Now it came to pass that my father's wife hated me, and the sun appeared dark in her eyes as long as I lived in my father's house. And so she persuaded my father to promise me in marriage to Ashota Tarkaan.
It seemed odd to Shasta that a girl would be riding a talking horse all alone and this quote explains bothto the reader and to Shasta how Aravis came to be in this situation. In Tashbaan the old-fashioned traditions of young girls being promised in marriage by their parents for political reasons rather than for reasons of their future happiness or for love was still very much alive and this seemed like a practical way for Aravis' stepmother to get rid of her. It shows both the scheming nature of her stepmother and also her father's blind love of his wife as he fell for her plan immediately. The quote also shows the feisty side to Aravis' character and illustrates that she is a girl who has firm belief in her own path.
The light was to bad now for Shasta to see much of the cat except that it was very big and very solemn. It looked as if it might have lived for long, long years among the Tombs, alone. Its eyes made you think it knew secrets it would not tell.
Shasta is rather unnerved by the cat who seems to have considerably more presence than the cats he was familiar with. He half expects it to be a talking cat (another transplant from Narnia in Tashbaan) because he can tell that it is more than feline. The observation that the cat seems to know secrets it has held for a long time is of course accurate as we learn later that the cat is in fact Aslan and we know that Aslan is the keeper of the most important secrets of life and has all of the knowledge that man is on earth to discover. Although not appearing as a lion, Aslan as a cat is nonetheless having the same effect on Shasta that he has on the other children in the Narnia Chronicles which is fear and a sense of calmness at the same time.
"Bree," said Aravis, who was not very interested in the cut of his tail,"I've been wanting to ask you something for a long time. Why do you keep on swearing By The Lion and By The Lion's Mane? I thought you hated lions."
"So I do," answered Bree. "But when I speak of THE Lion, of course I mean Aslan, the great deliverer of Narnia who drove away the Witch and the Winter. All Narnians swear by him."
"But is he a lion?"
"No, no, of course not," said Bree in a rather shocked voice.
"All the stories about him in Tashbaan say he is," replied Aravis. "And if he isn't a lion why do you call him a lion?"
"Well, you'd hardly understand it at your age," said Bree.
This conversation between Bree and Aravis might seem to be a discussion about semantics but is in actual fact the crux of the philosophical and religious nature of not just this novel, but all of the Narnia Chronicles. Although Aslan might seem to be a lion this is just his physical appearance and it is an Allegory for the Lion of God in the Bible. However Bree admits that because Aravis is a child she won't understand this and to her the Lion is just that - a lion. This reflects the way in which young children learn the stories that are in the Bible as stories, rather than interpreting heir deeper meaning.
