Charn is a fictional realm in C. S. Lewis's book The Magician's Nephew, one of the Chronicles of Narnia. In the book, two children from Earth journey 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, including weeds and 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 flowed through Charn was completely dried up, and there was no free water to be found anywhere. Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis, was an Irish author and scholar. ... The Magicians Nephew is a fantasy novel for children written by C. S. Lewis. ... Narnia is a fantasy world created by C. S. Lewis as a location for his Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels for children. ...

The only living person in Charn at the time of the stories is Jadis, its last Queen. According to her account, She and her sister had fought a long war. Finally, defeated and facing capture and execution, Jadis instead spoke the Deplorable Word which killed all living things under the Sun apart from herself, a possible allusion to the atomic bomb (the name "Charn" is also reminiscent of "charnel house", a place in which anonymous bones are stored). 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. Jadis, the White Witch is the key villain of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published book in C. S. Lewiss Chronicles of Narnia series, and the second chronologically. ... The Deplorable Word, as used in The Magicians Nephew, by author C. S. Lewis, is a magical curse which ends all life in the world except that of the one who speaks it. ... The mushroom cloud of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, 1945, rose some 18 km (11 mi) above the epicenter. ... A charnel house (Med. ... Digory Kirke is a human character from C. S. Lewiss fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. ... Polly Plummer is a human fictional character from C. S. Lewiss fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. ...

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. (However, because Charn is not broiling hot, it is possible that C. S. Lewis had a somewhat erroneous view of star evolution. Also, see Gliese 581 c.) The eight planets and three dwarf planets of the Solar System. ... Blue Giants are main sequence stars of spectral type O. A typical type O giant has a mass of 50 Suns and is tens of thousands of times more luminous than the Sun. ... According to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a red giant is a large non-main sequence star of stellar classification K or M; so-named because of the reddish appearance of the cooler giant stars. ... Gliese 581 c (IPA: ) is a extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. ...

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 a thousand years became the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Jadis, the White Witch is the key villain of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first published book in C. S. Lewiss Chronicles of Narnia series, and the second chronologically. ... The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis. ...

Other places

Jadis refers to a number of other places she has conquered, and presumably destroyed. 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. Antarctica Oceania Africa Asia Europe North America South America Middle East Caribbean Central Asia East Asia North Asia South Asia Southeast Asia SW. Asia Australasia Melanesia Micronesia Polynesia Central America Latin America Northern America Americas C. Africa E. Africa N. Africa Southern Africa W. Africa C. Europe E. Europe N...

"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."

Commentary

Mrs. Beaver speculates in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that Jadis is descended from "Adam's first wife", Lilith, on one side and from giants on the other. Assuming that this is true and not merely a rumour, this is rather confusing, since in the Narnian universe Adam would be presumed to be in our world, and the Witch to be in another. Since Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first, he had not yet written the "true" origin of the White Witch in The Magician's Nephew, which he wrote later but is chronologically earlier. From what Mrs. Beaver said, Jadis did not have a drop of human blood in her, meaning that she could not have come from Adam. It might be possible that Lilith went to another world (presumably Charn) and had offspring with someone else. This theory is corroborated by a Jewish folktale that mentions Lilith as residing in an "Other World" through which she is able to traverse between worlds and visit her "demon lovers."^[1] Mrs. ... The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a fantasy novel for children by C. S. Lewis. ... i love ms hope ... “Lilitu” redirects here. ...

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 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 Kings of Númenor (Lewis and Tolkien were friends). Nahum (נחום) was a minor prophet whose prophecy is recorded in the Hebrew Bible. ... This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library of Congress. ... , For other uses, see Nineveh (disambiguation). ... John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973) was an English philologist, writer and university professor, best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. ... The following is a list of the twenty-five Rulers of Númenor, an island realm in J.R.R. Tolkiens fictional universe: After Ar-Pharazôn, who perished in the Downfall of Númenor, the direct line of Kings was broken. ... Númenor is a fictional location from J. R. R. Tolkiens universe of Middle-earth and is intended to be his version of Atlantis. ...

References

1. ^ "Lilith's Cave," Lilith's Cave: Jewish tales of the supernatural, edited by Howard Schwartz (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988)