I was too busy last night to get to chapters one and two, so I'm doubling up today.
Chapter 1:
Two things stood out to me on this reading. The first is the silence. There are no birds except the occasional gull (and you'd expect to at least see gulls around the shore, but there weren't many, and the kids didn't remember seeing any nests about), and not even insect life in the woods (where there absolutely should be (but at least they don't have to deal with any mosquitoes!)). The kids don't even say very much while they're playing in the water or walking down the beach -- not for any particular reason, like being too tired or feeling too thirsty for it. It's a sleepy, dead silence that blankets everything. (Add to that the quiet, sleepy country station....)
The second is that there's actually some foreshadowing with Lucy here: she's the one who sees new developments first -- the stream, the apple trees, the castle wall. She has her eyes peeled, or at any rate, is alert and observant. She will continue to demonstrate this as the book goes on.
Chapter 2:
Ruins and history and pretty things to look at. Sign me up! I could spend a week down there.
That brooch has a story, surely.
And I love Peter's, "I suppose there
isn't a door." It's a bit sarcastic, a bit of a challenge, and also a bit playful or joking.
Chapter 3:
You really gotta give Susan props here. She's frightened, but she took the initiative to string her bow and take the shot. And, given her reasoning for saying she was
not shooting to kill... I think she actually was. I'm not sure that's ever really clicked with me before.
Curious that Trumpkin, a Narnian among Narnians, has grown up with the tales of "ghosts" in the eastern woods. There's a lot to unpack there, potentially. But not now. That requires more rumination on my part.
Chapter 4:
Another instance of something explicit that seems to have not quite connected is how young Caspian is when he first meets Doctor Cornelius. He's described as a "very little boy" when he accidentally spills the beans to Miraz, and it's only about a week later that Doctor Cornelius arrives. Now, I'm not sure what Lewis considers "a very little boy", but he's thirteen by the time he runs away, so he's got a few years' education from Doctor Cornelius for sure.
(And I seem to have goofed on a couple of other details in a fanfic I wrote about young Caspian a couple of years ago. Oops.)
On this reading, Doctor Cornelius reminds me vaguely of a couple of professors I had in college. Namely, the one that taught World History so engagingly, the one that had a dry and deadpan sense of humour (different from the grave voice and merry eyes, but he did trip up people and make them wonder if he was serious or joking), and the one who taught astronomy.