The battle against the forces of darkness is, first and foremost, a rescue operation. Or so Jill Pole is told. Aslan advises her that her quest is to seek the lost Prince Rilian, “until either you have found him and brought him to his father’s house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back into your own world.”
Her job is not to destroy the Lady of the Green Kirtle—Aslan doesn’t even mention her—or to prevent war in Narnia, or to bring justice for those talking beasts who have been eaten by giants. Jill has one clear job, and Aslan has specifically called her and Eustace here to do it.
Aslan gives Jill a tool to help her in her quest: a series of four “signs.” They are, Aslan says, “the signs by which I will guide you in your quest.” They’re legitimately terrible signs; more like riddles, really. We have to reckon with this strange, unclear, possibly unfair reality that Aslan doesn’t share everything he knows with Jill—not even helpful information that could help her to be more effective in her service to him.
Lewis clearly intends the four signs to be some sort of analog for scripture. They are a guide that Aslan tells Jill to repeat to herself “when you wake and when you lie down”—an echo of the instructions about the Torah (see Deuteronomy 6:7) and the wise commands and teachings of your parents: “When you walk, they will guide you; when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you.” (Proverbs 6:22, NIV)
One key thing to keep in mind regarding the complications to come as the story unfolds: when Jill accidentally knocks Eustace over the cliff, and Aslan asks her what happened, she replies that she “was showing off.” Aslan tells her that’s a good answer, and “your task will be harder because of what you have done.” It’s not clear why it’s harder, since she arrives in Narnia within a few moments of Eustace arriving, but Aslan has always made it clear to Lucy in past books that you don’t get to know “what might have been” if you had done the right thing. Maybe it’s just that she receives Aslan’s instructions and Eustace isn’t there for them. But a theme that’s repeated throughout the book is that the hardships the protagonists face along the way are largely the result of their own character flaws informing their actions.
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In any case, the four signs Aslan gives Jill are: “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.”
The first sign is bungled as soon as they arrive. Maybe they would have done better if Aslan had said, “You’ll see an ancient king who is actually your friend Caspian because it’s been years since you were here last time.” Still, the first sign is disobeyed out of ignorance. Eustace doesn’t recognize anyone as “an old friend.” (And hey, maybe it really is a riddle and Eustace was supposed to discover that it was a friend-who-is-old.) In any case, Aslan said if they followed this first sign then they’d get a lot of help along the way, but they don’t. So instead of “lots of help” they get sleepy owls and, eventually, a rather cranky Marsh-wiggle, which actually turns out for the best.
The second sign they abandon because of hardship. The weather is painfully cold, and the evil Lady in the Green Kirtle has suggested that there are warm beds and plenty of food to be had if they turn away to visit Harfang. It seems that our crew was almost there, though, because, unbeknownst to them, they were standing in the “third sign” at the moment they decide to head for Harfang.
The third sign is actually giant letters etched into the outskirts of the giant city that includes the words “UNDER ME.” This sign is meant to tell them to look under the giant city for Rilian. Now remember that Aslan knew perfectly well exactly where Rilian was. He could have simply said, “Go look under the ruined giant city for Rilian, where he’s held captive and enchanted by a witch.” He knew all those things. He doesn’t offer this information, though, and even now, with two of the three signs missed, Aslan doesn’t give a fuller revelation to Jill and Eustace. Instead, he just helps them get back on track with a dream…a dream where he literally just tells Jill the same words she would have seen if they had gone up to the ruined city as they were meant to do: “UNDER ME.”
Jill wonders if maybe the words UNDER ME were added later, after they missed them. But Eustace corrects her on that. “You were thinking how nice it would have been if Aslan hadn’t put the instructions on the stones of the ruined city till after we’d passed it. And then it would have been his fault, not ours. So likely, isn’t it? No. We must just own up. We’ve only four signs to go by, and we’ve muffed the first three.”
So they miss the first sign because of ignorance. The second because of hardship. The third because it relied on following the second. But the fourth…the fourth they understand (it’s pretty straightforward) and debate whether to follow it because they’re not sure what the consequences will be. It’s an important moment. They’re worried because Rilian—who is tied to the Silver Chair in that moment—is supposedly having a moment of “madness” when he asks them, in the name of Aslan, to help him. They don’t know what the consequences will be if they let him loose, if it will be good or bad. But they know this is the moment, this is the fourth sign of Aslan.
Puddleglum tells the kids, “Aslan didn’t tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do.” Whether the personal consequences are beneficial or dire, they need to do the right thing. So they do, and of course in this story everything works out for the best, as a result.
