Once upon a time, about forty years ago, I read the entire series of The Chronicles of Narnia in a single week. Way back then, I would probably given The Silver Chair two stars. But only because I was feeling generous and I was still in the halo of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.Some time in the interim, The Silver Chair moved from the bottom of my ratings to the top. And I do mean the very top. Today I'd give it more than five stars, if I could. Its rise has been steady; modest at first, it eventually came to float in and out of my Top 10 for a while. Now it's a serious contender for the all–time Number 1 spot. What happened to change my views?Well, first of all, I attended a L'Abri conference featuring Jerram Barrs and Wim Rietkirk at the University of Queensland sometime in the early eighties. One of them—I think it was Rietkirk—quoted at length from the scene where Rilian, Puddleglum and the children face off the Green Witch as she strums her enchantment of befuddlement in the Underworld. I can't remember exactly what they said but it changed my appreciation of the whole book. It stopped being one of my least favourite books and began its slow ascendancy.Then came the BBC series with Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor in the Doctor Who television series) as Puddleglum the marshwiggle. Such a respectabiggle portrayal! I liked the series so much, the book again made a jump in my estimation. (I even liked the bit they added with Eustace and the dragon—such a perfect touch!)Then I started to write books of my own. I loved two of the Narnia books, hated two and felt the other three were middling. It was an enormous surprise to me when, as I started to write, I found myself wanting to fill in the 'missing' story set on Ettinsmoor! Until I'd was half way into chapter 1 of Merlin's Wood, I had no idea I thought Narnia was incomplete, let alone that its incompleteness was connected with a story centred on Ettinsmoor. Fortunately good sense prevailed and my story shifted location to another planet entirely! However faint echoes of my flirtation with Ettinsmoor can be still be found throughout the story.As a result of this experience, I realised something deep in my spirit connected with something deep in this story, despite my superficial equivocation about liking it.The huge leap forward came as a result of two books: Planet Narnia and Green Suns and Faërie.I love Planet Narnia. I think it’s brilliant, incisive, a stunning work of sheer genius. I also think it’s wrong. In a very subtle way. As much as the difference between the north pole and the north magnetic pole.I was succumbing to the charms of its central premise—that the seven books of the Narnia series are based around the seven medieval planets—when I was brought up short by an obvious error. The Silver Chair is not, in my view, themed around the Moon. It’s themed around giants. In fact 40% of the chapters directly deal with giants or giants’ work. It’s all too easy here to be swayed by the word silver and its ubiquitous association with the moon.However, I believe the silverness of the chair is another of Lewis’ (many) tips of the hat to his friend and colleague, JRR Tolkien. In Green Suns and Faërie, Verlyn Flieger writes of Tolkien’s reworking of a Breton folktale on a variant theme of the Orpheus legend. The Corrigan is a faery woman who sits on a silver chair, rules an underworld and seeks to lure a hero to her dark realm. Sound familiar? The story doesn’t end well for the hero, so Lewis’ variant on a variant is more in line with the happily–ever–after of the medieval poem, Sir Orfeo. (Yep, another Tolkien obsession.) However the general alignment of plot at least as it pertains to the Rilian character suggests to me that silver is more to do with Tolkien's description of the Corrigan's chair than any lunar aspect. The Corrigan of course is a fairly obscure denizen of the lands of elfin. No doubt her name reminded Lewis of the Morrighan the war goddess of Ulster, the land of his birth. The Morrighan is said to be the forerunner of the witch queen Morgan le Fay in Arthurian romance. In fact Lewis was seriously tempted to name the White Witch 'Morgan' and not 'Jadis', as early drafts of The Magician's Nephew indicate. The inspiration of the Corrigan as a distant relative of the Morrighan is, I think, alluded to in the distant relationship between the witches of the north to Jadis.Jadis has, like Aslan, echoes of Norse naming. (Yeah, I know. Turkish cigarettes called Aslans with pictures of lions on them. Tales of the Arabian Nights with lions, aslans, in them. Yeah, yeah. Gimme a break. For a man self–admittedly ‘crazed with northern–ness’? When Aslan from Old Norse is god of the land?!) There are several possible translations for Jadis from Old Norse, but I’m inclined to go with ironwood witch–mother. Which probably explains the appearance of Fenris Ulf instead of Maugrim