Lord of the Rings: Time, Action and Choices

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, among the many fascinating areas for further thoughts and exploration is that of time, and the details of the action and the overall timeline. As noted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, this was something that Tolkien, ever the perfectionist, spent some amount of time on: going back and re-checking the dates and making corrections as needed, to correctly synchronize the action, especially in The Two Towers and Return of the King, with the multiple different storylines covered in alternating chapters as well as alternating books between Frodo and Sam and everyone else.

The official timeline of the action is found in the last part of Appendix B of Return of the King .  This website has a “Lord of the Rings Timeline,” similar to the Appendix B data but with a few date errors.  This page in a Reddit forum gives a suggested “chronological reading” of the chapters in The Two Towers and Return of the King, though it differs somewhat from the actual sequence in Appendix B.

One thing is very obvious, though, regarding the overall pace and action. So much is happening, and happening very quickly, in book 3 of The Two Towers. Yet, the first two chapters of book 4, with Frodo and Sam following Gollum through the marshes to the arrival of the Black Gate (the beginning of chapter 3) span the same amount of time as all 11 chapters of book 3. The entry for March 5, 3019 gives a crucial sync point:

Gandalf sets out with Peregrin for Minas Tirith. Frodo hides in sight of the Morannon, and leaves at dusk.

The winged Nazgul that Frodo, Sam and Gollum see and feel, heading to the west at the end of chapter 2 (The Passage of the Marshes), is heading west in response to Pippin looking into the Palantir.  Gandalf and Pippin are riding off at high speed on Shadowfax in the early morning hours just as the travelers are slowly approaching the Morannon.   The rest of the events in book 4 occur during the interim travel time of Gandalf and Pippin and then into the early chapters of Return of the King book 5.

Tolkien has given us illustrations of both kinds of life experience and how we perceive the time we live through: the fast-paced days when a lot is happening, and events of only a few days ago seem long past; and the slower days of plodding along, getting tasks done each day, and time for thought about what is happening, as Sam considers various facts regarding Gollum, his master, and their difficult physical circumstances. Life often happens thus, with these alternating patterns of busy activity and slowness. The Israelites had a few momentous, dramatic days in their flight from Egypt and crossing the Red Sea — followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert, punctuated by a few dramatic events but otherwise a lot of travel from place to place. The apostle Paul, in Acts 24:11, relates that “You can easily verify that no more than twelve days ago I went up to Jerusalem to worship,” regarding a series of events that started three chapters earlier.

Yet regardless of how we perceive the time, each day is given as it comes, and it is for us to be good stewards of our time. “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation,” (2 Cor. 6:2). We are to redeem the time, to make the most of the time, for the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16)

Tolkien gives us such a picture of these important truths, in the choices and fate of Gollum. Gollum has lived hundreds of years, long beyond the normal lifespan of his kindred, and lived most of those years doing and thinking evil, and in possession of the One Ring and its destructiveness; most of that time literally cut off in the dark caves, shunning sunlight and air, all the while continuing with acts of murder to serve his immediate needs. Since the time of The Hobbit, almost 80 more years have elapsed. Yet Gollum actually shows up in the Lord of the Rings story for a mere matter of days.

The actual time that Gollum is with Frodo and under his charge, until the time that Gollum betrays Frodo in the tunnel of Shelob’s Lair, is a mere 14 days (Feb. 29-30 and March 1- 12) — days in which Gollum was sometimes separated from Frodo for many hours at a time, but still with Frodo at least some of each day. From that point, Gollum’s destruction is just 13 days away — March 25 at the fires of Mount Doom. On the one hand, given such a short time, it seems incredible that anything could happen in the life of Gollum during these two weeks. That one so hardened, and for so long, could actually begin to respond to Frodo’s kindness, is a marvel of its own; no doubt, it could be said, due to the unusual characteristics of hobbits, who again and again show their resistance to things that affect the big people more easily. Yet these 14 days were Gollum’s limited opportunity for salvation, the time of the treatment of “his cure” as Gandalf had referred to it: a time when kindness and mercy was shown to him in a way he had never experienced before. And during that short time, Frodo actually achieved a level of trust with Gollum, demonstrated when Gollum obediently came to Frodo at the forbidden pool. Yet the end result should not be considered all that surprising: 14 days of kindness and mercy, after several hundred years of meanness and cruelty, was not enough to really get through to Gollum. Throughout the 14 days, Gollum never really comes to the point of recognizing or appreciating the mercy shown to him, of acknowledging his own sins; everything is still cast in terms of himself and how people treat him; Gollum is incapable of any gratitude for the mercy shown to him by Faramir and his men for not killing him at the Forbidden Pool.

