Puddleglum -- Reluctant Hero

Benisse

Perelandrian
Staff member
Royal Guard
Hypothesis: Through Puddleglum's tenacious, consistently half-empty, pessimistic perspective, Lewis actually lays the seeds for Puddleglum's heroic rescue of Jill, Eustace and Rilian at the end of The Silver Chair. If you agree, what are some ways his unique outlook contributed to the ultimate stamping out of the Green Witch's charms? Were his actions in stamping out the fire an out-of-character surprise to you, or did this initiative seem in character to you?
 
Anyone can act bold and confident when things are already going his way. God's righteous angels in Heaven are automatically full of moral virtue by nature; but in the fallen material creation, adversity is usually required to awaken the nobler qualities. Puddleglum's very pessimism actually helped him to become a hero, because he had no foolish optimism that would have been dashed by mishaps.

I get weary of people who demand that everyone "be positive." I would rather be surrounded by companions who were gloomy and sad -- but who would jump into the way of death to protect me -- than "always cheerful" happy-wappy types who in a pinch would abandon me to my fate.
 
The thing about Puddlegum is that because he was so pessimistic the children would not take him seriously. It is hard to live life if you assume nothing will go right. Yet it is the false promise, like good giants and warm beds, that will get you in more trouble. Puddlegum is the most fable like character in Lewis' CON. It is hard to imagine a real person like him, but he represents so much of the Christian walk.
 
I guess he just takes what some real people are like to an extreme. He's far less disturbed by his pessimism than some of the real-life pessimists I know. Puddleglum is a relatively hopeful pessimist--he'll talk like he's given up, but then he'll go right ahead and do whatever needs doing. His pessimistic comments seem to depress others more than they reflect any depression on his part.
 
Puddleglum is often saying things like "must make the best of it." He expected the worsed but that doesn't mean he aims for it.
Also, he's a cheerful pessimist, he looks forward to the quest that he expects to fail and always looks for the best in a bad situation, ie, from his perspective every situation.
 
With Puddle, his enduring faith was combined with not caring if what he believed was true. This was what his speech essentially said. The Green Witch tried to convince them that there was no world other than her own and that they were just imagining life in Narnia.

This didn't affect Puddle as his pessimism already informed him that could be true--that what he believed may be wrong. Of course, the issue with Puddle is that the two worlds were flipped. His imagination always went to the worst while the Narnia he remembered was amazing with the Underland being far worse than that. His worldview was therefore flipped and he used that aspect--that an imaginary world could be far better than a real one.

He then used that to tell her that the fact that he would rather live in his imaginary world and believe in his imaginary god and to look for that world, even if it doesn't exist.

MrBob
 
Although Puddleglum's expectations were set so low that, as others have mentioned, he was infuriating at times and depressing at others. The interesting thing about his expectations was that they so seldom came true.

This negative correlation between reality and expectations stood him in good stead at the climax of Silver Chair. The Green Witch's words did not phase him as much as the others. He did not have to fight what she was saying; who knows maybe she was right? So he was able to conserve his energy into taking a stand for what he believed in, whether it was true or not, and he was able to get up and stamp on that fire.

In general he was able to cling to his beliefs in spite of what others said, and at the crucial moment, he was able to cling to his beliefs in spite of what the witch said.
 
To some of our members, the actor Tom Baker is barely even a memory. But he did very well as BBC's Puddleglum. I just wish that, in the climax, he had been allowed (like the book) to JOIN IN FIGHTING the shape-changed witch.
 
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