I agree that I totally get why it would drive Tolkien crazy, but this doesn’t give Lewis anywhere near the credit he deserves.
Think of Tolkien as weaving a tapestry and Lewis as creating a mosaic. It’s just as intricate but the effect is completely different. AND it’s meant to be. Tolkien is trying to create this lived in history/mythology of a world. It stands on its own and you’re meant to read it and feel like it could be a real history that you’re seeing. While Tolkien wants his world to feel real, Lewis does not – he wants his world to feel fantastical. Because Middle Earth stands on its own, but Narnia exists alongside the real world. and while Middle Earth is meant to continue on past the end of Tolkien’s writing, Narnia is only ever meant to be glimpsed in these little windows we’re given. Its meant to be smaller in a sense– it’s entire history is contained within Diggory’s lifetime– because unlike Middle Earth there’s interaction between Narnia and our world, and seeing Narnia’s entire history play out within the arc or the books contributes to theme.
In creating this entirely fantastical world, Lewis makes much greater use of symbols and iconography. If you think the symbolism of Narnia goes as far as “the lion symbolizes Jesus, the Stone Table represents the cross” and stops there, you’re dead wrong. For one thing because Aslan doesn’t symbolize Jesus, he is Jesus (i could show you where this is evident in the books but I leave it at “Lewis said so” for now). And there are different levels to the symbolism. On one hand you have symbolism thats very simple to understand, even if only implicitly, because the books are for children and Lewis does a marvelous job communicating on their level. The witch turning people to stone, the Neverending winter, Aslan breathing life back into people– that’s all symbolic and even if you are young and can’t express WHY you still get it.
But there’s also other layers of symbolism that you do really have to sit down and work through but once you do it’s really masterful. An Oxford researcher named Michael Ward wrote a book arguing that the underlying symbolism is framed around medieval cosmology (something that is explicitly present in Lewis Space Trilogy) and that is used to reflect back on the central purpose of exploring the character of Christ. The book is called Planet Narnia but the much shorter lay version is called The Narnia Code and I highly recommend it. Wards work actually was partially inspired by the question of why Father Christmas was included (short answer: LWW is saturated with Jove imagery, and Father Christmas is a jovial symbol, all of which contributes to the central thematic characterization of Aslan and therefore Christmas as king). If you think this sounds far fetched, for one thing there’s an entire 350 page thesis that lays it out much better than I can, and the author also went and ran it by one of Lewis’s close friends and that guy said “that sounds JUST like something Jack would do”.
That symbolic and thematic resonance IS there. And whats more there is a very clear order to the way magic works in Narnia, its just a much freer system than Middle Earth. Even the vast differences in each book contribute to theme because as Aslan tells us “things never happen the same way twice” and thats the point.
You can also see Lewis’s philosophical and theological understanding come to bear on Narnia. For instance, the way the Wood Between the Worlds exists outside of time is directly the result of Lewis’s understanding of how God relates to time which he writes about in another of his books, and in light of that the way that Narnian time doesn’t sync up in any clear relation to real world time makes total sense. Other influences are clear as well– both Lewis and Tolkien have their worlds come into being through music which in both instances comes from the concept of the music of the spheres.
Also key to the workings of Narnia is Lewis’s concept of the True Myth– an idea he originally got from Tolkien and which both Narnia and Middle Earth play out in different ways.
The theology behind Aslan is also a whole lot deeper than just “he’s called the Lion of Judah so I made him a lion” and the writing of Aslan is actually brilliant and difficult.
So yes, Narnia isn’t just Lewis throwing things at the wall, its a well ordered, deceptively complex series rich with themes and symbols, all run by a consistent internal logic that just is aiming for an end very different from Tolkien’s. And if thats not your cup of tea, fine, but Narnia is every bit the intricate masterpiece that Lord of the Rings is.
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