In the end, though, we are all accountable for the time and the opportunities given to us: opportunities to perceive God’s kindness, opportunities to repent (Romans 2:4) — or not to repent. “Whether short time or long,” the apostle Paul urged King Agrippa regarding salvation in Acts 26:29. So that everyone will be held accountable to God, and that man is without excuse before God. And God is pleased in many instances to grant salvation to people in their old age, after years of hardening. But many, like Gollum, have become too hardened, and waste the opportunities given them.

Yet there is hope, while life lasts, as we do not know the outcome for each person.  C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia provides us a positive example, an opposite of Gollum:  Eustace, for all the brattiness and meanness acquired in his short life (and in that respect a great advantage over the aged, wicked sinner Gollum), finally reached the place where he  recognized and appreciated the kindness that the others had shown him, and wanted to be restored to humanity.  His brokenness led to godly repentance, and Aslan finally came and un-dragoned Eustace.

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Evil Counsellors (Wormtongue, and the Queen of Underland in Narnia) and Restoration

Continuing in the Lenten Lord of the Rings journey, some thoughts from The Two Towers, chapter “The King of the Golden Hall.”  As I was reading the parts concerning Grima Wormtongue, I was reminded of another evil counsellor, who was likewise depicted as a serpent (in a literal form): in The Silver Chair, the serpent that killed Prince Rilian’s mother, and later ensnares the Prince himself, in bondage to the “Queen of Underland,” to finally reappear in its true form of a serpent.

Though Grima does not literally change into a snake, the reference comes out in several places in the dialogue:

“See, Theoden, here is a snake! With safety you cannot take it with you, nor can you leave it behind. To slay it would be just. But it was not always as it now is. Once it was a man, and did you service. …

‘Nay, Éomer, you do not fully understand the mind of Master Wormtongue,’ said Gandalf, turning his piercing glance upon him. ‘He is bold and cunning. Even now he plays a game with peril and wins a throw. Hours of my precious time he has wasted already. Down, snake!’ he said suddenly in a terrible voice. ‘Down on your belly!

The situations are somewhat different, but show some clear similarities.  King Theoden has been shut in his dark castle, the Golden Hall which is dark by contrast with the daylight outside, and shut up with fears — that he is an old man, that he should take extreme caution and not do anything that might endanger his health in his dying days, that he should stay in that dark place.  Rilian is still a prince, heir to the throne, and yet quite literally in a dark place, under the ground; and he too, similar to Theoden, only goes outside (to the world above) seldom, when the Queen of Underland allows it and takes him with her.

Of course, the depiction of the evil character is more developed in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  Grima Wormtongue is servant to a greater demonic power, that of Saruman (who in turn has been in the service of the greater Dark Lord Sauron), whereas the Queen of Underland is understood to be representative of the devil or Satan himself, without any hierarchy of evil.  (C.S. Lewis, though, certainly understood and elsewhere taught such a concept of demonic hierarchy, as for instance in his classic work Screwtape Letters.  The simpler form is presented in the Narnia series, intended for children readers.)

The evil characters in both places seek domination over other wills, and do so in accordance with the measure of their demonic abilities.  While the Queen of Underland hoped to conquer and rule over all of Narnia, apparently Grima hoped for his reward from Saruman — the treasure, and Eowyn, as Gandalf described it:  you were to pick your share of the treasure, and take the woman you desire.

Yet in both cases their victim was under a spell:  not knowing their true, real self; in darkness, bondage, delusion and fear, trapped by the poison of a “toxic person” as described by the psychologists of our day.  Both Rilian and Theoden needed help from someone outside, as they were powerless to change their situation.  Rilian had his Silver Chair, that must be destroyed for the spell to be broken; he had tried once to break free, but the evil queen had been there and prevented his escape.  Theoden had friends who saw his situation and loved him, yet could do nothing for Theoden, whose will was in Wormtongue’s care.  “A man may love you and yet not love Wormtongue or his counsels,” said Gandalf.  For both of them, a healing was needed, and help must come from outside — messengers sent to them from God.

