Of Marshwiggles and Men: The Quest for the Lost Prince
Written: Aug 25 '01
Product Rating:
Pros: wide variety of well-developed characters including Puddleglum, action-packed, surprising plot twists
Cons: slightly preachy at times
The Bottom Line: Perhaps the best book in the best children's fantasy series ever written, The Silver Chair shines with life and adventure and a large cast of very unusual characters.
quasar's Full Review: C. S. Lewis - The Silver Chair
I've heard it said that the most fantastical of stories often begins in the most ordinary of fashions. I don't remember who said that, but whoever it was may very well have had C.S. Lewis' The Silver Chair in mind at the time.
You see, it starts out in an ordinary school with your run of the mill bullies chasing after a seemingly ordinary girl. Rescued by a schoolmate not exactly known as the most pleasant of chaps, she nonetheless lets him lead her away. As they are chased, they find the always locked gate to the outside mysteriously unlocked. They push through...and there any semblance of normalcy ends.
The rest of the story is spent flying through the air propelled by a mere breath, meeting at midnight with a counsel of wise owls, avoiding rocks tossed by irate giants, meeting the mysterious Lady of the Green Kirtle, wandering about lost in oddly shaped caverns, coddled by seemingly kind giants, and trapped in a mysteriously silent and dim underground city. Theirs is a journey through the magical sunlit lands of talking animals and mythical creatures accompanied by a marshwiggle on the orders of a regal talking lion.
All this in search of the missing crown prince of Narnia, Prince Rilian, son of King Caspian X of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader fame. Theirs is a noble quest, a quest to ensure the continuation of rule by the sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve in a land called Narnia.
That was their quest, to follow those signs,
No matter what hardships, no matter who whines;
To search for the prince
without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
for Narnia's cause! *
The Characters
The Silver Chair positively swarms with interesting and unique characters. Because it expands beyond Narnia to areas heretofore unexplored, Lewis was able to create a plethora of characters that didn't need to fit the Narnian mold in addition to adding many delightful new talking animals to the fold. Too many to enumerate here, the characters of The Silver Chair are a real strength of the book:
The Humans
Eustace Scrubb makes his second visit to Narnia much changed from the unhappy and unpleasant boy we first met in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Mostly up for adventure, reacting to difficulties with grace and cunning, he still has rare moments of petulance that he needs to overcome.
Jill Pole is a bit less developed, perhaps because we first meet her here and have no prior knowledge to draw on. Jill is far from perfect but she possesses a sweetness and charm that overcomes her faults.
The Marshwiggle
Puddleglum the Marshwiggle makes Eeyore seem downright upbeat. He sees the worst possible outcome for any situation and always voices it. If you contradict or counter him, you are putting on a brave front and greatly admired by the king of glum. Despite his negative words, Puddleglum always presses on bravely, his actions speaking much louder than his pessimistic words. Puddleglum may well be my favorite character in all of the Narnia books. Described as a tall gangly mess of legs and gills, I always imagine Puddleglum as a regal upright squid.
The Lion
As in most Narnia books Aslan makes an appearance in The Silver Chair. He guides, he corrects, he forgives, he sacrifices. Never the center of the story yet part of every story, Aslan brings continuity across a set of books that overall share little.
The Owls
Oh wise owls, creatures of the night who humor silly daytime creatures. Glimfeather and the others are fiercely loyal to King Caspian, holding midnight meetings to determine how best to help his cause. No silly daylight meetings for them.
The Lady of the Green Kirtle
Making strategic appearances that guide our young friends, change the course of their adventure, the Green Lady doesn't have much page time but she is central to the story. Regally beautiful with a lovely trill-filled voice, is she really sugar and spice and all things nice?
The Princes
The Prince of the Underworld - rude yet courtly, standoffish yet hospitable. Completely dependent on the Green Lady and afflicted with a strange terrible disease one hour every day, the prince is oddly compelling.
