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[Narnia Content Note: Depression]
Narnia Recap: Jill and Eustace have attended a parliament of owls and are ready to start their adventure.
The Silver Chair, Chapter 5: Puddleglum
Chapter 5 is aptly named "Puddleglum" because that's who the chapter introduces and it largely revolves around dialogue with him. And I want to give props here: if you don't dislike Puddleglum, this is a reasonably good chapter. It's maybe not as tight as might be imagined in a perfect world, since we're still hitting the Narnia trend of the first 5+ chapters not actually having much in the way of action, but we're at least planning now, instead of backstorying, and there's some nice character development and fleshing out and nothing here is too offensive to me. So massive props, Lewis, for writing a chapter I can't pick on too much.
'Course, you'll have noticed I said "if" you don't dislike Puddleglum, which is going to be a matter of personal mileage. I'm going to note upfront that adult characters in children's fantasy stories are difficult to write. If the adults are too competent, then the children can't make as many mistakes, and their victories are perhaps shared more than might be satisfying for the reader, since the child character starts to lack a sense of agency when they're just following around the more competent adults. For instance, if Trumpkin or Caspian had provided an armed escort, then Jill and Eustace would have been boiled down to a guide, at best, or a good luck charm that Aslan had provided.
The ideal solution in these situations is usually to provide an adult who can do all the Icky Hard Things (for example: Puddleglum will hunt their food and skin and clean and cook it on the road), but will be respectful enough of the children's opinions (or enough of a pushover) to let the kids call the shots and run the show. (This is not unlike my basic philosophy for NPCs being dragged along plot rails by the PCs, ha.) At the same time, you have to justify as the author why the kids aren't turning to the vastly more experienced adults and saying, "So what do you recommend here?" and then just doing that. (If you don't justify this, the children come off as ridiculously arrogant to an almost unrealistic degree. I was a pretty stubborn child, but I still would have delegated all adulting to Puddleglum the second a blizzard hits later.)
Shut Up!
Once upon a time Legos were the go to toy for gender-neutral innovation limited only by the child's imagination and the parent's bank account. There's no reason they couldn't be that again. Would be nice.
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Saturday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead, give us something new to explore!
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And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
Shut Up!
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[Narnia Content Note: Death, Poisoning, Snakes, People / Children being killed on adventures, Violent Kings, Misogyny]
Narnia Recap: Jill and Eustace have had a lovely evening and now shit's gonna get real.
The Silver Chair, Chapter 4: A Parliament of Owls
Alright people, once more into the breach!
I think it's a little interesting, the more we go through these books, to see the author struggle with keeping the action going and you guys, this is a legit hard thing to do. There's always this tension between whether to keep the characters stumbling towards the goal line or to actually slow down and info-dump all the world-building and backstory and there really is no One Right Way to do it because there are readers who couldn't give a toss about the backstory and there are readers who want pages and pages of this stuff, so I am inclined to give Lewis a touch of a pass on this just because this is genuinely hard and he tried. You Tried, Lewis.
Like, I'm reminded of all the early parts of The Fellowship of the Ring where, okay, it was genuinely in-character for Frodo to drag his feet on everything but as a kid I was like oh my god this is the most boring thing ever just go already THIS IS NOT HARD and then they FINALLY get on the road and exciting things happen but HAHA NOPE now we're going to sit around in Rivendell for what feels like YEARS AND YEARS so that people can recite poetry at you and I realize that there are fans for whom this backstory stuff is like sweet, sweet candy--and omg I respect the fuck out of these people, I really do--but all I wanted to do was read about this damn ring being melted, okay? So let's give Lewis props for at least not making us sit through eighteen pages of poetry about the Horse and His Boy but then I must immediately take those props away because he then made a full book out of the story so I GUESS WE'RE EVEN.
Anyway, like all the books that have come before it in this series, we are now going to have backstory and politics vomited at us, but it only takes one chapter this time instead of the three (or more??) chapters that it took in Prince Caspian so... yay, I guess?
Shut Up!
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[Narnia Content Note: Death, Old Age, Insensitive Treatment of Hearing Disabilities]
Narnia Recap: Jill has been given really unhelpful instructions by Aslan and now we can get on with it.
