Abstract
Although critics have used the Talking Beasts of Narnia along with Genesis as support for human “dominion” over animals, such usage is not altogether warranted. In The Magician’s Nephew, the roles of Adam and Eve are distributed among various characters, including the Talking Beasts. Thus they are not “mere” animals but are the Narnian equivalent of human beings, evolving in an accelerated evolutionary process similar to the normal-speed evolution Lewis describes for the human species in The Problem of Pain.
