C. S. Lewis insisted Aslan was not an allegory of Christ
Most readers take Aslan as a stand-in for Jesus. Lewis disagreed with the word allegory. He described the lion as an imaginative answer to a question: what might Christ be like if He chose to become incarnate in a world of talking animals? Part of the answer, he admitted, came from strange dreams.
Aslan is the only character who turns up in all seven Narnia books. He is a talking lion, the King of Beasts and son of the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, and his name is simply the Turkish word for lion. Lewis often gave Lion a capital letter, echoing the biblical title Lion of Judah. He gave three reasons for choosing the animal: lions are the traditional kings of beasts, Christ carries that title in the Bible, and he had been dreaming about lions when he started writing.
The clearest parallel comes in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Edmund betrays his siblings, and the White Witch claims his life under the Deep Magic. Aslan secretly offers himself instead and is killed on the Stone Table, watched by Susan and Lucy. A deeper magic the Witch does not know cracks the table and brings him back. Commentators have linked the two grieving girls to the Three Marys of Christian tradition.
Elsewhere he works more quietly. He cures Eustace of being turned into a dragon, briefly appears as a lamb at the edge of the world, and gives Jill four Signs for finding a lost prince. In The Horse and His Boy he is hidden for most of the story, chasing travellers together and comforting a frightened boy in the shape of a cat. In The Magician's Nephew he sings Narnia into being and gives some animals speech; in The Last Battle he ends it.
That final book caused argument. Aslan tells a soldier who served the false god Tash that honest service counted as service to him, a line critics read as endorsing inclusivism. On screen Liam Neeson voiced the computer-animated lion in three films starting in 2005, and in 2011 Aslan appeared on a set of Royal Mail stamps honouring eight British magical figures.
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