So why did Aslan give such vague instructions? Why not tell them exactly what needed to be done? Why not, for that matter, just do it himself? He has the power to simply walk into Underland and free Rilian. Why did he let Rilian fall under the Lady’s spell, and let her maintain a hold on the prince for years, and why let Caspian set out to sea seeking him if he was only going to announce that the king should turn back home, because Rilian has been saved and will meet him there?
Well, Lewis would tell us, this is the way it is in the war against forces of darkness.
There is a misunderstanding for some about the nature of evil and good in the Christian faith, and Lewis is touching on it here. Satan isn’t the equal and opposite of God. Satan is immensely weaker. Created by God. Lesser than God. When Satan is kicked out of heaven, God doesn’t even bother to do it: God has an angel take care of it. And though in other Narnian adventures we have seen Aslan intervene at the climactic moment to save the day, in this story—the one about fighting spiritual war—he acts as guide, commander-in-chief, and coach, but leaves the actual quest to his servants. Lewis is telling us clearly that, like Aslan, God could certainly intervene or, for that matter, simply take care of things himself. Instead, he gives us a role to play, and invites us into the work of fighting against evil in the world.
What happens in the story is precisely what Aslan intends. Puddleglum says, “Aslan’s instructions always work: there are no exceptions.” Aslan imparts the vague rules, the unclear instructions, in part so that Eustace and Jill will have the experiences that they do, so that the story would end the way it does. His instructions lead to the end he desires.
As Puddleglum notes, when the enchanted Rilian mocks them for thinking UNDER ME was a message to look under the city: “There are no accidents. Our guide is Aslan; and he was there when the giant King caused the letters to be cut, and he knew already all things that would come of them; including this.”
This may be, also, why we see that Aslan is not interested in punishing the kids for getting things wrong along the way. They did what needed to be done, they learned the lessons they needed to learn. In a moment that’s one of my favorite scenes in the book, Aslan makes it clear he’s not interested in chastising the kids for what they got wrong on their quest. Jill tries to find a way to tell Aslan she’s sorry for missing the signs, for fighting with Eustace, for all the ways she has messed up along the way, and Aslan touches his tongue to her forehead and to Eustace’s forehead and says, “Think of that no more. I will not always be scolding. You have done the work for which I sent you into Narnia.”
No scolding. No condemnation. No instructions about how to do better next time. Just a reminder that at the end of the day she had done what Aslan wanted her to do: find the lost prince and bring him home.
Then they are taken—along with the newly resurrected Caspian—to “set things right” at Experiment House and clear it out of all the bullies and “cowards.” They’re told to only use the flats of their swords, not to kill anyone, and again Aslan gives instructions but doesn’t participate other than to “show his backside” to them by lying across the gap in the broken wall, facing away from England and toward Narnia.
Once again we are reminded that in a spiritual war, it is not human beings who are our enemy. Even the right-hand warrior of the evil serpent may be an enchanted prince. And the role of Aslan’s people, the quest, the mission, is to find those who have been lost, those who have been enchanted and bring them home. Some bullies might have to be scared off, and some cowards might need to be moved on to other jobs, but we have to remember they are still, at worst, only people who have been deceived by the power of deep spiritual enchantments.
In the midst of all that, Aslan brings other unexpected gifts, too: transformations for Jill and Eustace, and changes for the better in their own lives. Once all the bullies and cowards are chased away, “things changed for the better at Experiment House, and it became quite a good school.” The terrifying dark lake of Underland becomes a holiday spot for Narnians on hot days. And, perhaps most importantly, “Jill and Eustace were always friends.”
This holds true, I think. To follow Aslan on a quest, to fight spiritual darkness—even when done poorly, even when we mess it up, even if there are consequences for doing the right thing—nearly always leads to new relationships, and even lifelong friendships.
So, my friends, a reminder for today: in Lewis’ conception of the world, we are invited into a war with dark forces. Not against people, but against those who would harm people. Our mission, our quest, our role is to seek and to find those who have been captured, enchanted, corrupted or deceived—even if they are serving the darkness—and bring them home. And, we hope, to learn something about ourselves and to make new, lifelong friends along the way.
Matt Mikalatos is the author of the YA fantasy The Crescent Stone. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.
These commentaries are excellent.
