The Silver Chair

I love this book, I'm left with so much to think about. The journey that Jill and Eustace take reminds me somewhat of the Pilgrim's Progress. It's a story about life, about failure, grace and redemption.

They're given instructions for their quest, which they more or less fail to carry out correctly, but Aslan hasn't abandoned them entirely and turns up to nudge them back on track. Interestingly, the only challenge they do not fail is the last, and most important. At this point, it is in their acknowledgement of their previous failures that they have the strength to carry out this last - and most dangerous - instruction: "They had muffed three already; they daren't muff the fourth." When it really counts, they remember the command and understand they must obey whatever the consquences.

One of my favourite moments of the whole series occurs at the beginning of this book, when Jill first meets Aslan. The following conversation is one of the longest conversations Aslan has in the books. It reminds me of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) - similarly one of the longest conversations Jesus has with a single individual in the Gospels. Like the Samaritan woman, Jill is after some water. And Aslan is in the way.

He offers her a drink from the stream: "If you're thirsty, you may drink."
Jill is not convinced, too fearful to drink while a lion watches.
"Will you promise not to - do anything to me, if I do come?" she asks him.
"I make no promise" says the Lion.
Jill asks him if he eats girls and his reply is not terribly comforting:
"I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms"
She does not dare drink.
"Then you will die of thirst," says the Lion
"...I suppose I must look for another stream then," she tells him.
"There is no other stream."
I love this dialogue. The strength of the Lion, unchanging and dangerous, giving her the facts, refusing to budge or to be less than he is. There's an unmoveable sense about him, despite Jill's fears, asking him to step out of the way. And of course she does drink from the stream in the end.

There's also a nice bit towards the end, when Puddleglum stamps on the enchanted fire.
"the pain itself made Puddleglum's head for a moment perfectly clear and he knew exactly what he really thought. There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic." The enchantment the witch was weaving was one of forgetfulness, forgetting the reality they had known of sky and sun and Aslan. Pain does indeed have the power to jolt us out of a daze.

Puddleglum goes on to explain to the witch that even if this remembered reality were a dream.."Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself"...then he prefers the dream to the 'reality' of the sunless lands below.
"We're just babies making up a game if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow."

And his best line yet, one that rings so true for me,
"I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."