The Silver Chair, Chapter 3: The Sailing of the King
I really liked the comparison last time to the prophetic instructions being given to Jill by Aslan as being "plot coupons". I've been writing a lot in my quiet sabbatical from the internet, and I think I also mentioned that I've been running a role playing game. In both cases--as writer and storyteller--it actually is pretty hard to give clues and plots to the reader/players such that they feel like they're participating actively in the story as opposed to just being pulled along by the nose.
Here again I wonder if Narnia wouldn't have been a better story if Lewis had left out the religion, because I really do think that the plot coupons could have been done so much better if he hadn't felt the need to make them all vague and prophecy-like to suit his religious bent. All this stuff about memorizing the signs and rules seems to be a combination of the commandment in Deuteronomy to remember god's laws, filtered through the modern Christian interest in being ready for the future because (a) Jesus' Second Coming or (b) your own personal death and judgment, whichever comes first.
But, first, remember, remember, remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night. And whatever strange things may happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs.
--Silver Chair, Chapter 2
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
--Deuteronomy 11:18-21
As a means to crowbar Deuteronomy into your book, it's not the most inelegant approach Lewis could have taken. But once Deuteronomy has been awkwardly crowbar'd into your book, now it's sitting there like a lumpy frog squatting over everything else, because--as everyone pointed out very nicely in the last installment--this basically ensures that Jill and Eustace have been setup to fail. Case in point, let us remember the first "sign" (which is not really a sign at all, but whatever):
First; as soon as the Boy Eustace sets foot in Narnia, he will meet an old and dear friend. He must greet that friend at once; if he does, you will both have good help.
So. Okay. Eustace and Jill have now set foot in Narnia. What do we see there?
Shut Up!
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[Narnia Content Note: Heights, Animal Violence, BDSM (done badly and/or treated as mandatory)]
Narnia Recap: Eustace has fallen off a cliff and been blown into Narnia; Jill remains behind to cope with all these lion shenanigans.
The Silver Chair, Chapter 2: Jill Is Given A Task
So I went ahead and read the whole thing last night because my kindle said the average read time for this book was 3 hours and I figured we could beat that. I still stand by my initial feels that Silver Chair is the least offensive of the series because there is fewer politics and fewer theologies and more of everyone being miserable and cold, but damned if I hadn't forgotten how contrived a lot of it feels.
Like, I remember starting these deconstructions feeling that Lewis was a good writer with terrible theologies, but I can't imagine now why I thought that. I know things have improved in the world of writing, Because The Future, but ye gods this book is the definition of a railroaded plot. The first two chapters are Aslan saying "go here", then there are owls saying "go there", then there is walking, then the villain shows up saying "go over there", and then there is actual writing that can be seen from space saying "go here", and then cake. Jill and Eustace might as well be wheeled about on dollies.
I also found Puddleglum both better and worse than I remember him, but more on that later. First we have to slog through Aslan being Aslan.
Shut Up!
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[Narnia Content Note: Religion, Bullying, Heights]
Narnia Recap: Eustace is now an Aslanite.
The Silver Chair, Chapter 1: Behind the Gym
I've been going back and forth on whether Silver Chair is even worth deconstructing. It's probably the least picked-apart book in the series; everyone knows the shit that goes down in Last Battle, and HaHB and Magician's Nephew have a lot of the really juicy racism and sexism to pick at. And of course the first three books (LWW, PC, and VoDT) have been adapted the most often. That leaves Silver Chair as sorta the abandoned middle child in the series.
It's also one of the most beloved books (which doesn't make it as much fun to deconstruct, because believe it or not, I don't enjoy wrecking everyone's childhood), possibly because it doesn't get picked at the hardest, and honestly it probably also helps that it's the most Tolkienesty one in the sense of getting away from all the palaces and privilege and just having a small adventuring party walking across cold hills and moors and whatnot in search of a prince they need to rescue. That's a good solid formula that's hard to fuck up, and it means that we have less of the faffing about in Prince Caspian and reams less of the privileged pillaging and looting that we had in Dawn Treader. It also has the famous Puddleglum speech, which everyone on earth loves except me. So I was sorta tempted to just give Silver Chair a pass and not deal with it.
But, hey, you know? Why not. Maybe the relative inoffensiveness of the material means we'll whip through it in record time. And just to be really edgy (or possibly lazy), I'm not going to re-read the entire book first this time. I'll be reading along with ya'll for once. Or at least for this first chapter.
Shut Up!
