Lewis took the idea of Pan, with the upper body of a man and lower body goat, and created Mr. Tumnus, who bears many similarities to Pan. Mr. Tumnus is not depicted as malevolent, instead as an innocent, led astray by the White Witch. The characters’ befriending of Edmund leads to the betrayal of the children and Aslan. It is easy to see parallels between Judas and the betrayal of Christ or St. Paul, who works for the devil, then finds his way to redemption by returning to God. Where Pan offered an alternative to Victorian ideas of Christianity, just as Grahame celebrated a call to Pan, Lewis used his authorial narrative as a call back to Christianity.

Over the last ten years, writing for older children has leaned towards dystopian literature. Through access to media/social media, children are increasingly aware of the environmental, political, and social threat to their world. Unlike Kenneth Grahame’s affectionate meanderings through a coded rural idyll, modern writers embrace topics and themes when writing for children that directly address dark and challenging subjects.

In researching the concept of Pan, I had little prior knowledge of Pantheism; I saw it connected to spiritual ideals and pastoral yearning. Writers of the Edwardian period looked for an alternative to the strict moral values and hypocrisy associated with Victorian Christianity. Like the Edwardians, we are on the cusp of social and political change. Researching Pantheism in children’s writing led me to discover political, social, and environmental concerns of those who wrote for children. While Pan was a literary device representing the zeitgeist of an age, Pan also represented social and political uncertainty. Writers for children may be seen on the outer edges of opinion, but perhaps, like’ The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, the issues addressed in writing for children are intrinsically linked to the spirit of the age.