The Magician’s Nephew: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Digory starts to scream, but Uncle Andrew quickly muffles him, warning Digory that his ailing mother might hear. (Digory later thinks back upon the cruelty of that moment.) Uncle Andrew says Digory’s shock is understandable—he, too, yelled the first time one of his guinea pigs disappeared. But now he knows his experiment has succeeded; he has sent Polly to “another place.” Digory demands to know what he means.

Uncle Andrew sits down to tell his story. He points to a photograph on the wall—his godmother, Mrs. Lefay. Digory doesn’t like the looks of her. He asks Uncle Andrew if there was something “wrong” with Mrs. Lefay. Uncle Andrew says that people are narrow-minded, but it’s true that Mrs. Lefay grew strange in later life and even went to prison. He doesn’t explain why. Anyway, she was released before her death, and Andrew was one of her only friends—she had come to dislike “ordinary, ignorant people.”

Before Mrs. Lefay died, she entrusted a little box to Uncle Andrew. She made him promise that he would burn it, “with certain ceremonies,” without looking inside. But Andrew, intrigued by the box’s secrets, didn’t obey. Digory says that this was “jolly rotten” of Andrew.

Uncle Andrew reacts to Digory’s words with pretended puzzlement. He claims that it’s fine for little boys to be taught to keep promises, or other ordinary people, but that “profound students and great thinkers” must be exempt from such rules. Digory is momentarily touched by this, seeing Uncle Andrew’s “noble and mysterious” face, but then he remembers his uncle’s expression when Polly disappeared. He realizes that Uncle Andrew “thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants.”

Uncle Andrew avoided opening the box for a long time, claiming that Mrs. Lefay had “fairy blood” and that the box might have contained something dangerous. Digory keeps trying to return to the question of Polly’s disappearance, but Uncle Andrew says that’s not what’s important right now. The box, he goes on, predated all ancient civilizations, being from the lost island of Atlantis. Uncle Andrew kept studying magic, meeting some strange people and having “disagreeable experiences” in the process, until at last he learned the truth: the box contained dust from another world, a world that could only be reached by magic.

Uncle Andrew knew that if he could get the magical dust into the proper form, the dust would draw a person back to the world from which the dust originated. He tried this on guinea pigs, but some of them died. Digory is appalled, but Uncle Andrew retorts, “That’s what the creatures were for. I’d bought them myself.”

At last Uncle Andrew succeeded in making the yellow rings, but then, how would he get back whatever creature he sent to the “Other Place”? Digory wants to know why Uncle Andrew didn’t simply go himself, but Uncle Andrew is offended by the question—how could someone at his time of life be expected to undertake such a risk? Digory is furious that Uncle Andrew would send Polly to an unknown place that he’s too cowardly to visit himself.

Uncle Andrew refuses to be spoken to like this by a mere schoolboy. He points out that he is the great magician; of course he needs subjects to experiment on. After all, “no great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.”

Finally, Uncle Andrew explains that he created the green rings in order to draw his “subjects” back from the Other Place. Polly, of course, doesn’t have a green ring. Digory is horrified to realize that Uncle Andrew has caught him in a trap. He agrees to go to the Other Place with the green rings in order to rescue Polly, but he points out that if Uncle Andrew were really honorable, he’d do it himself.

Digory adds that, after what he’s seen today, he now believes in magic. That means that the old fairy tales must be true, too—making Uncle Andrew “simply a wicked, cruel magician” like one in the old stories. Digory points out that such characters always get what’s coming to them in the end, and he’s sure that Uncle Andrew will, too. Uncle Andrew looks briefly horrified, but recovers himself quickly, dismissing Digory’s belief in “old wives’ tales.”

Uncle Andrew explains to Digory how the magic rings work. They must be touching the skin in order to work. The yellow ring causes the wearer to vanish to the Other Place; and the green ring (he thinks) causes the wearer to reappear in this world. He gives Digory the green rings, with instructions to keep them carefully in his pocket. Then he offers Digory a yellow ring. Knowing that Uncle Andrew can’t guarantee that the green rings will work, Digory takes a deep breath and puts on the yellow. He later thought “that he could not decently have done anything else.”