Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination

by Vigen Guroian

And over Edmund’s pleas of “Oh don’t, don’t, please don’t” (p. 127), she waves her wand and turns them all into statues. Once the terrible deed is done, the witch strikes Edmund hard on the face and says, “Let that teach you to ask favor for spies and traitors” (p. 128). Lewis now interjects, “And Edmund for the first time in this story felt sorry for someone besides himself.” Having come so near to being turned into a statue himself, or perhaps even fearing that the same would befall him soon, he now finds empathy and pity shifting his imaginings to the dreadful meaning of such a fate. “It seemed so pitiful to think of those little stone figures sitting there all the silent days and all the dark nights, year after year, till the moss grew on them and at last even their faces crumbled away” (p. 128). Edmund feels compassion. And compassion is a powerful impulse in the human breast. It has deep, even physiological resonances. It comes from the very guts of our being. It taps a primal sense that we are all bound one to another in a solidarity of flesh and spirit. Compassion binds us especially to the suffering of others so that we share their suffering vicariously and want to do something to alleviate it. No one who is without compassion deserves forgiveness. But he who has compassion is already far along toward repentance. Compassion not only awakens us to the suffering of others but moves us to see how we are responsible for having brought about some of that suffering.