But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. 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. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.
— Puddleglum (Błotosmętek).
C.S. Lewis. The Silver Chair. Chapter 12 "The Queen of Underland".
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"And this declaration of utterly ‘blind’ faith is what prompts the Witch to reveal herself in her true colours, as a venomous serpent.
This is not quite the emotional darkness of Last Battle, but it prepares us for it by inviting us to imagine a world in which the heart of the story is being written off as nonsense. Puddleglum’s refusal to turn his back on Aslan even if Aslan is a fiction is another bold moment. Lewis is by no means giving ground to the idea that the truth of religious language doesn’t matter as it is a question of will and commitment only – a position not unfamiliar in twentieth-century philosophy of religion. But he does allow himself to think of what it is like to have to choose between a world that, while ‘reasonable’, is actually smaller than what we experience and a world whose reality we cannot establish but which offers firmer ground to stand on".
Rowan Williams. The Lion's World – A journey into the heart of Narnia. London: SPCK 2012 p. 61.
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