Grown Up Fairytale wrote:I just now joined the reading group so this is exciting!
Nice to meet you, too!
1. Do you lose interest in Jill because she began to cry?Grown Up Fairytale wrote:Haha! No! Actually, it is yet another thing Jill does that feels super relatable to me. I wonder if Lewis wrote that to acknowledge that most fantasy heroes in her situation would not cry but any real child (or adult for that matter) would. Jill is one of my favorite characters because she is so real and usually says or does what I probably would have said or done in a Narnia book.
Thank you!
Besides, it all depends on why Jill was crying. Just because it is the third time in the book, doesn't mean she didn't have grounds for her weeping. She cried in Ch.1 because she has been humiliated, downtrodden and demoralised by people who may not be any better than herself, in background or in any other way. In Ch.2, crying was an understandable reaction, there being nothing else she could have done to remedy the situation at the time. At least she could feel sorrow for the situation and remorse for her own part in it.
Whilst this third time, Jill is cold, hungry, tired and wet already from the melted snow. Not the best time to be interviewed by a king and queen and the entire court, even if it isn't a court of law.
And, according to C.S.Lewis, it was the best thing Jill could do in the situation. Why, exactly, though? So far in the book, there is no great approval of school aged children crying. In 1953, when
Silver Chair was published, it was a time in UK and elsewhere when boys, in general, were expected to be stoic, brave, and to keep a "stiff upper lip", and were thus admired. And in the sort of environment of Experiment House, the bullies clearly thought of crying as a sign of weakness whether girl or boy. Believe me, in that post-WW2 time, girls were also expected to be just as stoic as were boys, and if I cried I could be slapped to give me something to cry about
. Even though it was considered ok for me to cry when the Sports teacher ran over and killed the Superintendant's cat, who was my friend, at any rate.
Grown Up Fairytale wrote:2. In Jill’s dream, why does Aslan take the form of a wooden horse for a moment?
Maybe this is shallow of me, but I always thought it was just a dream.
No, dreams can often be just dreams, but some dreams can be a lot more, especially when the dreamer has something on his/her mind. Even animals dream, by the way. It is the brain and the body processing information in a jumbled way, I think, and sometimes dreams can bring enlightenment. And yes, even in the last chapter, Jill has been feeling guilty over her inattention to the signs, and to Aslan's commands to her.
I've never thought about that particular SC dream before, but since there were other toys, including a horribly coloured lamb, that Aslan might have just as easily transformed into, like in VDT, I think possibly Aslan taking the initial form of the toy horse is a hint alluding to other famous non-living horses in literature. (
The wooden horse-Eric Williams,
the Aeneid-Virgil, and
the Iliad-Homer) As the three travellers find out later in this chapter, they are caught in a trap, and must find a way out of it.
3.. When Jill is unable to repeat the sign to Aslan in the dream, a “great horror” comes over her. What is so horrible?Because she hasn't been paying attention to the signs. And now she has been found wanting. And now, having not refreshed her memory about those signs she has missed something she should have paid more attention to. Especially when Aslan takes her to the window, revealing what she should have noticed the day beforehand, and shows her the instruction she is now to take. Of course Jill is horrified, because she has really made a mess of things, and if Aslan decides to eat her, he might have good grounds.
4. How should the dream sequence be adapted for the movie?However, probably we'll take out all the creepy and dark stuff from the dream and it will be more like Lucy's dreams in the PC and VDT movies. He's going to be sweet, fatherly, and she'll express her guilt over not remembering the signs. He'll tell her to look out the window with him gently. Then he'll say "Don't run from who you are." Then she'll wake up or something. Sad day
.
Certainly not this way.
Though
Grown Up Fairytale's other suggestions were fine. By the way, just how "sweet, fatherly and gentle" are average fathers, even otherwise okay fathers, when annoyed and exasperated with erring children? There was a time when threatening to "tell Dad when he gets home" was a standard way of disciplining children. I don't consider the quote above even a realistic way to depict the dream, to tell the truth. Especially as Jill isn't Lucy. And there isn't much point in suggesting that Jill's running away from Experiment House and the bullies' opinion of her was wrong in some way, when she deserves better.
Besides, Aslan in SC can be a stern lion whom Jill suspected of wanting to eat her, and now she has given that fearsome lion the perfect reason to do so, if he wanted to! If I was adapting the movie, I'd be seeing him growling or opening his mouth like the lion roaring through a circular banner to advertise MGM, was it? Dangerously so. And before he gets to that point and is still the toy horse, I'd take the metamorphosis a little slower, so that there is a picture of Troy's wooden horse, or even a vaulting horse somehow mixed up in it. Just so that people might get the message a little.
Later in the book, we find out that whilst Eustace had a great opportunity in going on the VDT, Jill in that holiday breal had the opportunity to learn to ride a horse.5. Who is to blame for their missing the ruinous city? Do you agree with Jill that it is she? Do you agree with Puddleglum that it is he? Do you think Scrubb is right and Puddleglum is the only one who isn’t to blame?Jill feels she is to blame because it was she who received the message, and she rightly sees it as her responsibility to do as she was told by Aslan. However, Scrubb, in saying what he did, is right also. Because if he had been more prepared to listen to her from the start, despite his righteous resentment about falling off a cliff, they might have been better off. Besides, he could have made it his business to be more helpful by learning the signs, himself, instead of leaving it all to Jill. And when they were crossing the terrain which got them to Harfang, Scrubb was just as eager to get out of the bad weather as was Pole. I think Eustace Scrubb was merely showing how much he had learned in VDT by saying what he did. Therefore I agree with him, and respect him more for taking the blame, too, and exonerating Puddleglum.
Puddleglum, at least, had obviously learned something from Jill's previous attempts to recite what the signs were about, when he was pointing out that the landscape they were traversing needed a second look. And if he was outvoted, despite his voiced misgivings, I don't think he had any option but to go with Eustace and Jill. Those travellers needed to stick together.
6. Is it significant that the queen of the giants chose to dress in green?Of course it is. Think of the queen's clothing this way, that what she wears says something about what she represents, including who she, as well as her court, wants to be allied to, and not what some random Giantish gossip/celebrity magazine says she should wear. Some members of this board belong to countries which do have a ruling King or Queen as their head of state, and in the case of HM Queen Elizabeth II and her family, when on a state visit, their clothing, as a courtesy to hosts, is often in the visited country's national colours, or otherwise reflects the visited country's cultural beliefs. Obviously this Giantish Queen is in cahoots with LOTGK, and is therefore not to be trusted. Let Jill, Eustace and Puddleglum beware!