So in Aslan’s purpose, messengers from our world (rather like departed saints, or angels, from the Narnian perspective — people not living among them in Narnia) were sent — Eustace and Jill — to free the prisoner.  In Iluvatar’s will, Gandalf had been “sent back” — as Gandalf described it in the previous chapter to Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli: sent back from death, after the fall into the pit with the Balrog in Moria, to continue the work for Gandalf to do.  And that work included coming to Theoden’s hall, and breaking the spell that had been put on King Theoden.

The healing is completed, the spell broken, and the characters can take action and move forward with their lives.  In the words of Prince Rilian, upon destroying the silver chair:

“Lie there, vile engine of sorcery,” he said, “lest your mistress should ever use you for another victim.”  Then he turned and surveyed his rescuers; and the something wrong, whatever it was, had vanished from his face. …. “Had I forgotten it [Narnia] when I was under the spell?” asked the Knight. “Well, that and all other bedevilments are now over.”

The wise counsel that Gandalf brings to Theoden, is so applicable for us all. When Theoden asks about the counsel that Gandalf had mentioned, first comes encouragement: “You have yourself already taken it,” answered Gandalf.  The counsel: “To put your trust in Eomer, rather than in a man of crooked mind. To cast away fear and regret.  To do the deed at hand.” And herein lies an answer to difficulties for all of us. Listen to the right people, cease listening to the voice of the enemy (and negative thoughts contrary to goodness, beauty, and truth), to put the past behind, and move forward. As the apostle Paul said (Phil. 3:13-14): Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Theoden is roused to go to the battle. He still has strength in his body, his people have strength, and there is still hope. Prince Rilian joins the travellers to escape from the Underworld, to meet his dying father and then to take on his responsibilities as the next King of Narnia.

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Further Up and Further In: Narnia, C.S. Lewis, and the V-Shaped Christian Conversion Experience

I’ve seen Hillsdale College advertisements on Facebook over the years (along with mention of it by a few online friends), but since it seemed that mostly their offerings were about American history and political related issues of American government, I had not tried it out.  A new offering from them, though, caught my eye: C.S. Lewis on Christianity.  The format is simple and straightforward — listen to several video lectures (this course has seven), and answer some multiple choice questions after each lecture.  Since I’m already familiar with C.S. Lewis, though it’s been many years since I last read his non-fiction, the lectures are a good overview of the major ideas in his non-fiction, such as Lewis’ Abolition of Man and Mere Christianity, and include some things that I had either forgotten or not come across before.

The third lecture talks about C.S. Lewis’ conversion to Christianity, and Lewis’ view of conversion as V-shaped: we must first go down, then further down, hit bottom and experience initial conversion, then gradually come back up, in the new life.  We can observe this pattern in much of Lewis’ fiction writing.  The lecturer mentions the number of steps into and out of the wardrobe, though I’m not sure if that is a really clear example; nothing in the text says that Lucy or the others stepped down and then stepped up, just that there were a certain number of steps.

However, other examples certainly do make the point.  The Silver Chair‘s overall structure is certainly that of a V: starting at the school Eustace and Jill attended, then to a very high cliff place above Narnia, then down to Narnia itself.  Then falling down into the giant-made letters of “Under Me” then down to Underland.  Puddleglum, Eustace and Jill finally accomplish the mission from Aslan while in Underland.  Then the return trip, back to Narnia, then back to Aslan, and then returning to the where it all started, at Jill and Eustace’s school.  The other Narnia travels from our world — The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and following — certainly have the beginning and end same, since that was in the nature of the travel itself — a point really noted in the first two stories, not so much in Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Yet The Silver Chair especially makes the V-shaped story in a very literal, geographical way.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader especially gives a picture of Christian conversion.  Eustace started out a real twit, then quickly worsened as he was put into difficult situations that revealed his bad character.  The downhill slide continued, until he ended up down in a valley, then became a dragon.  Upon finally becoming a dragon, the rock-bottom point of the V, in a great narrative account Eustace finally came to his senses:

his first feeling was one of relief.  There was nothing to be afraid of any more.  He was a terror himself now and nothing in the world but a knight (and not all of those) would dare to attack him. …

