The Silver Chair | Chapter 13: Underland Without the Queen

Chapter Summary:

Eustace, Jill, and Prince Rilian help Puddleglum bandage his burnt foot. Rilian tells them that there are many different ways to escape the Underworld. As they are talking about the best route to the surface, they begin to hear a noise coming from the city. Looking out of the castle window, they see a strange, giant red glow, and they see that the underground sea is rising very quickly. They realize that these are enchantments caused by the Witch, set on by her death--the underworld is being destroyed.

Eustace, Jill, Puddleglum and Prince Rilian go downstairs in the castle without meeting any opposition, and out to the stables, where they saddle two horses. They start heading toward one of the exits that Rilian knows of, and find themselves, along with all of the Earthmen, heading toward the red glow. 

Soon, it becomes clear that the Earthmen are gathering near the red glow as to cut off a route that they wish to take. Rilian quickly suggests that they take an Earthman alive as ransom, and make him explain what the Earthmen are doing. Puddleglum slips off his horse and grabs a nearby Earthman. Prince Rilian questions the Earthman while holding a sword to his throat. The Earthman is terrified that the Queen will hear what he tells them, and Prince Rilian assures the Earthman that he himself killed the Witch. The Earthman says that, in that case, Rilian is a friend, not an enemy.

Reflection:

This is indeed a clever and horrible Witch we have come across if the suppositions of our main characters are correct. This chapter reveals to us that the Witch's enchantments do not end upon her death--instead, in her final act, the Witch is going to bring complete destruction upon the entire Underworld, essentially attempting genocide, all in the sake of revenge after she is already gone. Creepily enough, this almost seems to make the Witch of this novel a more horrible person than the infamous White Witch who left Narnia in a 100-year winter and killed Aslan on the Stone Table. Indeed, the evil within Narnia is growing as we move toward The Last Battle. I suspect that a good deal of foreshadowing is at work.

This gets me thinking about the evil in our world, unfortunately. (I have a cold at the moment, perhaps I'm on the cynical side of things today? Oh well.) There certainly is a good deal of it, and when you think about it, what makes evil evil is not the action itself, but the long-range impacts of the action. It's unfortunate that the first thing that comes to mind is the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Japan, but indeed, that's the first thing that came to mind, so I'll go with it. We drop the bombs, which is indeed a massive evil--the widespread of murder of a large number of innocent people. But the evil is more than the action itself--it is what is left behind--a desolate land with thousands of cancer and leukemia sufferers, all in the name of a terrible war that was evil enough by itself. 

There are terrible things on a smaller scale as well. In general, these things are too terrible to talk about, but while we're on the topic of evil, there's rape. Rape is one of those things that is evil not only because of its immediate impact, but because of the long-lasting pain that it continually causes the victim for years and years after the event itself. It is evil because of the implied control and loss thereof. It is evil because it implies dominance (insists on it, actually) when that dominance should never exist. Thus is the evil of the Queen of the Underland--she is an evil that persists even when she is gone.