The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

First, two items of news and then an item of business

• The film Prince Caspian is expected to gross at least $400 million in world-wide sales
• Disney is in production on the Voyage of the Dawn Treader and it is scheduled for release in 2010
• For our next book the plans are to cover The Great Divorce, a fictional work in which the author imagines it is possible for the inhabitants of Hell to take a bus trip to Heaven and stay there if they wish.  If you have any comment about this, please drop me a line or two of email.

yourhost@allaboutcslewis.com

C S Lewis wrote the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (VDT) in just three months, using some of the images he had when he started Prince Caspian that did not fit in this story.  Most people think that this was intended to be the last book in the series because

• After the VDT, the original four children have been told that they will not be coming back into Narnia (Peter and Susan at the end of Prince Caspian and Edmund and Lucy at the end of VDT).
• The obvious parallel between the end of VDT and the end of John’s Gospel found in Chapter 21.

We’ll cover three things before we get into the VDT itself – dreams, magic and imagination.

Jack had an active dream life as a child and as an adult.  As a child, he was frightened by dreams about insects.  As an adult, he and his friends discussed their dreams in letters and dreams provided some of  the materials he used in his writing.

Some people try to discourage reading books by Lewis, Tolkien, and Rowling because of thei use of magic, since in their view magic is always evil.  Lewis includes both good and evil magic in his books – magic is not always evil.

Lewis associates spell-casting with his approach to fantasy writing he is trying to “cast a spell” to remove the evil enchantment that has been laid on us by the world.  He wants to replace worldly values with the “Narnian” values of courage, honor, loyalty, and trust.  He does this by permitting us to “try out” these vales in his “fairy tales”,  We do this by imagining how we would have acted had we been “there” in the story.

For Jack, facts and reason cannot tell us all we need to know about how we should live our lives in this world.  We need what we can perceive through our imaginations and reason as well.

In addition to Lucy and Edmund from the preceding two tales, Jack includes Caspian and Reepicheep who we met in Prince Caspian.  He introduces a new character, “Eustace”, a young boy who starts as being pretty much a brat.

Lucy, Edmund and Eustace are swept into Narnia when the were looking at a “magic picture” of a Narnian ship.  They end up in the ocean next to the ship and are taken on board.  There they meet Caspian and Reepicheep and learn that they are on quests for adventure, and that the name of the ship is “The Dawn Treader”.

The story is organized as an adventure tale as it follows what happens as the ship sails from to the East.  The first adventure we cover in the podcast is the story of a transformation involving Eustace.  He finds a dragon’s cave on an island and ends up sleeping on the dragon’s hoard, dreaming greedy, selfish thoughts.  He wakes up to find that he has been changed into a dragon.  He is changed back again, but you should read that story for yourself.

Next, we go to the island of the Dufflepuds or Duffers, dwarfs that get around by leaping on their single leg.  They are invisible and compel Lucy to go into a magician’s house and say the spell that makes them visible again.  She does so, but only after being tempted by her imagination to say another spell first.  The “make visible” spell works and Aslan becomes visible in addition to the Duffers.  Does this mean we can control God by magic? Read the story for the answer.

Finally, we look at the adventure with the Dark Island, where the Dawn Treader and her crew encounter a place where dreams come true. Initially they think  that this is a good thing but then are terrified when they learn that it means nightmares as well as the good dreams.  (Our imaginations can hurt us as well as help us).  The ship tries to row out of the darkness that encloses the island but gets lost.  Lucy prays to Aslan, and he answers by appearing in an albatross and leading them out.

The “American” End to the Dark Island adventure

In a few moments the darkness turned to greyness ahead and then, almost before they had dared to begin hoping, they shot out into the  warm, blue world again. And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight pouring through your window and to hear the cheerful voice of an early postman or milkman down below and to realize that it was only a dream: it wasn’t real, is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to have the joy of waking; so they all felt when they came out of the dark. The brightness of the ship herself astonished them: they had half expected to find that the darkness would cling to the white and the green and the gold in the form of some grime or scum.

Lucy lost no time in coming down to the deck, where she she found the others all gathered around the newcomer for a long time he was too happy to speak and could only gaze at the sea and the sun and feel the bulwarks and the ropes, as if to make sure he was really awake, while tears rolled down his cheeks….

Lord Rhoop fell on his knees and kissed the Kings hand.  “Sire you are the man in all the world I most wished to see.  Grant me a boon.”

“What is it?” asked Caspian.

“Never to ask me, nor to let any other ask me, what I have seen during my years on the Dark Island.”

“An easy boon, my Lord,” answered Caspian, and added with a shudder. “Ask you: I should think not. I would give all my treasure not to hear it.”

“Sire,” said Drinian, “this wind is fair for the southeast.  Shall I have our poor fellows up and set sail?  After that, every man who can be spared to his hammock.”

“Yes”, said Caspian, “and let there be grog all around.  I feel  that I could sleep the clock round myself.”

So all afternoon with great joy they sailed south-east with a fair wind, and the hump of darkness grew smaller and smaller astern.  But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.

The “British” End to the Dark Island Story

In a few moments the darkness turned to greyness ahead and then, almost before they had dared to begin hoping, they shot out into the warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been. They blinked their eyes and looked about them. The brightness of the ship herself astonished them:they had half expected to find that the darkness would cling to the white and the green and the gold in the form of some grime or scum. And then first one, and then another, began laughing.

‘I reckon we’ve made pretty good fools of ourselves,’ said Rynelf.

Lucy lost no time in coming down to the deck, where she she found the others all gathered around the newcomer for a long time he was too happy to speak and could only gaze at the sea and the sun and feel the bulwarks and the ropes, as if to make sure he was really awake, while tears rolled down his cheeks….

Lord Rhoop fell on his knees and kissed the Kings hand.  “Sire you are the man in all the world I most wished to see.  Grant me a boon.”

‘What is it?’ asked Caspian.

‘Never to bring me back there,’ he said. He pointed astern. They all looked. But they saw only bright blue sea and bright blue sky. The Dark Island and the darkness had vanished for ever.

‘Why!’ cried Lord Rhoop. ‘You have destroyed it!’ ‘I don’t think it was us,’ said Lucy.

“Sire,” said Drinian, “this wind is fair for the southeast.  Shall I have our poor fellows up and set sail?  After that, every man who can be spared to his hammock.”

“Yes”, said Caspian, “and let there be grog all around.  I feel  that I could sleep the clock round myself.”

So all afternoon with great joy they sailed south-east with a fair wind. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.