There’s a stance on Edmund that seems to float around Narnia tumblr a lot that doesn’t sit right with me. Something to this effect:
“Don’t hate on Edmund for betraying his siblings in LWW. The Turkish delight was enchanted, plus WW2 sugar rationing was a thing.”
All true, but reductionistic to the point of essentially missing one of the most crucial points of Edmund’s LWW story. Namely: Edmund is culpable.
Spurred on by the Witch’s lies and his own spite, Edmund betrays his family in exchange for enchanted candy and the promise of princedom. This is a crime so serious that Aslan must die to free Edmund of it.
And yes, “he betrayed his family for mediocre candy” sounds silly. It is silly! So are so, so many of the sins that we humans commit. We regularly betray kindness for status, truth for comfortable lies, integrity for money, and the God of the universe for idols. Is any of that, from a cosmic perspective, truly any less silly than selling out one’s family for Turkish delight?
Yet at the same time, it is reductionistic to discount the fact that the Turkish delight was enchanted. In universe, it is literally enchanted to make you want more of it, but I think that Lewis wrote it that way to make a broader point, one which is a bit more abstract. Sin is addictive. Once you have had a little, you will always want more (until and unless God changes your heart). This may be an explanation for many sin patterns, but it is not an excuse.
LWW makes it very clear that there was spite in Edmund’s heart before the Witch got to him. Jadis, like Satan, saw Edmund’s predisposition towards sin and deceived him into believing that good was evil and evil good. Jadis is both deceiver and accuser, but Edmund’s heart was inherently spiteful, and the debt of his treachery could never be cleared with until Aslan died for him.
“Even a traitor may mend. I have known one who did.”
I know that the posts I keep seeing are meant to be a little tongue in cheek; I also think it’s important to point out that the sinner’s culpability is what gives grace its value. As Bonhoeffer wrote, “Costly grace […] is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”
Also tongue-in-cheek, I know, but a lot of the posts I’ve seen point out that Lucy goes with Tumnus for tea and sardines, just as Edmund takes candy from the Witch. It’s the Pevensie MO to take food from strangers! There’s a deeper truth there as well. It could have been Lucy. When Lucy stumbled into Narnia for the first time, she could have met the Witch the way Edmund did, cold and alone and without knowing anything else about that world. Jadis could have been kind to Lucy, and tempted her with addictive food, and deceived her as well—perhaps preying not on spite and resentment, but rather on her feelings of inadequacy. Lucy could have gotten caught in sin just as Edmund was, and so could Susan or Peter. If that had been the case, Aslan would have shown them the same grace he showed Edmund.
(I do think that Edmund encountering the Witch and eating the Turkish delight was no accident; Aslan chose to justify and sanctify him specifically. But that’s another discussion.)
This has gotten a little long, so TLDR: LWW is a Gospel story, and by excusing Edmund’s culpability in his sin, we discount the sinner’s need for grace, and indeed the marvelous beauty of the fact that grace is offered.