I read once that The Silver Chair deals with the 7 deadly sins. Eustace doesn’t hear the signs because Jill is giving into pride, “showing off.” Because of her pride in not being afraid of heights, she puts herself in a dangerous position and needs to be saved by Eustace. When she meets up with Eustace again, he’s angry and impatient so he doesn’t really listen to her explanation that he needs to go up to the first person he saw when he arrived. Later, Jill is slothful, forgetting to recite the signs at night and when she gets up. All three of them give into gluttony.
In medieval times, food needed to be stored for the long winter months, when it would not be available. Using so much food that others went hungry or using up supplies that were meant to last were serious concerns. Gluttony was the sin of focusing on food and physical appetites to the point that you were not thinking of greater concerns–which is why none of the three recognize the sign of the giant’s writing when they are standing right in it, because they are thinking too much about food and warm beds instead of the task they’ve been given. Even though Jill is specifically asked which sign they should be looking for while they are literally in the middle of it, she brushes off the question as unimportant at the time.
They then are captured (without even realizing it) by the giants, who personify gluttony. Although they have no shortage of food, they are going to kill Jill (who they seem genuinely fond of) and Eustace because man-pies are a traditional part of the feast. Even Puddleglum (who the cookbook says will be difficult to make tasty) is on the menu.
This being a children’s book, lust is touched on very lightly. Lust could mean not just sexual desire but any unbridled desire that blinded a person to greater obligations. Rillian first gives into wrath in attempting to hunt down what he believes is a dumb beast, although he has an arguable duty to find and eliminate a dangerous creature. He is blinded to this and his other duties when he falls under the green witch’s spell.
The witch is dominated by greed (her desire to rule Narnia) which is fueled by envy (she resents what others have that she doesn’t) and also seems to be motivated by pride and wrath (she is going to cause a bloodbath when she takes over Narnia).
Rillian is also briefly motivated by envy and pride when he considers exploring the true underworld instead of his duty to return home because he wants to be known for an achievement similar to his father’s journey to the east.
Of course, I still hold with the theory that the Green Witch is Jadis trying to make a return from the dead. She, not Rillian, is the one limited in her ability to leave the underworld until certain conditions are met and her control of Rillian is complete and is why she wears green, the Celtic color of death.
Yes, this is one of the many times throughout the series when the imperatives of storytelling and moralizing (and theology) steamroll in-world practicality. Aslan could often have provided or expedited solutions to Narnia’s problems much better if that was his priority, but he (like Lewis) is focused on forcefully putting certain children through journeys of hardship, heroism, and spiritual growth, with Narnia and the rest of its people as the means to that end. Trouble is, the children sometimes get blamed for quite avoidably failing…or unintentionally succeeding.
How would our group have read the humongous letters (especially in a whiteout blizzard, as the text even notes, though it doesn’t note that the letter-trenches should have rapidly filled with snow) if not from a high window at Harfang? How would they not have died of hypothermia — Jill was wearing shorts — if they hadn’t gone to Harfang? I like fictional Gluttony and Sloth, but I think seeking food and shelter in a lethal blizzard, after many days of camping, doesn’t qualify. If they were supposed to blunder around the trenches until they blundered into the entrance to the underground world, that might have saved them, especially if the Bism gnomes were also hanging around there at that time, but I don’t fault them for not thinking this might be an option.
The ‘merciful’ retaliation on the Experiment House bullies appealed to me as a very bullied child. But now I’m less comfortable with a boy and a young man beating unarmored boys with the flats of metal swords while a girl whips girls with a riding crop.
I know I’m being harsh. I loved the Narnia books. They have much to love about them. But I’ve spent a long time reading Ana Mardoll’s extremely harsh and extremely detailed Narnia deconstruction, which highlights a multitude of logical and ethical Problems, and here you’ve raised some of the same points.
I really like this article and you said everything so well, I really don’t have anything to add! Except how a reminder it is that our war is not against flesh and blood. We need that reminder. This has always been one of my fav books and I really want to re-read now….but I just did a Narnia re-read last year so think I will hold off. Still, I love reading your thoughts and musings. Thank you, Matt.
(Sidenote – I just got my copy of The Crescent Stone last night and had to keep myself from reading it all in a sitting. Much enjoying it!!)
@1/roses. Thank you!
@2/Ellynne. Whoa! That’s pretty intense and hey, sounds convincing to me.
@3/AeronaGreenjoy. Kids books, right? :) Lewis just doesn’t really care about things like worldbuilding, continuity and practicality in the way we’ve come to expect our fiction to be today. I read some of Ana’s posts a long, long time ago. As I recall she’s *very* funny. I don’t want to re-read them right now because I don’t want to mess with my whole “what will it be like to reread these as an adult” experiment here, but I think when the series is done I’ll go check them out again!
