Digory Kirke

Narnia character
Digory Kirke
Race	Human
Nation	England
Gender	Male
Birthplace	England, Earth
Family
Parents	Mr. Kirke and Mrs. Mabel Ketterley-Kirke
Family	Andrew Ketterley (uncle), Letitia Ketterley (aunt)
Major character in
The Magician's Nephew The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The Last Battle
Portrayals in adaptations
1988 BBC miniseries: Michael Aldridge
2005 Walden/Disney film: Jim Broadbent

Digory Kirke (1888 - 1949) is a fictional character from C. S. Lewis' fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. He is in three of the seven books: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Magician's Nephew, and The Last Battle, and is mentioned in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In the 2005 film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he is played as an adult by Jim Broadbent.

Biography

The Magician's Nephew

In The Magician's Nephew, the sixth book to be published but the first in the chronology of Narnia, Digory is a young boy. He lives in London with his Uncle Andrew, due to his father being away in India, as well as his sick mother and her unmarried sister. Andrew, a magician, has made magic rings that allow whoever wears them to travel to other worlds by passing through the Wood between the Worlds. Uncle Andrew first tricks Digory's friend Polly Plummer into trying the ring; when she disappears, he then blackmails his nephew into following her with another ring in order to bring her back. Digory has a sometimes misguided sense of adventure that causes him to go into another world before trying to get home and to ring a bell just to see what happens thus breaking the enchantment that held Jadis, the future White Witch, in an enchanted sleep in her dead world Charn, and accidentally brings her back to London, and soon after, into the newly-created Narnia. While there, however, Aslan sends him on a mission, which allows a magical tree to grow in Narnia which will keep the Witch at bay for nine hundred Narnian years. He took an apple from this tree, with Aslan's permission and blessing, back to the normal world, and used it to save his sick mother's life; he then buried the core, which grew into a peculiar, and possibly magical, tree in his world. The tree blew down in a storm at the end of the book; not having the heart to turn it into firewood, he had it crafted into the wardrobe which is the portal to Narnia in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

40 years later, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy stay with the now 52-year-old Professor Kirke during The Blitz of London. The four children discover Narnia via the wardrobe, and in part, tell Digory.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it is mentioned in passing that he has lost his fortune and has had to downsize to a cottage with only one spare bedroom. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, this explains why Edmund and Lucy are forced to stay with their cousin Eustace Scrubb when their parents and Susan go abroad, with only Peter being able to stay with the professor so as to be tutored for Peter's upcoming university examinations.

The Last Battle

In The Last Battle, Digory dies in a train accident and is pulled into Narnia, with other listed major characters. He and Polly (age 60 and 61) both become young again. They are thus allowed to take up lives in New Narnia. The Last Battle also notes that, prior to the events of the book, Digory, Polly, the Pevensie siblings (with the exception of Susan, who comes to believe that Narnia was a youthful fantasy), Eustace, and Jill Pole had been gathering on occasion as "friends of Narnia", to reminisce about their various adventures.

Portrayals

Michael Aldridge as Digory in the 1988 BBC miniseries adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Jim Broadbent as the adult Digory Kirke in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Michael Aldridge played Digory in the 1988 BBC miniseries adaptation.

Jim Broadbent played the character in the 2005 film.

References

Narnia portal

• Ford, Paul (2005), Digory Kirke (in The Companion to Narnia: A Complete Guide to the Magical World of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia), HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-079127-6 

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