The Horse and His Boy | Chapter 10: The Hermit of the Southern March

Chapter Summary:

The chapter begins with Shasta, Aravis, Bree, and Hwin crossing a large river into Archenland. Looking back, they suddenly see the army of Rabadash moving toward them. The horses begin to gallop, in a race to beat the army to King Lune and Anvard.

Then, Shasta hears the snarling of a lion behind them. Bree and Shasta are running ahead of Hwin and Aravis, but as the lion has nearly caught up with Hwin/Aravis, Shasta jumps off of Bree's back and runs to help Hwin/Aravis. Just as Shasta reaches them, the lion rips his claws across Aravis's back, wounding her. Turning on the defenseless Shasta, the lion suddenly checks itself and runs away.

Looking around them after the lion has fled, Bree, Shasta, Hwin, and Aravis find that they are not at all far from a large wall of green shrubbery. In a doorwall in the wall is a man. The man greets them and says that he is the Hermit of the Southern March. He tells Shasta to run in a certain direction, where he will find King Lune in time to warn him of Rabadash's army. Shasta, already exhausted, runs off in that direction.

Meanwhile, the Hermit cares for Bree, Hwin, and the wounded Aravis. Aravis awakens to find her wound dressed. The Hermit says that it is strange that the lion only clawed her and didn't bite--and he says that this is not merely luck (but he doesn't know what it means).

Aravis is healed enough to get up the next day. She visits Hwin and Bree. Bree is in very, very poor spirits, and says that he will go back to Calormen as a slave. He is completely ashamed that he fled from the lion while Shasta went back to help Aravis and Hwin. The Hermit joins them and tells Bree that the only thing he has lost is his own self-conceit. He says that while he was a smarter, more clever horse in Calormen, he should not expect to be so in Narnia.

Reflection:

This was definitely my favorite chapter of The Horse and His Boy thus far--and one of my favorites in the entire TCON series thus far. The reason is simple: This chapter rather parallels Frodo and Sam's visit to Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. It is one of the most interesting and question-provoking chapters in The Lord of the Rings, and it is most definitely the same in this novel. 

The questions that arise from this chapter are rather numerous indeed. Here's a few of them: (1) Who is this lion, and why is it terrorizing Shasta, Bree, Aravis, and Hwin? (1.5) If the lion is Aslan, which I think we can somewhat assume, then why did it wound Aravis? (2) Who is the Hermit? (3) Why does the Hermit have complete and total awareness of who/what Shasta, Aravis, Bree, and Hwin are, and what they are doing? (4) How does the Hermit have such vast knowledge of present events? (5) Is this garden perhaps the same garden that Digory took the apple from in The Magician's Nephew? The beautiful tree in the middle seems to imply so. (6) Does Shasta make it to King Lune in time? 

There are others, but those are a good start. The Hermit is definitely one of the most interesting characters in TCON series, and perhaps the wisest as well. This sets up some very impressive quotations to take a look at. The first one, however, comes from our narrator. This is immediately after the Hermit tells Shasta that in order to reach King Lune in time, he must begin running immediately and without stopping:

"Shasta's heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one" (p. 185).

Like the last chapter, we see another quotation about the ability to keep going on. If you recall, yesterday the narrator told us that (I'm paraphrasing) we often underestimate our own capacity to do unless given some sort of incentive to continue doing. And today, we have an example of this. Shasta is exhausted, and his adrenaline is probably through the roof--he has just come face-to-face with a lion--and now he is being told that he must keep going. And not just keep going--he must run, and he must do it alone. (Most runners will tell you that running alone is much more difficult than running with others.) Nevertheless, Shasta does not hesitate. He asks for directions, heads for the gate, and runs. In doing this, Shasta has demonstrated incredible bravery and relentless persistence all in the span of a few moments. Even Aravis, who has been hostile toward Shasta, realizes the depth of what he has done. Shasta is certainly coming into his own in a pretty awesome way.

And now, I think one of the most important quotations in the entire novel comes from the Hermit in his speech to Bree at the very end of the chapter:

"'My good Horse, you've lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don't put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You're not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn't follow that you'll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you're nobody special, you'll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole" (p. 187). 

Fascinating! College freshmen beginning their college careers could most certainly benefit from the wisdom embedded in this statement. In it is a very important message: It does not matter in the slightest whether you are better (smarter, faster, stronger) than others--what matters significantly more is your humility.

This chapter comes with so many powerful lessons, it would be hard to discuss them all, but I think I have covered the basics. I am impressed (and honestly, grateful) for the substance of this chapter--I believe it will set us up nicely for a strong conclusion to this story, and perhaps some answers to the questions that have risen from this chapter as well. To Narnia and the North!