@4/Sonofthunder. I am SO THRILLED you are reading The Crescent Stone! Yay!
While I do sometimes agree with the more logical take of ‘if Aslan wants this thing done it makes more sense to just give plain instructions’, but I think in a way Aslan doesn’t just want this thing done, he also wants the children to learn and grow…and they have more of an opportunity to do it with the signs/instructions.
@6/Lisamarie. I agree! And I think that’s purposeful in this book about participating in the fight against evil in the world.
It occurs to me now that the scene in which Aslan shows his “backside” across the gap in the broken wall may be a reference to Exodus 33, where Moses may see only the “back” of God, and 1 Kings 19, where Elijah on Mt Horeb may also only see the “back” of God.
@8 Russell H
Yes, that’s what it made me think of.
I’m going to ask a question that shows how truly ignorant I am of Lewis’s meaning, but please be kind. Why is the book called The Silver Chair when that is such a minor part of the story?
8/9 Russell H and srEdit — hey! That’s in tomorrow’s article! :)
10/Alison. Okay, I think mostly because the “silver chair” is a metaphor for the moon and thus “lunacy.” But I think “The Brave Marshwiggle” would have been a perfectly wonderful name! Hahaha.
I’ve read a set of one-sentence blurbs for the Narnia books where this one was described as “How captive Prince Rillian escaped from the Emerald Witch’s underground kingdom.” A slightly more informative description than the title, but failing to credit any of the people who facilitated Rillian’s rescue.
In Chapter 2 of The Silver Chair, Jill, confronted by Aslan (and seeing only a lion) asks him for reassurance that he’s safe:
Now, we know why he says that: he’s God, and anything ever destroyed (which includes all those things) is destroyed by God’s will. We even know how Lewis might explain it: that some pain is necessary to reveal the greater good, as Eustance must painfully peal away his skin in Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Edmund must go through pain (spiritual/psychological pain, and also the pain of almost dying in battle) to redeem himself (the latter is not described as redemptive but it seems to be) in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
But when I read this out loud to my son for the first time—he was about 5 or 6, I think—he immediately said that this was a fake Aslan. Aslan, you see, was good: and someone good wouldn’t do those things. And also (he didn’t say but maybe felt) wouldn’t scare Jill, and by extension him, by not being clear about it.
Now, he was wrong: God, as pictured by Lewis, does do those things. But on a deeper level he was right: someone good does not do those things. Lewis has to show Aslan do those things because God does, and because his faith requires him to believe both in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being, and in the reality of evil he could see in the world.
Sometimes Lewis’s translations of his beliefs into fairy tale children’s novels make them more powerful, or more comprehensible. But doing so also runs the risk—a risk I think Lewis fully falls into, here and elsewhere—of showing the deep and essential contradiction, the untruth, in them.
Of course a good God wouldn’t do or permit those things. So of course, since they happen, there isn’t one.
So, too, with the signs. You describe a complex way in which it all turns out all right, and all happens as Aslan wishes. But the truth is simpler and sharper. Aslan gives unclear signs, because he is a translation of a myth trying to explain a world where people believed (falsely) that God gave signs, and didn’t understand them. But of course if God did exist and had wanted to communicate, he could have been clear (he can do anything!) and he would have wanted to be clear (by hypothesis he wants to communicate, and also he is good, and good people don’t confuse others where clarity would help). So Lewis has to make Aslan give out misleading signs, because he has to believe (or wants to believe) that God did. And he wants to believe this to get around the obvious but unpalatable truth: that there isn’t an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being, and that this is proved by (among so much else) the confusion of supposed signs and the repeated ruins of towns and realms and little boys and girls.
The Narnia books are great because Lewis is a great writer. But fundamentally they make no sense (why doesn’t Aslan just free the prince? Hell, why not prevent him being captured?) because the belief they are written to illustrate doesn’t. And once you see that, it’s hard to stop seeing it.
@13: I was always miffed that we never see Aslan literally eat anything or anyone. (Not even the White Witch — we look away after he pounces on her and are told nothing more.) If he had shown the truth of this great boast, I might have deemed him a god more worrhy of my worship. :-p
But I agree with you.
Stephen Frug- Excellent post
@13 – the Problem of Pain is a well known issue within Christianity and is discussed in many books including some by Lewis. The fact is, people in real pain often find Faith a great help. They can attest to the reality of God
Honestly, my answer to that, is a sometimes cynical idea that….who says God has to be good (and how do we define good)? (Although it’s not really a discussion I’m willing to get into on here.).
