The Silver Chair (Novel)

By C. S. Lewis

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

At around the halfway point in the Chronicles of Narnia (this being the fourth book published out of seven,) the series started to become, I feel, a bit less frenetic with its allegories.  Instead of trying to pack fresh allegories into every single chapter, like the first three books did, the Silver Chair just kind of has a couple of major, recurring allegories in the story, and as obvious as they are, they don't really get in the way as much; a theme that continues through book 5 (The Horse and His Boy.)

Honestly, I couldn't be happier about it.  Not only is it easier to describe in a review, but Narnia really isn't supposed to be a theology textbook, a carbon copy of the bible, hagiography or a church history text with fauns and lions in it.  It's Christian-friendly fiction, and like all Christian-friendly fiction, it's at its best when it focuses on telling a good story, and just sort of tells it from a Christian point of view.

The major points of allegory in this story are two; the signs of Aslan, and the Lady of the Green Kirdle, who for the sake of brevity, I'll refer to as the Green Witch.

The signs of Aslan are clearly the most obvious allegory in the book, and they come into play fairly early on.  Eustace (one of the children from the last book) teams up with a new girl named Jill, and almost at once, Aslan introduces himself to her, and gives her four signs, which she needs to memorize and follow if she wants to complete the quest he's sending them on.  Aslan seems awfully demanding in this book, and doesn't really promise much of a reward for their efforts at first, although he does wind up giving them one anyway.  It's kind of small time, though, considering all the garbage they went through for him.

But anyway, back to the signs.  Aslan gives Jill the signs, and it's her job to memorize them and follow them to success.  Well, for one reason or another, they end up ignoring or screwing up the signs over and over again during the journey, and it always ends badly for them when they do, which is both a lesson on following the commandments given by God, and a pretty good allegory for the history of Israel, but on closer inspection, there's even more to it than that.

You see, Aslan doesn't just give the signs to everyone, and let each of them figure the signs out for themselves, and this is key.  He only gives them to Jill, and then trusts her to be his messenger, and let everyone else know about them.  In other words, we can't get God's message directly from God.  We need to go through intermediaries.  This message is specifically Catholic (or at least Catholic-like,) because it once again goes back to the whole "law, prophets, priesthood" thing that dominates the bible; where God appoints specific people to bring his truth to the world, and continues to do that, to this very day.  Because of the truths they've been given, these people therefore have moral authority that others lack.  As near as I can tell, only Catholics really still believe this, but I could be wrong.

In contrast, the Green Witch is far more short-lived as a plot point, and has much fewer dimensions to her, but nonetheless remains a very amusing allegory, since she tries to use her magic to make the kids believe there's no sun, sky, or Aslan; that it's all just fantasy stuff they've made up because they were in a silly mood, and they're too old to believe such things anymore.  In short, the Green Witch is the embodiment of Atheism.

Now, Lewis' argument against the Green Witch in this book isn't terribly convincing from a logical/philosophical point of view, but I have to admit, it's the one that won me over when I was younger and less logical, and this is a book written for children, after all.  Even for adults, listening to the dialogue of the Green Witch can be amusing, just because of how transparent and ridiculous her arguments are, and what a striking resemblance they bear to the arguments of modern and recent atheists.  The allegory isn't perfect, largely because her followers regain their senses when she dies, but I still found it a load of fun to read.

Now, at the beginning of this review, I said Narnia is at its best when its allegory is unobtrusive, and it focuses on just telling a good story.  Now, the allegory is unobtrusive, but is it a good story...?

Not so much.  Oh, don't get me wrong; it's far and away a better story than Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  At least this book has a major villain, but she doesn't exactly get many appearances, and there's very little forshadowing until they're almost on top of her.  I'd compare her to Miraz from Prince Caspian in terms of how often we see her, and just how threatening she is (not very.)  Her dialogue is more fun to read than Miraz's dialogue was, but that's about all I can say.  That, plus the fact that unlike Miraz, she never really caused any wars or conquered anything sort of makes her the weakest main villain of the series.  It's really kind of a shame, because I wanted to like her as a villain, but the giants of Harfang left more of an impression on me than she did.

The Silver Chair is unquestionably the darkest and grimmest of the seven books; containing all sorts of bizarre imagery; man-eating giants, pitchfork-waving, brain-dead gnomes, underworld dwellers, destroyed kingdoms, a madman tied to a chair, lava flows, mind-control spells and so forth.  Even the main guest character of the book; Puddleglum, though occasionally funny, can be easily misinterpreted as just depressing and an overall pain in the neck.  I don't reccomend skipping over this book, of course, but there's a lot in it that's just kind of annoying and depressing, without really being all that terrifying or anything, and I'm afraid that C. S. Lewis didn't specialize in intense moods; at least not during his Narnia books.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book, but you have to be a certain kind of person.  It's not perfect, but it's kind of simple fun at times.

A word of warning, however.  There was also a movie version of this book produced by BBC.  The BBC Narnia movies were hit or miss, due to their somewhat limited special effects, and the Silver Chair is by far the worst, because far from bad special effects, it seemed to take all the annoying and depressing things from the book, and make them all look a great deal more annoying, depressing and disgusting.  I personally don't suggest watching the movie version.  There's nothing immoral about it.  I just don't think it's any fun to watch.  By comparison to that, the book is a breath of fresh air.