Prince Rilian, son of Caspian X from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader mysteriously disappeared after becoming infatuated with a beautiful mysterious lady. Where is he, heir to the throne of Narnia? Throughout most of the book Rilian is a character in spirit, not seen, not heard, but guiding the action nonetheless.
The Others
Many other colorful characters wind their way in and out of this book. Perhaps the most interesting are the gentle giants of Harfang. Preparing for their Autumn Feast when our intrepid travelers arrive, the giants cosset and pamper our party...for a time. The other particularly interesting collection of characters are the folks of all shape and size inhabiting the underworld lands. Strangely silent, totally obiedient to the under-queen, they act by rote and habit, never breaking form, repeating their eerie warning Many sink down but few return to the sunlit lands. It hardly seems natural.
Lessons Learned
Unlike some of the other Narnia books, The Silver Chair has no overtly religious themes, at least none obvious to someone like me who isn't Christian. What it does have is a somewhat preachy subplot.
Before blowing her to Narnia, Aslan instructs Jill to remember four signs to guide our crew on their quest. He told her to repeat the signs until she knew them without thought, and to keep repeating them throughout their journey. On arriving in Narnia, Jill immediately forgets about the signs. She remembers them later, but not soon enough to follow the first directive. Squabbling ensues as guilt creeps in, and their mission is off to a rocky start.
Many times throughout the story pieces of the signs are ignored or not recognized because of petty infighting or lack of attention. Lewis seems to be saying that you need to be receptive to guidance or it does you no good and fighting is detrimental to accomplishing your goals. Although I don't disagree with either of these statements, I do think I was hit over the head with them a little strongly at times within this book.
Even so, even with this very obvious lesson to learn from the book, Lewis presents the bickering and the inability to immediate grasp and process every input immediately in a realistic yet appealing way for the most part. Although not as ignorable as some of the religious overtones in the other Narnia books, these lessons still don't interfere with the magic of the book. It is still at heart a fantasy, a tale that soars into the imagination of children young and old and makes them just a bit happier to have lived through the experience.
The Best of Narnia?
Depending somewhat on the day you ask me, the phase of the moon, and (more accurately) if I've read it since my last read of The Magician's Nephew, I generally consider The Silver Chair my favorite of the Narnia books. There are days when The Magician's Nephew might be foremost in my mind, but certainly the two top my list in some order.
I think The Silver Chair holds this exhaulted position because of its more advanced character development. I can't think of any other Narnia story with so many well fleshed out characters, mostly all of different races. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with its sea voyage introduces a wide variety of characters but not all of them fully live in quite the same way.
I think too the exceptional underground scenes and the somewhat surprising plot twists near the end (and no, I am not going to tell you - you have read it for yourself) are unique to Narnia and really help The Silver Chair shine.
A Further Suggestion
Just as Jill did not listen to all of Aslan's suggestions and made the quest to find Prince Rilian more difficult than it perhaps had to be, you too have a choice. You may take my advice about how to read the Narnia books and get what I consider the full effect of the wondrous worlds and tales described therein or you may conform to the current trends and lose a bit of the wonder and joy. It is your choice. My suggestion: read the books in their original publication order rather than the current chronological ordering. That is, read them in this order:
* The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
* Prince Caspian
* The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
* The Silver Chair
* The Horse and His Boy
* The Magician's Nephew
* The Last Battle
Reading order is less important for this book; for the most part as long as it is read after The Voyage of the Dawn Treader all will be well, and it is ordered after in both systems. But it does make a big difference for some of the other books in the series. Read them as originally intended.
The Sequel Was Better than the Original Writeoff
This is my embarrassingly late entry into MrSocko316's writeoff on books or movie sequels better than the originals. The writeoff was on August 17th; read the wonderful entries posted on that date by:
The Narnia Chronicles, first published in 1950, remain some of the most enduringly popular ever published. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has b...More at Alibris
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