The Silver Chair | Chapter 1: Behind the Gym

Chapter Summary:

One day at school, a girl named Jill Pole cries behind her school because she has been bullied a lot recently. A boy named Eustace happens upon Jill. Eustace and Jill talk about how Eustace used to be one of the bullies, but that he has become so much better since the holidays. When Jill asks why he has changed. Eustace hesitates, but then tells Jill briefly about his adventure to Narnia with his cousins.

Jill believes Eustace's rather unusual story. Just when Eustace and Jill are trying to figure out a way to get to Narnia, they hear voices that indicate that Jill is being looked for. Eustace and Jill scramble into the nearby bushes and up a small hill among the bushes. At the back of the bushes is a wall with a door in it. The door is almost always locked, because it leads beyond the school grounds.

When Eustace tries to open the door, it opens. Through the door is an entirely different land--Narnia. Eustace and Jill go through the door and find themselves in a large but not dense forest. They walk along, until they quite suddenly come to a cliff of incredible, unimaginable heights.

Jill initially feels brave, but finds herself feeling woozy. Eustace tries to catch Jill as she nearly faints at the cliff's edge, but she ends up pulling Eustace over the edge. Almost immediately, a huge creature is at Jill's side, blowing a current of wind toward Eustace, so that Eustace travels horizontally instead of vertically. Jill looks at the creature again and realizes that it is a lion.

Reflection:

Sitting here thinking, I just realized who Eustace is. Eustace is Paul. Like, from the Bible. Duh. Goes around persecuting the Aslanians (Christians) Edmund and Lucy until one day he is transformed (literally, into a dragon) and then Baptized by none other than Aslan himself. Thus, the beginning of The Silver Chair shows us Eustace after his transformation is complete. The former bully is now an ally to Jill, who is herself a victim of the very type of bullying that Eustace used to perform. 

And like any good Aslanian (Christian), Eustace responds to the call to bring Jill to Aslan (Christ) rather literally, by trying to bring her to Narnia--and then, of course, succeeding. As we can see as we read through the chapter, it does take a little convincing from Eustace before Jill is willing to believe his story about Narnia. Jill is skeptical, most likely because she is rather used to being misled as a form of bullying. But Eustace is truthful, and Jill knows this as soon as she looks through the door beyond the school grounds and gets her first glimpse of Narnia.

But all does not go as planned when Jill and Eustace arrive in Narnia. And perhaps this was because there was absolutely no plan at all--the only plan was to escape the school and the bullies that inhabited it. Thus Jill and Eustace find themselves at the edge of an impossibly huge cliff (I would imagine something about ten times the height of Mount Everest), and very soon afterward, Eustace finds himself going over that very cliff, having just tried to save Jill from the same fate. Luckily, Aslan intervenes. 

There's another comparison I'd like to draw from this chapter as well, and that is that Jill is not too unlike the Lucy that we meet at the beginning of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. If you recall, Lucy at that time is a rather quiet young girl. Edmund bullies her and her other siblings don't take her seriously when she first mentions her initial trip through the wardrobe and into Narnia. I would imagine that Jill would identify in many ways with that character. Perhaps they will meet some day.

Onward we go, to find out what Eustace and Jill's fate will be now that they are separated in the large world of Narnia.