Pass That Chronic-WHAT?-cles of Narnia
And introducing r/thelaundry
Where I am lately, the world is literally burning around us. I spent the past several weeks monitoring Watch Duty notifications, as fires kept popping up just miles from our house in Southern California. A cousin lost her home in the fires in L.A. Amidst the fires, we have a new president and administration making dramatic changes to our institutions. And global AI competition (hi DeepSeek!) has further accelerated the race to develop super intelligent AI, which may take our jobs, kill us, or both. In the face of unbridled uncertainty, it’s easy to be pessimistic.
I generally shoot for defiant optimism, but that view feels like an itchy sweater right now. So I’ve been embracing pessimism, finding a kind of inviting melancholy to it—like listening to an emo Goo Goo Dolls song while pining over a girl as a teen in the ‘90s.
And here’s my question: Does embracing pessimism, even for a time, necessarily make you a hopeless and insufferable downer? Answer: Puddleglum.
Last Halloween, my four-year-old daughter dressed up as Queen Lucy the Valiant of Narnia from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe after reading C.S. Lewis’s classic book with mom. She enlisted me as Aslan, the Great Lion of Narnia. Since then, it’s been a Narnian-themed several months in our house.1 My oldest son and I, on my daughter’s recommendation, have been reading the Chronicles of Narnia together at bedtime and just finished The Silver Chair—the fourth book Lewis wrote in the series.
We were iffy on The Silver Chair at first. The big budget movies stopped after the third book—so no prize after finishing this one. None of the kids from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe return, and our favorite character is gone: Reepicheep, the noble mouse and fearsome knight (don’t call him cute) introduced in Prince Caspian, sailed beyond the edge of the world into Aslan’s Country in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Still, Lewis has earned our trust as a storyteller. And he writes great characters, once you get to know them. So we gave The Silver Chair a fair shake—and there was no waitlist on the Libby app (bad sign?). Lewis did not disappoint. Enter Puddleglum.
Reepicheep remains my son’s favorite Narnian, but Puddleglum is now a close second. And for me, he’s number one. He’s a Marsh-wiggle. Marsh-wiggles are a tall, froglike people, who do most of the watery and fishy kinds of work in Narnia and who are constitutionally unable to look on the bright side of anything. Think Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, if Cameron lived in a swamp, fished all day, and had webbed feet.
Brief backstory on The Silver Chair: Jill and Eustace—two kids—have been called to Narnia and sent on an Aslan-assigned quest to find the long lost Prince Rillian, son of King Caspian, the protagonist in the last two books. The Prince was captured by a shape-shifting green witch after tirelessly searching for a green serpent that killed his mom, the Queen. Classic Narnian bad juju stuff.
Jill and Eustace get off to a wretched start, before some helpful owls introduce the kids to Puddleglum. Puddleglum, despite anticipating a horrible outcome and likely death, agrees to accompany them on their quest to Giant’s Country, per Aslan’s instructions. Puddleglum is classic Marsh-wiggle, a down-to-earth realist, who doesn’t sugarcoat things and always expects the worst (i.e., a pessimist). But he remains unwaveringly loyal to his core values, and there is nothing he values more than Aslan’s goodness.
Throughout their journey north, Puddleglum maintains a steady drumbeat of doom. When they encounter a mysterious green-clad lady who directs them to warm beds and a welcoming feast at Harfang, home of the supposedly “Gentle Giants,” he’s the only one who remains suspicious. The lady seems too perfect, her knight companion too silent, her promises of warm beds and a welcoming feast too good to be true. “Not the sort you expect to meet in the wilds of Giantland,” he mutters after she leaves. “Up to no good, I'll be bound.” (Damn obvious to the reader too, but so it goes.)
But when the children insist on seeking shelter at Harfang, we see Puddleglum’s deeper character emerge. Despite all his warnings, it’s Puddleglum who shows the most courage at the giants’ gate. “Steady pace, now,” he tells the children. “Don’t look frightened, whatever you do. We’ve done the silliest thing in the world by coming at all: but now that we are here, we'd best put a bold face on it.” Then he strides forward and calls out in his loudest voice to the giants: “Ho! Porter! Guests who seek lodging.” Even the children have to admit—he may be a wet blanket, but he has plenty of pluck.
It’s in the dark depths of the Underland, though, where Puddleglum’s light truly shines. After escaping the giants (who, it turns out, had welcomed them warmly because they were meant to be the main course at the Autumn Feast), our heroes find themselves in a vast underground kingdom. Here they finally discover Prince Rillian—but he’s under the enchantment of the Green Lady, who reveals herself as the same mysterious witch who sent them to Harfang. When they break the spell that binds the Prince, she doesn’t take kindly to losing her prisoner.
The witch fills her underground chamber with sweet-smelling magic, working to make them all forget Narnia exists—gaslighting narcissist that she is. One by one, she dismantles their memories: the sun? Just a child’s fancy, copying her underground lamp. Lions? Merely an imagination of a bigger cat. With each thrumming note from her instrument, each soft, musical laugh, she weaves her web of doubt. “There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan,” she croons, as if soothing children after a bad dream.
As the Prince and kids start to succumb, their heads hanging down and eyes half-closed, Puddleglum does something extraordinary. He gathers his last remaining strength, walks straight to the raging, enchanted fire, and stamps it out with his bare webbed foot. The pain is terrible but clears his head. And then he delivers his defining lines:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones... I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
The magic breaks, and the witch goes ballistic. She turns into a giant serpent (the same one who killed the Queen), and Rillian and Puddleglum promptly chop off her/its head. Witches, man. The rest is (Narnian) history.
Jill’s farewell to Puddleglum, at the end of the story, captures him perfectly: “You’re a regular old humbug. You sound as doleful as a funeral and I believe you’re perfectly happy. And you talk as if you were afraid of everything, when you’re really as brave as—as a lion.”
So, there you have it. Puddleglum. Hell of a name for my latest hero—from a children's book, no less. These days, I find myself bristling at that tired line about how “it will all turn out for the best”—it’s just another way to look away from reality, to dampen our ability to see things as they are and act on what we see. I prefer Puddleglum’s clear-eyed pessimism right now.
But a bit of pessimism, even expecting or preparing for the worst, doesn’t mean we have to live without hope or joy or be an insufferable downer. That’s Puddleglum’s brilliance. C.S. Lewis likely felt this back in the 1950s when he was writing these books and when humanity was wrestling with the very real possibility of nuclear annihilation. He nailed how I’ve been feeling with this quote:
“If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.”
As for me, I’m going to keep doing what I can to make this world a better place, and in the meantime, I’m going to keep reading with my oldest boy. We’re moving on to the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle—an eerily fitting title these days.
Which, finally, brings me to the laundry.
I mentioned r/thelaundry in my first post. It’s open now. The name comes from Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry—a reminder that even after the most profound insights or awakening experiences, we still have to deal with everyday life. Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
If you’re interested in exploring how to show up for both the mundane and the momentous, come join me at r/thelaundry. Right now it’s just me—which Puddleglum would say is about what he expected—but like my favorite pessimistic frog-man, I’m going to keep showing up anyway.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
For years, my only association with the Chronicles of Narnia was Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell rapping about it in this classic Lonely Island sketch, Lazy Sunday, hence the title of this post. (Also, I lived in the West Village back then, and Magnolia cupcakes were legit.)