in the American editions: because he too comes from the ironwood.I just don’t get the bizarre tendency of those who write about Lewis to overlook the Old Icelandic language. There are too many allusions to Norse mythology to look south for the answers in my view and see Latin or Turkish in the snow–swirled landscape of Narnia. So, heading north, I will point out that the giants dominate the tale of The Silver Chair, far more than silvery things or watery things or lunar things. And in Norse mythology, the giants are the thurses, the rises and the jotuns; they’re the ettins or eotens from which Tolkien derived the name, ents. Even in Irish folklore, the Red Ettin is a giant of the Jack–and–the–Beanstalk school. Here’s where the name Ettinsmoor comes into its own: it’s the high moorland of the giants. Fits nicely. It’s probably based on the Borders area of Scotland, since the folktale of the giant of the broch of Edinshall (edin being a variant of ettin) is about a rock–throwing game.Now in Norse mythology, gnomes and giants are sometimes confused. Thus, if it’s permissible to add in the chapters about the gnomes to the count of the giants, over 50% of the book are devoted to the big guys. Now the giant planet is not the Moon. It’s Jupiter. Which, in medieval times, was equated to Thor. (Both wield thunderbolts, for the obvious parallel.) We refer to Thor all the time, even though few of us realise it. Thursday is named after this feisty hammer–wielding giant.And herein lies, I think, Lewis’ clever gamesmanship and mastery of words. The Silver Chair is themed around Thursday, not around the Moon. Moreover it’s not a nod to Thor/Jupiter but rather to the thurses of Norse mythology. (Not forgetting thur from old Gaelic is strong.) As it happens, the medieval planets correspond to the Days of the Week. So I believe Michael Ward in Planet Narnia was utterly, superlatively, outstandingly right in his overall theory while still being wrong in important specific details. (Because it’s a closed system, one error means there have to be at least two. Another involves The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which should be aligned with Wednesday and Woden/Mercury—as clearly attested by the silver sea or lily lake sailed by Reepicheep and which appears in the myth about Mercury.)Now all this cleverness was admirable and wonderful. But it certainly wasn’t enough to catapult The Silver Chair so far up it has come to rival my all–time favourite story.What did it was a study of threshold covenants. As I’ve worked on understanding them and listing the symptoms of them, I realised The Silver Chair is the story par excellence of their nature.Python — check!Wasteland — check!Memory issues — check!Giants out to make a meal of us — check!Giants on a threshold — check!Being silenced by the enemy — check!Ambiguous information — check!‘If’ — check! Theft of destiny — check!Name covenant — check!The Silver Chair could almost be a manual on the tricks and tactics of the Python spirit governing thresholds. Indeed the Lady who lures Prince Rilian from the fountain assumes the form of a monstrous snake at the climax of the story and tries to crush him to death. The heroes find their way underground to rescue Prince Rilian through a giant letter E, suggesting that the Lady was meant to evoke an image of the ‘Pythoness’ of Delphi, an oracular shrine famed for its navelstone carved with a mysterious E. (Which most probably, according to Plutarch, means if.)It’s been enormously helpful to me as I’ve looked more at threshold covenants. The really interesting aspect of the novel is that it starts with a name covenant. As it should if it’s truly dealing with thresholds. In fact, it begins an evocation of a very particular name covenant. The massive fall of Jill into Narnia at the beginning of the story which ends with a watery splash should remind us of the nursery rhyme, Jack and Jill, and of Lewis’ own nickname: Jack.So, of course, it has giants. Because what else does Jack face in the most enduring fairytale of all about a boy of that name? A giant, of course, at the top of a beanstalk. Lewis had always been fascinated by the foes of his namesake. He wrote passionately of Gawain from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the ettins that were blowing after him. The Green Knight of the tale is half–ettin himself, his unnamed wife has a green girdle and appears to be a student of Morgan le Fay. So it is no surprise to find gusts of the great medieval poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, all the way through The Silver Chair. It isn’t far from the Lady of the Green Girdle to the Lady of the Green Kirtle, after all, especially when both of whom are artists of ambiguity and deceit.And if anything is going to make me love a book more, it’s one that owes its inspiration to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an especial and particular favourite of mine.
