What makes a myth enduring? According to J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the genuine power of fictional stories, especially fantastical ones, comes from the deep truths they tell — the more powerfully because they’re defamiliarized, disguised, and stripped of the cliches that might have encumbered them in the culture.
We see true human friendship all the more clearly when it’s two hairy-footed hobbits, Sam and Frodo, scrabbling up Mount Doom. If cliched depictions of Jesus have left us somewhat jaded, the image of Aslan offering himself for the hapless sinner Edmund makes the Redemption fresh for us again. …