Andrew Ketterley
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| Narnia character | |
| Andrew Ketterley | |
|---|---|
| Race/Nation | Human / England |
| Gender | Male |
| Birthplace | England, Earth |
| Family | |
| Sibling(s) | Mabel Ketterley Kirke, Laetitia Ketterley |
| Other | Digory Kirke (nephew) |
| Major character in | |
| The Magician's Nephew | |
Andrew Ketterley is a fictional character from C. S. Lewis's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia. He is prominent in the book The Magician's Nephew. He is the brother of Laetitia ("Letty") and Digory's mother Mabel, making him Digory's Uncle Andrew.
Uncle Andrew is the "magician" of which the title speaks, although his magic is not an inborn trait but is learned from books and experiments. He is initially portrayed as a frightening figure, although later on we see that Uncle Andrew is less than intimidating in comparison to a true evil villain, such as Queen Jadis, who treated him as a servant, and on whom he developed a rather laughable crush.
Uncle Andrew is not exactly an evil villain, but is nevertheless portrayed as a cowardly, selfish, greedy character who causes much trouble during the book, both intentionally and incompetently. He is described as as vain as a peacock, and he has a drinking problem. At the beginning of the book, he lives with his far more practical and benign sister Letty; their relationship is strained, as his drinking and extravagant lifestyle have rendered Letty much poorer than she originally was. It was Uncle Andrew's cowardice about using his magic rings on himself that led him to trick Polly, a little girl, into using them instead. Also, among the humans who arrive in Narnia, Uncle Andrew is the only one (along with Jadis) who fears Aslan and all the animals Aslan creates.
Uncle Andrew's normally greedy, selfish nature swells to an extreme degree when he arrives in Narnia. He observes that the Narnian soil is so fertile that an iron bar Jadis ripped off a London lamppost and threw at Aslan has now "sprouted" into a new lamppost. Andrew immediately conceives delusional thoughts about exploiting this magical property by "planting" bits of scrap metal in Narnian soil and "growing" tanks, battleships, and other war machines, to sell back on Earth. He also dreams about killing Aslan and the other "wild animals" and opening up an expensive health resort in Narnia (erroneously thinking that, because of the "sprouting" lamppost, Narnia is the Land of Youth). Fortunately, the newborn Narnian animals terrorize Andrew so much (through no fault of their own) that Aslan puts a sleeping spell on him that lasts until Digory and Polly return back to London.
At the close of the story, Digory and his parents take Uncle Andrew to live with them in their new country house (the manor in which the events of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" later take place), and Digory says that in his old age Andrew abandoned his tinkering in magic and became less selfish and persnicketty--although his infatuation with Jadis remained as strong as ever.
Uncle Andrew was not a natural sorcerer like Jadis, who was born with her magic powers. His magic was all learned from books and done via instruments, without which he was essentially powerless. According to Jadis, magicians of his sort once existed in Charn but were exterminated. He tells Digory how he had a fairy godmother, one of the last people with Fairy blood left in their world, who gave him a box of soil from Atlantis (or perhaps a similar world), from which he crafted the rings.
Andrew Ketterley may have been modelled on such Victorian dilettantes in magic as Aleister Crowley.
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