The Magicians Nephew is one of the seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia. Including The Magicians Nephew, which I have just read, I have read five of the seven books. I really enjoy these fantasy adventure books and I like how the author writes. I can always picture in my head what’s happening whilst reading. In this book, The Magicians Nephew, Digory (the nephew) and Polly become friends in London when Digory’s uncle (the magician which he does not realise yet) gives them magic rings which sends them into the ‘Wood between the Worlds’. In this wood, they can use the rings to travel to different world by jumping into one of the many ponds. When they enter one, they find themselves in a new world. They come across an old room in an abandoned stone courtyard with broken walls and pillars, and thought there were lots of people in the room at first, but they were portraits hung on the walls. The furthest left portraits looked like nice and friendly people, but the further they moved down the wall, the nastier the people were. At the very end, there was an image of a woman. She looked beautiful, but fierce. Digory and Polly determined that she was the queen. And beyond her, there were empty chairs as if there were meant to be more people. In the middle of the room, there was a table which they went over to inspect. Some foreign language was engraved on the stone which they could not understand at first. This is when I came across this passage of the book.
If only Digory had remembered what he himself had said a few minutes ago, that this was an enchanted room, he might have guessed that the enchantment was beginning to work. But he was too wild with curiosity to think about that. He was longer more and more to know what was written on the pillar. And very soon they both knew. What it said was something like this – at least this is the sense of it through the poetry, when you read it there, was better:
Make your choice adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had (p. 35)
After reading this, they got into a quarrel because Polly did not with to continue but Digory did. At last, Digory hit the bell with the hammer, which was the choice they had to make to find out what would happen, and it were like a mini earthquake had happened. The room was filled with such loud noise and rumbling. Once it had stopped, at the end of the room where the image of the cruel woman had been, had come alive.
I chose this passage because I find it an important part of the story to learn how the queen came to be which will start Narnia and give readers a better understanding of how the story starts. Because of what happened here, they entered (unknowingly) into the land of Narnia by entering the wrong pond and then they got to watch it be created by Aslan which will be the start of the real adventures for anyone who comes across Narnia by mistake, which will be in the other books.