Over and Under Narnia(A Book Review of C. S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair)The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis is considered the penultimate book in The Chronicles of Narnia, and I have no contention why readers said that it’s an all together different book (though I had taken a much different tack in reading the series for reasons stated on this post). At the outset it is the first book in the series that does not have anything to do with the Pevensie siblings; instead it features Eustace Scrubb (who first appeared in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), their cousin, in a leading role along with a new character, Jill Pole, his classmate from boarding school.The book decidedly has a more grown-up feel to it as reading upon the opening pages we witness Jill’s distress, hiding in the shrubbery and chased by the school bullies. This shift in tone and hints at mature themes continues to turn up bit by bit throughout the book. I will not say much here but this incident will lead Eustace and Jill to an adventure, and you bet it that there are more than bullies they have to deal with once they find their way through the land of Narnia.Once again the reader is in for a treat in C. S. Lewis’s patented quest tale, but what makes The Silver Chair something else is the new set of beguiling characters. I know it might take a while for some reader to get used to it seeing as it is that we get to know events in Narnia through the eyes of the Pevensies. In my opinion, this point makes the installment of The Horse and his Boy significant in the sequence in that it weans us for a bit from the beloved protagonists and lets the reader see the adventure in another set of point of view.Eustace is his same snotty self, yet more in a restrained manner this time around — indeed he already learned his lesson (plus more once you get to the book). Lewis takes female characterization again up a notch with the introduction of Jill Pole, and as I see it, it seems much of the book is told from her standpoint, which is all the more splendid for one can’t help but like and relate to her. Seen cringing during the first chapter she takes on a lot of guts and personality as the plot progresses. Lewis shows in Jill a very much grounded and human character: she screws up from the very beginning; she is easily distracted by simple comforts, though you can’t blame her seeing as it is how hard of a journey they have ahead of them; she’s not afraid to cry and to use trickery as she sees fit; and do tell me, if being afraid of caves and dark craggy places isn’t human enough, then what is? In the face of all these, what makes her all the more awesome is she isn’t afraid to own up her mistakes and no matter how dismal she feels, she gets up and tries again. With confidence she does all these in a completely, utterly real way.And before I totally forgot there’s a Puddleglum, a marshwiggle, an original creature by Lewis who accompanies and guides the two kids and provides the comic relief in the novel. I tell you he’s such a character — he closely reminds me of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — and what make him memorable are his outwardly amusing pessimistic views, though actually he’s a closet optimist. I think it’s merely his way of offsetting fears that he himself doesn’t recognize he’s courageous enough to face. You might not get what I’m saying right now; just wait until you read the book.A stark contrast to earlier books, this is the only quest so far where the heroes are groping their way, with completely unclear instructions to accomplish. Midway in the book, seeing the general happenings in the land of Narnia since the indeterminate time a Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve ever visited there, we get a semblance of the task they have to do. Since the characters met and teamed up from the start, we got a pretty straightforward narration from Lewis along with the seamless unfolding of worldcraft, adding to the mythological feel of the series the haunting kingdom of the giants up north and the ghastly gloom of Underland (a nod to the traditional tale of heroes of old traveling in the underworld as part of their journey). Since there’s only a handful of characters, I take this book is more action packed than others with some pretty neat scenes describing in detail some of the amazing sword fights. It has its moments of suspense as well: it had me on the edge of my seat, breathless, thinking if Eustace and Jill will ever get out of Narnia or they might end up stuck in there. It also has some charming fantastical elements like flying by Aslan’s breath and on the back of huge talking owls and we get to learn nifty facts about Centaurs to boot. What’s not to love, eh?In the vein of prior books, The Silver Chair brings to its pages Christian themes yet now with a marked sophistication for readers who followed up reading the series. In this occasion it stresses the vital lesson on developing discipline, to not take our eyes off the instructions and promises no matter how absurd it may look like in the first place. Out of Eustace and Jill we realize that it is hard to confess — more so to ourselves — our personal responsibilities, that we are accountable. At the end of the day, faithful obedience done even in the face of death is just but one side of the coin. We slip, we tumble and as Paulo Coelho succinctly said said: “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” I believe the answer remains whether or not we’ll be able forgive ourselves.To err is human;To forgive divine._________________________Book Details:Book #43 for 2011Published by Scholastic Inc.(Trade Paperback, January 1995 Edition)243 pagesStarted: November 15, 2011Finished: November 17, 2011My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★[See this review on my book blog Dark Chest of Wonders and for many others.]
