History Literature / TheLastBattle

** Hey, maybe [[spoiler:Susan]] was eventually the one who [[BreakingTheFourthWall told the whole story]] to Creator/CSLewis?

--> Shift had one friend and neighbour who was a donkey called Puzzle. At least they both said they were friends, but from the way things went on you might have thought Puzzle was more like Shift's servant than his friend.

* FateWorseThanDeath: After Ginger goes into the stable to speak to "Tashlan", when he comes out, he [[spoiler:turns into a regular non-talking cat]]

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: In a conversation with talking Dogs, it is said that male pups that don't behave are often called Boys. One mentions that female dogs are called Girls instead, and another dog tells him not to use that word because it's rude.

* GondorCallsForAid

* HollywoodAtheist: The Dwarfs. And boy do they pay for it.

* HonorBeforeReason: Tirian and Jewel are so ashamed of killing the Calormene slavemasters in unfair combat that they voluntarily surrender their weapons and allow themselves to be captured. [[StupidSacrifice Er. Yes]].
** Not really. They also were under the belief that Aslan had ordered the Calormenes to use the Talking Horses, so they felt it was necessary to be punished because they had deeply blasphemed.

** The dwarves in the stable are a more concrete example. They believe themselves to be damned, so they are.

* StairwayToHeaven: "further up and further in."

* {{Unicorn}}: Jewel, but GoodIsNotNice.

* WalkingWasteland: Tash shows this ability.

The seventh and final installment in ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' and the seventh book chronologically. Seven years (on Earth) after the events of ''TheSilverChair'', Jill and Eustace are summoned back for one last adventure, to aid the current King of Narnia against the treachery of the [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys ape]], [[TheQuisling Shift]], and his [[ArabianNightsDays quasi-Arabian]] Calormene allies.

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Susan survives, but is written out of the story. The Pevensie children claim that she stopped believing in Narnia and started dismissing her adventures as childhood games. The effect is {{Anticlimax}}.

* KillEmAll: Played with. Since the final book deals with the afterlife, the character who gets effectively written out is the one who ''didn't'' die.

* TheWarToEndAllWars: It's in the title.

* BreadEggsBreadedEggs: Shift claims that the Narnian's Aslan and the Calormen's god Tash are the same, referring to this combined being as "Tashlan".

* PaperThinDisguise: Puzzle's disguise as Aslan is woefully bad. The only reason anybody falls for is because it's dark when they see him, because he never says anything, and because it's been years since anybody saw a living lion.

* RecursiveReality: Mr. Tumnus touches on the true nature of Narnia as "an onion where the layers get bigger as you peel then away"

-->“Do you think I care if Aslan doomes me to death?” said the King. “That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be -->better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and -->longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.”

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: Shift brings the Calormenes into Narnia to help him rule it, they promptly reduce him to a figurehead. Ginger and the Tisroc perpetuate the idea of "Tashlan", and are [[spoiler:respectively made-unintelligent and taken to Hell by Tash.]]

* BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork: Ginger, Shift, and the Tisroc were all done away with by [[spoiler:Tash. He turned Ginger into an un-intelligent animal, killed Shift, and took the Tisroc alive to Hell.]]

* TakeOurWordForIt: Lewis ends the story by claiming that the previous adventures were book covers to the main stories that will follow. We'll never read about them, though.
** At least not in ''this'' world...

* [[spoiler:scendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]]

[[spoiler:* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence]]

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence

** Also, the intended Aesop behind Susan's betrayal, which becomes clearer upon reading the author's nonfiction writings.

** Hey, maybe Susan was eventually the one who [[BreakingTheFourthWall told the whole story]] to Creator/CSLewis?

* BitterSweetEnding: Even if the children are now happily living in Aslan's country, the realization that they had been mangled corpses on some train platform for the better part of the book is still jarring to the reader. This is because ''The Last Battle'' has the same type of optimism found in the Literature/BookOfRevelation -- the end of this world is just the beginning of a [[AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence truer existence]]; if you don't buy it, the ending might come off as very dark indeed.

The seventh and final installment in ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' and the seventh book chronologically. Seven years (on Earth) after the events of ''TheSilverChair'', Jill and Eustace are summoned back for one last adventure, to aid the current King of Narnia against the treachery of the [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys ape]], [[TheQuisling Shift]], and his [[ArabianNightsDays quasi-Arabian]] Calormene allies. [[spoiler: This time, they fail to prevent disaster, and the world ends, but the "real-world" characters, apart from Susan ([[AgentScully who has stopped believing in Narnia]] and thus [[MissedTheCall didn't join the gathering of friends]] before they are summoned away), as well as many Narnian heroes of the previous novels, are taken bodily to "the real Narnia," where Aslan tells the assembled characters that Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy have died in a railway crash and that they have all arrived in "Aslan's country", ''i.e.'', Heaven.

Critics still wonder what Lewis intended for Susan's ultimate fate to be. Lewis issued no definitive statements on her fate, saying only in published correspondence that "perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end." She isn't dead yet, after all -- she's just an apostate for the time being. It is worth noting that this is one of the few cases in literature where the reader gets to feel bad for the [[EverybodysDeadDave lone survivor]].]]

The seventh and final installment in ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' and the seventh book chronologically. Seven years (on Earth) after the events of ''TheSilverChair'', Jill and Eustace are summoned back for one last adventure, to aid the current King of Narnia against the treachery of the [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys ape]], [[TheQuisling Shift]], and his [[ArabianNightsDays quasi-Arabian]] Calormene allies. This time, they fail to prevent disaster, and the world ends, but the "real-world" characters, apart from Susan ([[AgentScully who has stopped believing in Narnia]] and thus [[MissedTheCall didn't join the gathering of friends]] before they are summoned away), as well as many Narnian heroes of the previous novels, are taken bodily to "the real Narnia," where Aslan tells the assembled characters that Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy have died in a railway crash and that they have all arrived in "Aslan's country", ''i.e.'', Heaven.

Critics still wonder what Lewis intended for Susan's ultimate fate to be. Lewis issued no definitive statements on her fate, saying only in published correspondence that "perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end." She isn't dead yet, after all -- she's just an apostate for the time being. It is worth noting that this is one of the few cases in literature where the reader gets to feel bad for the [[EverybodysDeadDave lone survivor]].

* LaserGuidedKarma: Ginger the cat, who takes over from Shift, loses his voice and his reason after seeing Tash in the flesh.

** The Tisroc is the BiggerBad for the BigBadDuumvirate.

The seventh and final installment in ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia''. Seven years (on Earth) after the events of ''TheSilverChair'', Jill and Eustace are summoned back for one last adventure, to aid the current King of Narnia against the treachery of the [[EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys ape]], [[TheQuisling Shift]], and his [[ArabianNightsDays quasi-Arabian]] Calormene allies. This time, they fail to prevent disaster, and the world ends, but the "real-world" characters, apart from Susan ([[AgentScully who has stopped believing in Narnia]] and thus [[MissedTheCall didn't join the gathering of friends]] before they are summoned away), as well as many Narnian heroes of the previous novels, are taken bodily to "the real Narnia," where Aslan tells the assembled characters that Digory, Polly, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy have died in a railway crash and that they have all arrived in "Aslan's country", ''i.e.'', Heaven.

* BigBad: Shift.