Unexpected Teachers: Freedom From the Silver Chair

Last semester, I opened up C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia for the first time in over a decade. Seeking the balance of a brandy old fashioned—the sweetness of a fairy tale with my daily rigors in theology—I found the mix rather refreshing, and much stronger than I remembered. Lewis’s magical drama not only brought me a smile after a long day trudging through dogmatics (a joyous trudge, mind you), but surprisingly matched those theological treatises pound for pound in depth and clarity—with wit often far surpassing.

One such truth I discovered in the most unlikely place—book six, The Silver Chair. That was the one book in the septilogy I had never read, figuring it only an insignificant pebble before the mountain of The Last Battle. Since finishing it, however, The Silver Chair has occupied my mind to the strangest degree, leaving the other six in want of attention. The stone which the builders rejected…

In short, the tale chronicles the quest of Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum in their search for Prince Rilian, the rightful heir to the throne of Narnia, who had been kidnapped by a witch in his youth. Their journey takes them down into the underworld, where they come upon Prince Rilian, but recognize him not. So enamored and possessed by the witch (his queen), Rilian appears to have no memory of his Narnian past, instead sounding like a puppet of his wicked captor. Rilian reveals to the trio that each night he undergoes what the witch calls his “evil hour.” He says “They bind me hand and foot… none but the queen herself remains [in the room]… she would not willingly suffer any ears but her own to hear the words I utter in that frenzy.” In her absence, however, Rilian invites the travellers to remain in the room, if they dare, on one condition—they are by no means to cut the cords which bind him to the silver chair, no matter how much he plead; doing so would change him into a loathsome serpent. They are to wait and watch until this spell is past.

Eustace, Jill, and Puddleglum all agree that none shall set him free. Yet his utterances were far from what they expected. “Enchantments… clammy web of evil magic… Dragged down under the earth,” Rilian sporadically utters in anguish:

Oh have mercy. Let me feel the wind and see the sky… Quick, I am sane now! Every night I am sane. If only I could get out of this enchanted chair, it would last. I should be a man again… Have they told you that if I am released from this chair I shall kill you and become a serpent? I see by your faces that they have. It is a lie. It is at this hour that I am in my right mind.

Rilian’s pleas become more frantic and desperate as the hour continues. He seeks confirmation in his moment of sanity, his moment of memory. And while the three travellers stand fast on account of his earlier caution, they are simultaneously troubled: which is the sane Rilian, which is bewitched? Only when Rilian cries out “By the great Lion, by Aslan himself, I charge you—” do the three realize that Rilian’s mind in this “evil hour” is sane, and that the Rilian they first met was a cursed shadow of the true man. They release him. And far from turning into a serpent, he remains instead a man, and goes on to fulfill his mission as a prince of Narnia.

I believe Lewis here has captured the very heart of our mission as educators, theologians, and men. The students of our age, so enamored with the witches of this world, have lost sight of their past and thus their identity—but never entirely. We never completely lose ourselves, no matter how deeply entrenched in sin and sorrow. There always remains a hint of memory, a faint desire, a restless spirit. There always remains a mustard seed of humanity begging for cultivation.

And that, perhaps, is our role: cultivation. Amidst the voices of this age, there remains in every man a desire for the good and the true. Yet the world mocks this desire, labeling it a fit of insanity, an evil hour. It takes a wise man to recognize and affirm this desire; to tell him that following it will not turn him into a prude, a wretch, a throwaway—a serpent, as it were—but rather that following it will set him free. It will keep him human.

What does this look like? “No, young man or woman, that was not a weird coincidence, but the grace of God. The desire for greatness is not a romantic idealism but rather a reality check. You are not insane, you are called.”

In his usual way, Lewis spoke in a simple story what many a theologian cannot speak in volumes. As such, my evening refreshment proved a far stiffer drink than I bargained for. Paradoxically, after seven of them, I saw things far more clearly.