The Silver Chair | Chapter 2: Jill is Given a Task

Chapter Summary:

The lion finishes blowing, and walks away into the woods. Jill lays face down and cries, afraid of the lion and upset about Eustace's fall. After she's done crying, Jill goes into the woods and comes across the lion at the edge of a stream. Jill is incredibly thirsty, but will not get closer to the lion to drink. After a long while, the lion encourages Jill to come to the stream to drink, lest she die of thirst. Jill is worried that he will eat her, and the lion says he will make no guarantees about what he will do once Jill drinks from the stream. Eventually, Jill drinks.

The lion asks Jill what happened with Eustace, and Jill says that Eustace fell because he tried to save Jill when she was showing off. The lion says that this is a good answer. The lion says that he has blown Eustace to Narnia. The lion then says that he has a task for her--a task that will be more difficult now that she and Eustace are separate. The lion says that this is the reason he called Jill and Eustace into Narnia. Jill understands now that the lion is the somebody that Eustace was asking to bring them to Narnia.

The lion says that their task is to find the prince of Narnia, who is currently missing, and restore him to his father--an old King of Narnia who is currently without an heir. They have only three options: Complete the task, die in the process, or return to their own world.

The lion says that there are four signs which will guide their quest:

"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. Second; you must journey out of Narnia to the north till you come to the ruined city of the ancient giants. Third; you shall find a writing on a stone in that ruined city, and you must do what the writing tells you. Fourth; you will know the lost prince (if you find him) by this, that he will be the first person you have met in your travels who will ask you to do something in my name, in the name of Aslan" (p. 383).

Aslan then tells Jill to repeat the four signs until she remembers them perfectly. Then, Aslan and Jill walk to the cliff, and Aslan blows Jill toward Narnia, just as he did with Eustace. As he blows her away, he gives her a warning--that on the mountain, Jill's mind is clear--she cannot allow herself to be confused or distracted from the signs and the task she has been given. 

Jill floats through the sky at a high speed for many hours. She sees islands below her, and it is clear that she has just been blown from the mountains beyond the sun that were seen by Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheep near the end of their voyage across the eastern sea.

After a long time, Jill alights next to a river in Narnia and finds Eustace right next to her. There is also a very grand ship nearby. 

Reflection:

There is a whole bunch in this chapter, and the reader learns rather a great deal (as does Jill). Perhaps the most significant thing that we realize--or that I realized--while reading this chapter is that Eustace and Jill enter Narnia via the mountains beyond the sun. The very same mountains that the Dawn Treader passangers saw only for a split second, and only from a very, very great distance. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, those mountains represented what was not attainable for that particular voyage. They had come such a very long way to get from Narnia to the end of the world and the edge of the great sea, but there was still so much further to go. Eustace and Jill materialize in exactly that far-off place--the place that everyone is certain is Aslan's Country. I'm not even sure if Eustace realized where he was, until perhaps he was flying away from the mountain.

On to another interesting thing. The Silver Chair is clearly going to be a very different type of story than The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was. In our previous story, the reader never really knew what was going to come next. We knew that the journey would continue, but we had no idea what obstacles would come before the end, and we did not know what the end would look like (lilies, by the way, is the answer to that). This story is framed in the opposite way. Aslan practically gives us a thesis statement for how The Silver Chair is going to play out--but of course, we still don't know how it will all end, and that is what is most significant. But what we do know is that Jill and Eustace have a task, and we know exactly what that task is. We also know that their only way to get out of that task is to die or return to their own world. We also know the four signs that will appear along the way. And finally, we know that those signs are going to be unlike what we (or Jill or Eustace) imagine--and that there will be distractions and obstacles along the way. 

What we don't know so much about is who or what the antagonist of this story will be, and this is a very large similarity to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader thus far. This could certainly change, and I almost expect it to. (Perhaps "giants" will be the answer?) I also expect that The Silver Chair will come with more narrator intervention than previous TCON stories. Since we, the reader (and thus, the narrator) know the basic plot of the story already, this gives the narrator more opportunity to speak up and converse with us. Perhaps this is totally off the mark, but it's fun to speculate.

All in all, I think The Silver Chair will be a pretty neat read--not with regard to plot, but with regard to how the characters interact and develop, and of course, how it will all end.