know him), two horses, Shasta and the mysterious rider, two lions. Bree does treat Shasta rather harsh for being an ignorant, peasant boy, but he is willing to teach him. They fear the other pair is shadowing them so they seek more darkness (under the cover of a cloud).

It is set during the Golden Age of Narnia but, for Shasta, he went from Gold to Lead. Like Harry, he lives the life of a drudge, doing lots of physical labor. People wear dirty clothes and life is dull for him. Shasta runs away under cover of darkness. He meets Aravis at night as well. The conversation between Shasta and his dad is like that between Harry and the Dursleys: business and practicality. WOW!!!!

Plus in riding Bree, he falls a lot and is physically beat up by riding. When he meets Aravis, she gives him a lot of verbal jabs. When he first meets the Narnians, they box his ears for running away. MIND BLOWN.

I’m trying to learn more about Literary Alchemy by way of Harry Potter. The black stage is often kicked off by death. In this case, the death of Shasta’s old life as well as the guardian in the boat. Like Harry Potter, the black stage includes mistreatment: his father beats him and abuses him. He hardly feeds him (the boy has experience in trying to eat grass).

Since the lions are gone, they decide to unpack, rest, eat, and share stories. Shasta tries to put on airs but he comes across as awkward so he sulks. The horses get along well and they compare their early life in Narnia. Bree asks Aravis to tell her story and she does so in the Calormen story-telling fashion.

He says that it’s obvious that he and the boy are running away. However, it’s also obvious that Hwin is running away, too. It offends Aravis that he is talking to her horse. As the title suggests, lots of tables are flipped here. To their POV, they are free people trying to escape the slavery of Calormen which shuts her up. After some mildly heated discussion, they agree to travel together. Combining!