At any rate I can also see a great deal of possible meanings around what it means for Aslan to ‘eat’ or ‘devour’ things (including the concept of dying to self which is pretty critical, or even the Eucharist in which we turn around and eat God). But I won’t lie about the struggle and the paradox being real!
It’s amazing how meeting Aslan in these books can help us find him in our world…..
God could easily defeat all struggles and temptations for all of us, but He dignifies us by giving us tasks to participate in His work.
They “muffed the first sign” not because of Eustace’s “ignorance” per se but because of Jill’s showing off at the edge of the cliff, which meant that they were separated when Aslan gave the signs, time was wasted, Eustace was not primed for what to look for, and the ship was already pulling away from shore when they arrived. Even if Caspian was changed beyond recognition by the passage of so much Narnian time, Eustace was not; if they had arrived before the ship embarked, Caspian might have recognized Eustace and outfitted him for the journey. Instead, he did not even see him.
If Aslan had not had to take all that time blowing Eustace most of the way to Narnia, dealing with Jill’s meltdown and fear, and then filling her in on the story and giving her the signs, both children could have heard the instructions and been blown to Narnia much sooner.
Eustace reaches Narnia only a few moments before Jill, presumably because Aslan has slowed his journey so as not to have him arrive alone and completely confused and disoriented until Jill could show up and fill him in. But ideally, both would have heard the signs, both would have listened, then both would have been sent off on Aslan’s breath with all the speed that Jill was, and both would have arrived a good deal sooner, focused on discerning how to follow the first sign rather than on confusion and recrimination.
And while it is true that the cryptic nature of the signs has much in common with scripture, don’t forget that Lewis was not merely writing Christian allegory to be decoded into spiritual truths. He was also writing in the literary tradition of Fairy Tales, which are full of challenging and riddling instructions and seemingly unnecessary quests and tasks, that test the mettle of the protagonists and turn out to bring blessing.
Parts of the essays and comments here strike me as attempts to flatten the Narnia stories into patterns simply for the sake of lining them up with some Christian or “medieval” schema. Lewis was a better writer, with a broader set of interests, than to map out his stories in that way.
Of course he packed his books with Christian imagery, scriptural and liturgical echoes, and plot elements taken from the spiritual pilgrimage. But he was a professor of English literature before he was a Christian apologist, and he always thought of himself as a writer and literary critic by vocation, not a preacher or pastor or evangelist. He shared with Tolkien the conviction that a story had better be a good story in its own right, and that the wise storyteller should take as a model the time-tested structures and tropes of fairy tales and folk tales.
It so happens that many of these structures and tropes are also found in the Bible, because the Bible consists of (among other types of writing) ancient tales. And so I would argue that many of the “scriptural” echoes in Lewis’s books for children are there not because they are pieces in a puzzle that are to be assembled into some scriptural or catechetical schema, but because both they and scripture have features in common with the ancient archetypes such as hero tales, foundational myths, lost paradises, quests, enchantments and releases, and all those other stories that arise from deep in the human condition and seem to nourish the human imagination so powerfully in every time and place.
I am always puzzled by the number of complaints about the logical problems of stories. Perhaps my taste is different from most people’s; plot holes etc etc only matter to me if the story is the sort where close logic is one of the things you enjoy (examples would be detective stories and time travel paradox stories). As @19 notes, Silver Chair is in the literary form of the fairy tale quest: unclear instructions are part of the convention (as are giants planning to eat the hero, incidentally). Stories have their own sort of logic.
One of the reasons I like this book is that, far more than in the others, the children basically screw up almost everything. Heroes I can identify with, in that way. I also love Puddleglum, of course. I love Reepicheep, but Puddleglum is more the sort of hero I can aspire to.
This is definitely my favourite book of the whole series.
One of the interesting things to me about the last sign, is who does what in response to it.
Puddleglum cuts through the fog: “It is the sign”. The children are doubtful about it: it is the words of the sign, Aslan didn’t mean us to release a madman. Puddleglum clarifies: “Aslan didn’t tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the sign.” But after that – the final word is left to Jill. She is the one who makes the decision “All right!” said Jill suddenly. “Let’s get it over. Good-bye, everyone…!”.
Puddleglum is their mentor, and he will fulfil that role again when the witch tries to enchant them and confuse them, but the decision rests with the children, especially Jill, who received the signs and has responsibility to obey them. And she makes the final, terrifying decision to be faithful to Aslan in the face of a horrible threat.