The Silver Chair Setting

Where It All Goes Down

Experiment House, England; Aslan's Mountain; Various Places in Narnia and Underland

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 know that there is a gym behind which one can bawl their eyes out, and that it is bordered by a stone wall with a door in it. Perhaps the description is so sparse because Lewis promises us that "this is not going to be a school story" (1.1). Phew—it seems like a pretty rough place.

Aslan's mountain, on the other hand, gets a great deal of description, especially concerning the two focal points of action: the cliff and the stream. The cliff—high beyond all imagining—becomes the launching point for the gang's adventures in Narnia. And the stream is clearly a symbolic, life-giving font. For more on this, though, you're going to have to hop on over to the "Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory" section, where the symbolic analyses flow freely. Ahem.

We suggest that you take a look at the map of Narnia included in your edition of The Silver Chair. Though it is highly stylized rather than strictly practical, it will give you a good sense of the space that Jill, Eustace, and Puddleglum cross on their journey north toward the ruined city of the giants. As you can see from the map, it would be easy for a character not to see all of Narnia on a first visit. The terrain is vast and various and includes cultivated lands, marshes, mountains, and moors—enough land to fill, say, seven books with.