In C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, what figure does Aslan represent?

In C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, Aslan represents Jesus Christ.

Aslan is the great lion of Narnia, its creator, king, and spiritual guide. His death and resurrection in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe deliberately echo the Christian story of sacrifice and resurrection. Lewis explained that Aslan was not simply an allegorical label but a fictional imagining of what Christ might be like in another world.

This distinction matters because Lewis resisted treating the Narnia books as a rigid one-to-one code. Aslan’s identity is explicitly Christian, but the novels also use myth, fairy-tale structure, classical imagery, and original invention. The lion’s name comes from the Turkish word for “lion.”

Aslan appears throughout the series, though his role and visibility vary from book to book. He guides characters, establishes moral order, and appears at the end of the series in The Last Battle. His relationship to Narnia’s creator and king is central to the series’ theology.