But the moment he thought this he realised that he didn’t want to.  He wanted to be friends.  He wanted to get back among humans and talk and laugh and share things.  He realised that he was a monster cut off from the human race.  An appalling loneliness came over him.  He began to see the others had not really been fiends at all.  He began to wonder if he himself had been such a nice person as he had always supposed.  He longed for their voices.  He would have been grateful for a kind word even from Reepicheep.

But then it was still a long way back up the “V”: he first became nicer and more helpful as a dragon.  After some time, then he met Aslan, and even then he first tried removing his own dragon skin, which still revealed more dragon skin under; then Aslan removed all the dragon and restored him back to a human boy.  Afterwards, as Lewis notes, Eustace began to be a different boy.  He had relapses.  There were still many days when he could be very tiresome.  But most of those I shall not notice.  The cure had begun.  The upward climb of that V had begun and would continue for the rest of his life — the “further up and further in.”  What a great picture of salvation is provided here: not merely a one-time event back in the past.  That was the cure that began.  Salvation then continues in the present life, and to the future glorification and perfection.

Then of course comes the glorious ending to the Chronicles of Narnia, with the idea of “further up and further in” in its fullness with the ushering in of the New Narnia, leading to the real, new England and New Earth.

The Hillsdale College lecture mentions a few other examples of a V-shaped experience, such as in  Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces:  the heroine goes down into a green valley, a picture of the conversion experience — descent and loss, but such descent into greenness and fertility — which signifies gain and new life.  The bottom of the V is the “turn” — the “cure begun” in Eustace, also what J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as the eucatastrophe (see previous post link:   ).  Other examples of this bitter-sweet conversion, where the turn occurs, can be found in The Great Divorce (a character with a lizard on the shoulder), and also in the third volume of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, with the conversion of Jane:  It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing made at this very moment… And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both.

I’ll continue through this set of C.S. Lewis lectures, and then on to more lecture series from Hillsdale, for further insights into particulars of Lewis’ writing and then other topics such as classic literature.  Hillsdale also offers an introductory course on C.S. Lewis with another nine lectures.

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The Books That Eustace Had Not Read (Chronicles of Narnia)

In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis makes quite a point in describing Eustace, that he had read all the wrong books.  From the first page of the story we learn that Eustace liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools.  Then, after Eustace ran off by himself and then ran into the dragon’s cave, this special note:  Most of us know what we should expect to find in a dragon’s lair, but as I said before, Eustace had read only the wrong books.  They had a lot to say about exports and imports and governments and drains, but they were weak on dragons.

A similar plot scenario comes up in the sequel, The Silver Chair, though implied rather than directly stated.  Since that adventure only happened within 2-3 months of Eustace’s return from Narnia, and he still lived with his parents and still had to attend that progressive school, it could not be reasonably expected that Eustace would have had the time to acquire and read enough of the right books to prepare him for his second visit to Narnia.  Jill, likewise, by the fact of attending the Experiment House, no doubt had parents similar to Harold and Alberta, who had not allowed her to read the right type of books.  Thus we find that both Eustace and Jill think it would be a great idea to visit the “gentle giants” and apparently had no clue of the possible danger of being eaten by giants.

All of this raises an interesting point: what books should Eustace have been reading, to have been prepared for entering a dragon’s lair?  Voyage of the Dawn Treader was published in 1952 (and The Silver Chair a year later), but the England side of the story is set during World War II, the summer and fall of 1942.  On an Amon Sul podcast that I listened to recently  (episode #022), the guest Richard Rohlin mentioned Eustace not having read about dragons.  He then said that a few people he knew had looked at this question and concluded that the only book of that type that was around, that the children in Lewis’ day could have been reading that would have told them about dragons, was The Hobbit.  Thus, Rohlin saw this mention in Lewis’ book as a coded reference to his friend Tolkien’s writing; and then to follow the chain, Tolkien himself of course, in The Hobbit, had allusions to Beowulf.  (In this previous post I mentioned one interesting allusion to Beowulf, from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.)

