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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Horse and His Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Freedom and Justice
Bravery vs. Recklessness
Christianity
Gender Roles
Summary
Analysis
Shasta climbs out the window and starts running through Tashbaan. He reaches the meeting spot that Bree mentioned earlier, the Tombs, which are right on the edge of the desert. But Bree, Aravis, and Hwin aren’t there, so Shasta fears they’ve abandoned him. It gets dark, and Shasta starts to feel afraid. A cat startles Shasta in the low light. Shasta is intrigued and decides to follow the cat through the Tombs. Eventually, an exhausted Shasta can’t help falling asleep.
Now that Shasta is alone, he has a chance to discover what type of person he is without anyone else around to impose expectations on him. The Tombs could represent danger or perhaps Shasta’s realization of his own mortality. He seems to realize that if he does not find his way to the freedom of Narnia, he may one day find himself resting in lonely Tombs like these. Narnia represents salvation, just as Christianity promises salvation from death.
Themes
When Shasta wakes up, the cat is gone, and the Tombs seem bigger than ever. Suddenly, he thinks he hears jackals crying out and fears they’re coming toward him. Just as he’s running away from the jackals, a big four-legged creature comes to his defense. Shasta figures it must be a lion and fears it will attack him next. But when the creature makes its way back to Shasta, he realizes that actually it’s smaller than he expected—it’s the cat that he saw earlier. Shasta promise to be nice to cats for the rest of his life.
Lions continue to follow Shasta on his journey, and though they seem like they’re dangerous, they’re actually aiding him, as the lion (or perhaps cat) here does by scaring off the jackals. This is again a representation of the mysterious power of God. Shasta’s decision to be nice to cats perhaps suggests how he is still naïve and early on his spiritual journey—he sees this cat as the thing protecting him rather than as just one part of some larger force.
Themes
Shasta goes back to the meeting place by the Tombs and wonders how long he should wait there. All of a sudden, while he’s keeping watch, he sees Bree and Hwin come toward the Tombs, but Aravis is nowhere in sight and instead a strange man is leading the horses. Shasta fears it may be a trap.
Shasta went through a period of doubt and fear when he was alone in the Tombs, and now his reward for overcoming his fears is a sign about where to go next. Shasta’s decision to follow Bree and Hwin, in spite of his fears that this may be a trap, shows Shasta’s growing faith.
Themes
