Puddleglum

I was listening to The Silver Chair the other day, and was reminded of just how much I love Puddleglum. He really is the best of the Marshwiggles.

He often seems to be a contradiction: He is the one who wants to go to Harfang the least, yet shows most courage upon arrival. He is the most pessimistic, yet in the worst of times he manages to remember the best.

Perhaps because of all of the times he has expected the worst and been wrong, when he finally gets one right, the children won’t take him seriously. They are too tired, too cold, and too hungry to consider the possibility that Harfang might be a bad idea after all or that the lady in the green dress might not be as sweet as she appears. Pole has started to forget the signs and the Aslan’s warning that things might not be quite what they appear. They have found something they want, and decided it is something they need while the best course of action would have led them in quite the other direction.

They make it out alright in the end, but everything would have been much simpler if they had just remembered the signs, the warnings, and maybe taken Puddleglum a little bit more seriously.