That is an interesting idea, and could be true to a point.  Certainly elsewhere C.S. Lewis included references to Tolkien’s works, and much more direct ones.  The main character in his Space Trilogy, Ransom, after all, was a philologist.  And C.S. Lewis mentioned “Numinor” in his Space Trilogy — a reference which Tolkien said (in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien) came from the audible sound of the word as Lewis had heard Tolkien’s writings, when Tolkien would read aloud to the Inklings — and thus a misspelled version of Numenor.  But in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis mentions Eustace reading “the wrong books” and that is “books” (plural), which would indicate that Lewis knew of many other books that Eustace could (and should) have been reading.

Certainly the general books of pagan mythology have been around, though school children in mid-20th century England may not have been reading those.  A look at Goodreads and its lists of popular children’s fantasy books, by decade, gives us additional possibilities from the 1930s list.    Yes, The Hobbit is on that list, along with familiar titles including Mary Poppins, and a King Arthur collection, T.H. White’s Sword in the Stone; this Arthurian legends book includes one reference to dragons, the legend of “St. George and the Dragon.”  Earlier that decade, though, another book was published, The Book of Dragons: Tales and Legends from Many Lands.  Since this book was an anthology of existing tales, it may not have become as popular over the years, but no doubt it served its purpose for that generation of children: retelling the existing dragon lore, to the next generation of English-speaking children.

So, while it’s nice to think that C.S. Lewis intended a reference to The Hobbit in his description of Eustace not reading the “right” books, it seems that in this case C.S. Lewis was thinking in more general category terms.  Certainly The Hobbit would be included, as a book published just 5 years before Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace had their adventure.  But a school boy in that era would have had at least a few other choices of books, so that he could have learned something about dragons.  Sadly, though, Eustace’s parents had kept such books away from him, and also thoroughly brainwashed the kid so that he did not even have the desire to read them.

Readers, are there any other fantasy books that you are familiar with, published in the 20th century, to add to the list of books that Eustace should have been reading?  Any further comments about the books that Eustace and Jill ought to have read?

 

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Enchantment in a classic-style Fairy Tale: The Horse and His Boy (Chronicles of Narnia)

In my re-reading through The Chronicles of Narnia, it strikes me that the stories involve a great deal of action and travel and places outside of Narnia itself.  Only three out of the seven Narnia tales actually have the majority of action taking place in the land of Narnia:  the first two (The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and Prince Caspian) and the very last one (The Last Battle).  In between, Lewis first introduces the islands at sea (Voyage of the Dawn Treader), then the land to the north of Narnia, as well as under Narnia (The Silver Chair).  The next installment takes us back to the “golden age” of the rule of High King Peter along with King Edmund and Queens Susan and Lucy — and to lands south of Narnia.  In The Horse and His Boy we are introduced to Archenland and especially Calormen.

Nearing the end of The Horse and His Boy, the wonder and enchantment are back, and appreciation for the story.  The plot is more complex than the earliest books, and introduces more human characters in Narnia’s neighboring countries — extra details not in the first books.  In this enjoyable story, we have several themes intertwined:  a variation on Greek classic literature (Oedipus),in a positive spin, and the rags to riches motif as well, for Shasta/Cor (somewhat like Charles’ Dickens tale of Oliver Twist, though much briefer and with the fantasy elements of another world with talking animals) combined with other characters who start out high and noble and must learn what it is to be humbled and abased.

In this story also we especially see God’s hand of Providence, and Aslan’s purpose in directing the lives of the two human children and the two talking horses:  the lion that appears (seemingly two lions) for the purpose of forcing the two traveling groups to meet and work together (Shasta with Bree, and Hwin with Aravis); the cat that comforts Shasta alone at the tombs, which later turns into a lion to ward off the jackals; and then especially the great scene in which Shasta rides slowly along on the dumb (non-talking) horse, left behind and alone, yet with the Presence of Someone, the great Aslan.  Here we also have the recurring theme of each individual’s story, and to be content with that.  Just as Aslan had rebuked Lucy for eavesdropping (by means of magic) on a conversation between two of her classmates in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, so here Aslan tempers Shasta’s curiosity as to why Aslan the Lion had attacked Aravis and whipped her back:  “Child,” said the Voice, “I am telling you your story, not hers.  I tell no-one any story but his own.”  As we later find out, of course, Aslan does tell Aravis her own story.

