Shift (Narnia)

Did You Know?

• The name Shift picks up on the two themes of deception (shiftiness) and development (change/shift).
• Shift lives at the base of the Great Waterfall, next to the Caldron Pool where the Great River starts its course to the sea.

Biographical summary

Shift's origins are a mystery. When he first appears in the story, he is described as being so ancient that no one recalls when he took up residence at the base of the great waterfall. After his death, there is a hint that he might have been working as an agent for the Tisroc long before the lion skin turned up, simply biding his time for a chance to undermine Narnia. His driving forces throughout the tale are greed and a hunger for power, and his wickedness escalates as events unfold.

He starts by deceiving his companion Puzzle, then progresses to fooling the other talking animals with absurd fabrications and harsh commands that primarily serve his own interests and those of the Calormenes. Eventually, he has no qualms about killing them or selling them into bondage to boost his own wealth and influence. As his evil deepens, his appearance and manner become more human-like. He puts on human clothes and insists he is not an ape, claiming that if he looks like one, it is only because he is extremely old, hundreds of years old.

He also develops a drinking habit and increasingly acts as a mouthpiece for the Calormene captain Rishda Tarkaan and the cunning cat Ginger. Shift seizes power by convincing Puzzle to pose as Aslan, and later, to gain Calormen's support, he declares that their god Tash and Aslan are identical. His scheme falls apart when his actions inadvertently bring the actual Tash into Narnia. King Tirian throws Shift into the stable where Tash resides, and the monstrous god devours him.

Allegorical interpretations and literary references

C.S. Lewis, who knew a great deal about allegory, did not classify his Narnia stories that way. Instead, he called them "suppositional," exploring what Christ might be like if he were incarnate in a world like Narnia. Because of this, the series contains strong parallels to Christianity. The character Shift is frequently compared to the Antichrist from the Book of Revelation.

A verse from Revelation 13:15 describes how the beast’s image is given life and speech, and those who refuse to worship it are killed. This closely matches Shift’s method of control: he presents a false Aslan to force obedience, and the Calormenes execute anyone who resists. Some critics, including A. N. Wilson and John Goldthwaite, argue that Shift represents the Catholic Church, reflecting a traditional Protestant view that identifies the Pope with the Antichrist.

They point to Shift’s claim that Aslan will not speak directly to animals and that Shift alone is his mouthpiece. John J. Miller of National Review agrees, saying he cannot see Shift as anything but a satire of Roman Catholicism and the papacy. However, Lewis’s other works show he held no particular hostility toward Catholicism; he opposed all forms of theocracy. In his Oxford History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, he supports Milton’s criticism that Elizabethan Presbyterianism was just as guilty as Catholicism of placing a priestly mediator between people and God, for instance by insisting the Bible be “opened through preaching” rather than read aloud in churches.

Additionally, Shift’s assertion that Aslan is not bound by human ideas of good and evil aligns more with Puritan thinking than with Catholic doctrine.