On failure and hope in Narnia
Though The Silver Chair, as with all the Narnia books, ends happily, it is arguably the bleakest of the series. The children make terrible mistakes from the very start and there are times when hope seems to be almost wholly extinguished. So it is, I think, worth considering the role of failure and the nature of hope in the book.
Let’s start with hope.
This is what the Witch tells Eustace, Jill, Puddleglum, and Rilian in the Underworld:
When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children’s story.
She is a nominalist rather than a realist. Or maybe she is a modern sceptical materialist. In fact, to be absolutely precise, she knows the truth and has rejected it, but attempts to convince her audience - as so many rationalists do - that they are deluded.
And, for a while, it seems that her captives will be convinced. That is why this scene is so chilling. But then Puddleglum, whose pessimism is grounded in a healthy realism, stamps out the Witch’s fire and, as he does so, his head clears. This is what he tells her:
Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. 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.
He knows he cannot outargue the Witch but he trusts his intuitions and his intuitions are right. Where all seemed lost, now there is hope.
But what about failure? After all, the travellers have messed up pretty badly. This is how Jill reacts to her failings:
“I have come,” said a deep voice behind them. They turned and saw the Lion himself, so bright and real and strong that everything else began at once to look pale and shadowy compared with him. And in less time than it takes to breathe Jill forgot about the dead King of Narnia and remembered only how she had made Eustace fall over the cliff, and how she had helped to muff nearly all the signs, and about all the snappings and quarrellings. And she wanted to say “I’m sorry” but she could not speak.
She seems close to despair once more, but she has one more lesson to learn, which is that Aslan responds to failure quite differently. Mistakes and sins need not lead to despair but, once more, to hope:
Then the Lion drew them towards him with his eyes, and bent down and touched their pale faces with his tongue, and said:
“Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.”