Modern critics no doubt find much to criticize in The Horse and His Boy, especially the “racist” treatment of the dark-skinned people of Calormen, who are presented as the stereotype of uncouth Arabians. For C.S. Lewis of course, the characterization of the Calormene also, and significantly, is that of a pagan nation, spiritually dark, without hope, without God, and thus showing the fruits of such a world: slavery, cruelty, and sadness.  Some of Lewis’s writing style and words now appear dated, in part due to the corruption and perversion of some of our English words in the years since Lewis wrote in the 1950s.  Yet Lewis’ main point throughout is a contrast between a pagan land (which bears some similarities to our folk tales of Arabians and dark-skinned people of the Middle East and Africa) and Christian lands (of the North, which was Lewis’ primary love as well, things of a northern quality).  The scene of the Narnian rulers entering Tashbaan, indeed, provides the stark contrast, of the joy and happiness of the Narnians.

Their tunics were of fine, bright, hardy colours–woodland green, or gay yellow, or fresh blue.  Instead of turbans they wore steel or silver caps, some of them set with jewels… instead of being grave and mysterious like most Calormenes, they walked with a swing and let their arms and shoulders go free, and chatted and laughed.  One was whistling.  You could see that they were ready to be friends with anyone who was friendly, and didn’t give a fig for anyone who wasn’t.  Shasta thought he had never seen anything so lovely in his life.

More could be said, regarding the many plot points in The Horse and His Boy, such as the contrast of wisdom with folly and the foolish characters, as well as the pride in Bree and Aravis.  How does this world have such thriving communities of humans, with a clear history of many years, in a world that (according to The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe) has mostly talking beasts and was under a spell of 100 years of winter until only a few years ago (15 years ago at most)?  The answer of course is provided with the creation of these other lands Archenland and Calormen.  Only Narnia had been under the winter spell all those years, and thus it is now becoming a power to be reckoned with  (according to the leaders of Calormen).  Narnia’s past of endless winter is well integrated into this story, with references to it from Aravis’ city friend Lasaraleen.

This, the 5th published book in The Chronicles of Narnia (and the third book according to Narnian chronology), is an enjoyable story, escapism with a lot of elements that make a great fairy tale story.  It would be nice to see a movie or stage dramatization of this; apparently it has been done in some places as a stage production.  It was not included in the BBC mini-series.  Apparently something of a movie has been made in recent years, or attempted at least.  But usually, it seems, movie efforts at the full Chronicles of Narnia series get stalled after completion of the earlier books.

 

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The Silver Chair (Chronicles of Narnia): Praying to Aslan, Facing East

After many years, I’m rereading the Chronicles of Narnia.  Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair, are the stories I best remember, in large part due to the BBC dramatizations from the early 1990s, of which I especially appreciated The Silver Chair.  So, to this day, I still have mental pictures of the young teenagers who played Eustace and Jill, and of course Tom Baker (who I remembered and loved from my earlier Dr. Who fandom days, in his 7 years as the 4th Doctor) as Puddleglum.  The BBC versions were low-budget compared to Hollywood movies, but quite faithful to the original stories, and provided 3 hour renditions of both The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Silver Chair, giving short shrift of only 1 hours to Prince Caspian and 2 hours to Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  The last one in this BBC mini-series, The Silver Chair, was the best quality in my opinion.

Reading the books again is a good refresher, to include parts omitted or slightly changed in the 3 hour BBC version; the audio book of The Silver Chair is slightly over 5 hours, so at least the 3 hour dramatization gets relatively close, as compared to most movie dramatizations of popular books.

The descriptions of The Experiment House are classic C.S. Lewis comments against the problems of modernism and progressivist, anti-Christian thought, that was one of Lewis’ key focus throughout his fiction and non-fiction writings.  I’m also noticing how Jill, early in the adventure, complains a lot and desires the comforts of home such as a bed with blankets and hot baths.  That strong desire for comfort indeed becomes a major failure and plot point, how they end up at the giants’ castle and then have to escape from it.  This same desire for comfort and dislike for adventure, of course, is also brought out regarding Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit — though not to the extreme exhibited by Jill and even Eustace, to the point of wrong, sinful choices made in order to achieve the desired comfort.

