The Silver Chair Analysis

The Silver Chair opens and closes at Experiment House, a modern school in England with some very quirky ideas about social order and discipline. We don't see very much of its landscape, except to k...

It's clear from the first page of The Silver Chair that we have a narrator with free access to everything that is knowable about this fictional world. He or she (though we can probably assume he si...

If you find yourself stepping through a portal into an "otherworld" that has talking animals, species you've never seen before, and a similar yet slightly foreign social structure, you know you've...

Lewis knew that he had to tell this story in a way that would make sense to young readers, but he also knew that he couldn't be condescending to his audience, which he assumed would be bright and i...

While in some ways Lewis keeps himself on the straight and narrow because he's writing for children—no big words, no long chapters, no overly complex ideas—he includes some big thematic concern...

The Silver Chair refers to the "vile engine of sorcery" (an actual chair made of silver) that is fashioned by the Queen of Underland to contain Prince Rilian for the one hour per night that he retu...

In the very end, we leave Narnia behind in order to return to the ordinary human world, specifically to Experiment House, the terrible school that prompts Jill and Eustace's journey in the first pl...

You would be a happy creature indeed if all books were as easy to get caught up in as this one. C.S. Lewis has a plainspoken and straightforward way of telling a story, even when describing unseen...

There's No Crying at Experiment HouseThe adventure of The Silver Chair really begins because Eustace and Jill call out to Aslan to take them away from their hideous school, where the idea of safety...

In this story, there are two actual calls that begin the adventure, though they're connected. First, Jill and Eustace do their best to find a formula or prayer that will put them in touch with Asla...

Aslan brings Jill and Eustace to his mountain and commissions them with the quest to find the lost Prince Rilian.Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum journey north, encountering the Lady of the Green Kirt...

Aslan, the name of Lewis's mighty Lion-ruler of Narnia, comes from the Turkish word for lion. Lewis borrowed the name from the Turkish sultan's elite guards, which he saw on a trip to Turkey in the...

Lewis is well known for his Christian writings, and accordingly, this book stays modest to the end. If that's not enough to convince you, here's an excerpt from a letter he wrote to James E. Higgin...

Aslan as the Lion of Judah and Jesus (throughout)William Shakespeare, Hamlet (10.151)Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (and the idea of free will) (10.154)Theological Compatibilism (10.154) B...