Aslan

One might also want to point out the fact that Aslan is the Turkish word for lion. C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe also referred to Turkish Delight, known in Turkey as loukoum.

C.S. Lewis' allegory for Jesus Christ in his 7-part series The Chronicles of Narnia. Aslan is the Lord and Master of Narnia who called it into being and oversaw its end. He appears simultaneously fearsome and inspiring to good characters, and loathsome and terrifying to bad characters.

(In my Chronicles of Narnia nodes I resist referring to Aslan as the "God" of Narnia. Fantasy literature is replete with pantheons of fictional gods, but Lewis clearly meant Aslan to represent the Christian God. As such, it seems insufficient to call Aslan the God of Narnia; Lewis would say the character reflects the reader's God as well.)

Aslan first appeared in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe where the Christ-parallel was most pronounced. His role is an active one throughout the story; He arrives in Narnia to thaw the White Witch's eternal winter. He ransoms Himself to the White Witch in return for her sparing the life of the traitor Edmund in accordance with the Deep Magic. He is bound, ridiculed, and killed; He is resurrected according to "deeper magic" that will restore an innocent life sacrificed.

In the other books Aslan is less a participant than a motivator for the other characters:

• Prince Caspian: 1,000 years after Lion, He encourages and instructs Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie as they return to a world that has forgotten Him.
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Eustace Scrubb's encounter with Him leads to repentance.
• The Silver Chair: Aslan gives a task to Eustace and Jill Pole, who stray from His instructions and only triumph when they remember them.
• The Horse and His Boy: As Shasta and Aravis escape Calormen, Aslan spurs them onward in encounters that test their conscience and resolve.
• The Magician's Nephew: Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer witness Aslan creating Narnia; Aslan sets it in the right direction by choosing its first leaders and sending Digory on a quest that will protect the new land.
• The Last Battle: After Narnia falls, Aslan leads His followers to Paradise.

At no point in the books is Aslan ever explicitly linked with Jesus Christ. The Chronicles of Narnia are first above all children's fiction and work best at that level. Lewis' own quote on the matter:

In 1954, Lewis was asked to explain the Aslan-Christ parallel to some fifth graders in Maryland. He replied: "I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said 'Let us suppose that there were land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen". (Lewis, 1954, 1998)

-- from The Lion, the Witch and the Allegory:
An Analysis of Selected Narnia Chronicles
Matt Brennan
student at McGill University
archived at http://cslewis.drzeus.net/

Also the fictional mood altering drug in Jonathan Franzen's book The Corrections. Aslan first appears in the book under the street name of Mexican A when serial loser Chip's far-too-young girlfriend Melissa buys a supply before they head off for a weekend's worth of 'fucking'. When asked about the effects Melissa describes it as doing 'Nothing and everything'. The drug removes every trace of inhibition from Chip and a few hours after taking the first golden pill, while driving, Chip states 'We have to stop immediately and fuck.'

Aslan re-appears later in the book when Chip's mom, Enid visits the ship doctor on a cruise when she finds herself feeling 'confused' and unable to sleep. The doctor, a patronising youngster named Dr. Hibbard, offers her a flavour of the drug officially known as ASLAN® Cruiser^TM. When Enid asks what it does Hibbard replies 'Absolutely nothing, if you are in perfect mental health. However, let's face it, who is?' He goes on to explain that 'Alsan provides a state-of-the-art factor regulation. The best medications now approved for American use are like two Marlboros and a rum-and-Coke, by comparison.' When Enid asks if it is an antidepressant he replies 'Crude term. “Personality optimizer” is the phrase preferred.'

Manufactured by a company named Farmacopea, Aslan is available in numerous varieties, each optimised for a particular activity or mental state. Besides Aslan 'Basic' there is Aslan 'Ski', Aslan 'Hacker', Aslan 'Performance Ultra', Aslan 'Teen', Aslan 'Club Med', Aslan 'Golden Years' and Aslan 'California'. The company also plans to bring several other blends to market, namely Aslan 'Exam Buster', Aslan 'Courtship', Aslan 'White Nights', Aslan 'Reader's Challenge', Aslan 'Connoisseur Class' and several others. The drug is not available in America. When Enid asks if she can get in her hometown of St. Jude he advises her to get her Aslan from Mexico.

He gives her two week supply in exchange for the $150 which she won gambling the previous night.

For Enid Aslan is miraculous. 'Golden sunlight fell across the blankets in her windowless room.' Suddenly she is not nervous anymore, she does not worry about what the other people on the luxury ship might think about her and her husband's cabin on the cheap lower deck. She is confident and comfortable. Even when her husband falls eight stories into the freezing water when he leans over a railing to peek at the nudist sun deck she is unconcerned with the intense gazes of strangers at her and her soaked husband. The only thing that does concern her, that clouds her optimised mood is the niggling question of how she might be able to secure more Aslan once her current supply runs out.

When her supply does run out she is outwardly unchanged, but collapses on the inside.

The drug makes its final appearance toward the end of the book when Enid, having asked a friend going on holiday to Europe to ask her doctor son-in-law to write Enid a prescription for more of the golden pills, waits anxiously for her package. Unfortunately when it is delivered to her door it is intercepted by Enid's eldest son, Gary, who deigns not to let his mother have it and hides it from her. Enid's daughter Denise knows about the Aslan (which she instantly identifies as Mexican A 'Club drug. Very young person.') and steals it from Gary's coat pocket while he is asleep to give to her mother in the form of a secret little Christmas present hidden in an Advent calendar.

After several more minor and major catastrophe's in the family's doomed 'last Christmas with everyone together' Denise's destructive need for relief from her surroundings sends her to her mother with the words 'I think there's something in the Advent calendar for you.'

Enid returns from the calendar with the pills wrapped in a tissue. 'I'm sure whoever put these there meant well, but I don't want them in my house. I want the real thing or I don't want anything.'

The pills end up in the garbage grinder and disappear down the drain forever leaving the Lamberts to fend for themselves in the real world where their demented and crippled (from Parkinson's disease) father is on an irreversible slide into nursing home oblivion.