In the C.S. Lewis's fictional world of Narnia, Mr. Tumnus is a faun in the story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. He is sometimes referred to as 'Faun Tumnus', and is described as having reddish skin, curly hair, horns on his forehead, cloven hooves, and a long tail that he carries over his arm.
Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.
Tumnus meets Lucy Pevensie, one of the main four characters, when she first enters the magical land of Narnia through the eponymous wardrobe. They meet at a lamppost and Mr. Tumnus offers Lucy tea at his home. While at his house Mr. Tumnus gives Lucy tea and cakes, then plays his flute for her. Either the song or the flute has some enchantment which puts Lucy to sleep. She wakes up several hours later to find Mr. Tumnus crying. He then explains to her how he had entered the service of the White Witch, and was planning on turning Lucy over to the Witch when she was asleep. He begs Lucy's forgiveness, which she readily gives and then takes her back to the Lamppost so she can go home.
Mr. Tumnus is later arrested and turned to stone by the White Witch. Much of Lucy's eagerness to fight the White Witch comes from her affection for and desire to rescue the Faun.
Allegorically, Tumnus signifies the moral standing of man apart from God, particularly as expressed by the Epistle to the Romans; which is to say, that conscience and "natural virtue" can never in itself be sufficient for salvation and that true righteousness can only derive from acceptance of God's mercy.
Unbeknownst to his father and to the school authorities and many of his friends, Lewis set up a household in Oxford with Mrs.
A little over twenty years later he again reviewed the shape of his early life and the events that led to his conversion in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy.
Having faced these four major changes as a young academic at Oxford, Lewis was now headed into the most fruitful period of his life as an author, the details of which we will look at more tomorrow night.
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