What do You think about The Silver Chair (2008)?
C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair isn’t nearly as successful as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian; even so, that leaves plenty of possibility for this book, which relates the return of the reformed prig Eustace Stubbs to Narnia, this time with a new companion, Jill Pole. The pair, with the help of the great lion Aslan, set out on a quest to find the missing Price Rilian, son of that very same Caspian.The novel starts a bit slowly, but both the storyline and the underlying Christian allegory prove pleasant enough. If you don’t expect The Silver Chair to be as good as those featuring the Pevensie children, you won’t be disappointed. After all, the book was good enough for me to order The Horse and His Boy immediately.
—Ivonne Rovira
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—Peter
I started the series with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, making this the fifth book I've read in the series, and so far it's my least favorite. I wasn't going to proceed with the series after the first book I read, because I found the blatant Christian Allegory annoying, but friends told me that, except for The Last Battle, that aspect of the books becomes less evident--and I pretty much found that to be the case, including in this book, although it's hard not to see it when Aslan the Lion enters the story. And actually, in a way I almost enjoyed that aspect this time. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, but I thought that entire scene with the Witch and the Marsh-wiggle debating was a cool version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It's not a philosophical view I ascribe to, but I had to give Lewis snaps for presenting rather sophisticated philosophical/theological concepts through the workings of a magical spell in a children's story.What annoyed me here were the slaps at co-educational, secular (and democratic/republican ie non-monarchial) education through the school the children Jill and Eustace attend. "Experiment House" has a Head who *gasp* "was by the way, a woman" and where "girls are not taught to curtsy." Quel horror! It irritated me so much--even though it's a very small part of the story, that it was hard for the story's admitted charms to come though. I think much of the accusations I've read that Lewis' Narnia is racist or sexist is mostly Politically Correct hogwash. His girls are every bit as smart, brave and capable as his boys--and as important to the story. But all that does make me cringe.As usual though, Lewis does exhibit a prodigious imagination and powerful imagery in this quest tale as well as winning touches of humor and whimsy. Puddleglum is a great comedic character and settings like Bism unforgettable. It's been obvious reading these that Narnia is as influential in fantasy as Tolkien's Middle Earth. With messenger owls, giants, feasts and the evils of the color green connected to snakes I'm reminded of Rowling's Harry Potter tales just as the warrior mice of Prince Caspian made me think of Jacques' Redwall and the talking horses of The Horse and His Boy made me think of Lackey's companions in her Valdemar books. And it's more obvious with every book Pullman's His Dark Materials is the anti-Narnia.So, bottom line is as a fan of the fantasy genre I'm glad I'm finally catching up with this series. Were I a parent I might feel ambivalent giving this to my children--Lewis' values aren't mine. But I also tend to think it's best to just feed kid's imaginations and not worry books like these are going to indoctrinate them. I know people of all faiths and no faith who loved Narnia as a child--and I can understand why.
—Lisa (Harmonybites)