Another interesting point I had forgotten, but now note the significance of:  behind the gym, when Eustace in conversation with his classmate Jill considers formally asking Aslan if they can go to Narnia, he makes a special point about the proper position for making such a request.  Their request is in effect a type of prayer, though Lewis never uses the actual term prayer.  But a petition is certainly a large part of what is involved in prayer.    How Aslan should be asked, included hands stretched forward with palms down — as Eustace had observed done on Ramandu’s Island near the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader — and facing to the east.

As an aside, this scene also is one of the examples cited by modern feminists and secularists, of the supposedly sexist dialogue in C.S. Lewis’ writing:  Eustace’s line to Jill, that girls don’t know their direction on a compass.  Not mentioned by these critics, is Jill’s retort that Eustace himself obviously didn’t know — at that particular location they were at — which direction was east; and later in the story, the narrator author admits that he does not know if such lack of compass directions is true of all girls, but that it was true for Jill in particular.

In all my years growing up as a Protestant Christian, then coming to saving faith as a Protestant (Evangelical) Christian as a young adult and the many years since then as a Protestant Christian, I had never known the significance of facing east in prayer.  (I had heard this about cemetery plots, but nothing else.)  In prior readings of The Silver Chair I probably attributed this point to the internal plot of the Narnia story itself, since in the previous book, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the characters did indeed quite literally sail East to Aslan’s country.  However, as I recently learned, as part of my study of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (the faith of the early church and its adherents to this day), it has always been a significant part of Orthodox Christian practice to pray facing this particular compass direction, of East.  Just as in Judaism before it, synagogues would face the direction of Jerusalem and the direction of East was held in high regard, and as the men of Gondor in Middle Earth turned in the specific direction of West toward Numenor in their prayer and moment of silence (link: previous post), the early Church saw significance of praying to the East.  As St. Basil observed in the 4th century (in his work, On the Holy Spirit):

For example, let us especially make note of the first and commonest thing: that those who hope in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ should sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross. Who taught this in Scripture? Which Scripture instructed us that we should turn to the east in prayer? …Is this not the silent and secret tradition?   … Is it not from this unpublished and unspoken teaching which our Fathers have preserved in a silence inaccessible to curiosity and scrutiny, because they were thoroughly instructed to preserve in silence the sanctity of the Mysteries [i.e., Sacraments]? For what propriety would there be to proclaim in writing a teaching concerning that which it is not allowed for the unbaptized even to behold?

For further explanation of why the early Church (and Orthodoxy to this day) face East in their prayers, here are two helpful articles:  Why Orthodox Churches Face East and Why do the Altars of Orthodox Churches Face East? 

Returning to C.S. Lewis and this story detail (the children facing East when making their petition to Aslan):  I find this interesting, as another piece fitting quite well into the picture of C.S. Lewis as being closest in his beliefs to Eastern Orthodoxy, as I also have recently learned from other online sources.  For further reference, here is a podcast episode and an article regarding C.S. Lewis’ beliefs and Eastern Orthodoxy.

I’m still re-reading The Silver Chair, and looking forward to finding even more story incidents that allude to early church practices.  I already know about this one (near the end of The Silver Chair), mentioned in this free online book Know the Faith: A Handbook for Orthodox Christians and Inquirers:

In C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, from his Chronicles of Narnia series, we encounter a beautiful description of a most natural, God-inspired act of icon veneration. Finding his formerly blackened shield now immaculate and revealing the blood-red image of the lion (Aslan, Lewis’s Christ figure), Prince Rilian addresses his small band of fellow travelers: “Now by my counsel, we shall all kneel and kiss his likeness, and then all shake hands one with another, as true friends that may shortly be parted.” The solemn act of love and reverence for the one who had delivered them from the delusion of the green witch was appropriately followed by acts of reconciliation and forgiveness.

I welcome any reader thoughts here — your thoughts about the Narnia movies (either the BBC series or other versions), as well as your comments about the overall story.

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