How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Page)
Quote #1
"Supposing I told you I'd been in a place where animals can talk and where there are—er—enchantments and dragons—and—well, all the sorts of things you have in fairy-tales." (1.7)
For The Silver Chair, the "other" stands for "otherworld." Narnia is a place straight from a storybook, and Scrubb knows that it will be hard to describe to Jill, and for her to believe him.
Quote #2
They had expected to see the gray, heathery slope of the moor going up and up to join the dull autumn sky. Instead, a blaze of sunshine met them […] It made the drops of water on the grass glitter like beads and showed up the dirtiness of Jill's tear-stained face. And the sunlight was coming from what certainly did look like a different world—what they could see of it. They saw a smooth turf, smoother and brighter than Jill had ever seen before, and blue sky, and, darting to and fro, things so bright that they might have been jewels or huge butterflies. (1.12)
It's clear that the children are in a new and different world, but we also understand here that they are the foreigners. The grubbiness and dirtiness of their world becomes noticeable in the clean, calm, and beautiful setting of Aslan's country.
Quote #3
And before [Jill] quite knew what was happening, [Scrubb] had grabbed her hand and pulled her through the door, out of the school grounds, out of England, out of our whole world into That Place. (1.13)
If you're going to journey into the otherworld, you've got to find the portal to get in, and in this case, it's literally a door. Lewis really wants us to understand that Jill and Eustace have left England and are heading into something truly different and foreign.
Quote #4
But what really made Jill open her eyes and mouth as wide as they would go, was the people themselves. If "people" was the right word. For only about one in every five was human. The rest were things you never saw in our world. Fauns, satyrs, centaurs: Jill could give a name to these for she had seen pictures of them. Dwarfs too. And there were a lot of animals she knew as well; bears, badgers, moles, leopards, mice, and various birds. But then they were so very different from the animals which one called by the same names in England. (3.35)
In fantasy stories, it can be difficult for the author to describe the wonderfulness of other worlds and the people in them. One way to do this is to say how much you can't describe it. So while Lewis can kind of tell us what Jill is seeing—we all understand mythical creatures and animals—there is still an element of difference that's so big he can't make the leap. The creatures being "so very different" makes this a truly exotic destination.
Quote #5
"Long, long ago, at the very beginning, a White Witch came out of the North and bound our land in snow and ice for a hundred years. And we think this may be some of the same crew." (4.61)
Even in Narnia, there is a sense of otherness, and it's not always a good and exciting thing. In this case, the witches are considered evil outsiders who never mean any good to them.
Quote #6
She filled a giant foot-bath with hot water and helped Jill get into it. If you can swim (as Jill could) a giant bath is a lovely thing. And giant towels, though a bit rough and coarse, are lovely too, because there are acres of them. In fact you don't need to dry at all, you just roll about on them in front of the fire and enjoy yourself. (8.114)
When you find yourself in a totally different world, sometimes the best thing to do is simply enjoy yourself. Though the House of Harfang turns out to be a very unpleasant place, Jill finds pleasure in the difference between being a giant and being herself.
Quote #7
They were very different; some had tails and others not, some wore great beards and other s had very round, smooth faces, big as pumpkins. There were long, pointed noses, and long, soft noses like small trunks, and great blobby noses. Several had single horns in the middle of their foreheads. But in one respect they were all alike: every face in the whole hundred was as sad as a face could be. (10.141)
Beyond Narnia (or below it, as the case might be), Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum discover worlds even more diverse and strange. In Underland, it becomes even harder to describe the species that exist, because they are more fantastical than ever. Lewis focuses on some extraordinary features of the Earthmen to explain just how different they are from anything we've seen before.
Quote #8
The cold light came from a large ball on top of a long pole, and the tallest of the gnomes carried this at the head of the procession. By its cheerless rays they could see that they were in a natural cavern; the walls and roof were knobbed, twisted, and gashed into a thousand fantastic shapes, and the stony floor sloped downward as they proceeded. (10.142)
The look of this shadowy new world reveals its frightening and potentially sinister nature. In this case, otherness is not a delightful diversity but rather something that provokes anxiety and fear.
Quote #9
It brought them into a smaller cave, long and narrow, about the shape and size of a cathedral. Here, filling almost the whole length of it, lay an enormous man fast asleep. He was far bigger than any of the giants, and his face was not like a giant's, but noble and beautiful. His breast rose and fell gently under the snowy beard which covered him to the waist. A pure, silver light (no one saw where it came from) rested upon him. (10.145)
Even in this frightening, strange place, there can be beauty. Lewis describes a myriad of strange creatures in this place (all of which have "fallen down from the sunlit lands"), most of which fire our imaginations. Old Father Time is a creature of legend, and though in a sinister place, he maintains his purity and beauty.
Quote #10
"She is of divine race, and knows neither age nor death." (10.154)
Learning that the Queen of Underland is immortal does not impress Puddleglum as the enchanted Rilian hopes it might. Puddleglum understands that immortality signals a very scary kind of other—the chaos-causing witches from the North.
Quote #11
"I have heard of those little scratches in the crust that you Topdwellers call mines. But that's where you get dead gold, dead silver, dead gems. Down in Bism, we have them alive and growing. There I'll pick you bunches of rubies that you can eat and squeeze you a cupful of diamond juice." (14.206)
Golg the gnome reveals a startling truth to Rilian and company: What we call precious and valuable (i.e., gems and gold, silver) do not resemble the true magnificence of their original state. So in this scenario, we have double otherness: Golg looks on the Overlanders and their world as foreign and dangerous, and Rilian sees Bism as an unknown place well-worthy of exploration.