Once Upon a Wardrobe

Content Warning: This section refers to terminal illness and death.

“George Henry Devonshire is only eight years old, and he already knows the truth. They don’t have to tell him: the heart he was born with isn’t strong enough, and they’ve done all they can.”

The novel’s opening lines introduce the story’s major conflict: eight-year-old George’s incurable heart condition. George’s failing health drives the narrative as his sister attempts to fulfill his dying wish to discover the origins of Narnia. The opening lines also characterize George as mature beyond his years. While doctors and his family try to protect him from the truth, he knows that his life expectancy is short and faces this fact with stoicism.

“What he can do is sit inside this space and close his eyes and take himself to that imaginary world, where he can have his own adventures, where he can escape the very real world, where his body won’t get old, and where his mum doesn’t cry in the kitchen.”

Sitting inside his wardrobe, George can imaginatively escape from the confines of his bedroom, his illness, and his family’s grief over his condition. His use of the space as a portal to the imaginative world echoes the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which gives the Pevensie children access to the magical world of Narnia.

“My heart belongs to numbers and equations, my head to thoughts of solving the greatest mysteries of physics.”

As a mathematics student at Oxford University, Megs thrives when faced with mathematical or scientific conundrums. However, Callahan demonstrates that the protagonist’s overreliance on logic and practicality precludes her from enjoying many elements of life. Her heart is initially closed to making new connections, and her mind is shut to the imaginative joys of fiction.