osprey_archer | Book Review: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Back when I first read the Narnia books, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my very favorite, and I am happy to report that this holds true today! To me it always seemed the most purely magical and numinous of the Narnia books: Lucy and Edmund and Eustace being washed into a painting and hauled aboard the Dawn Treader, (and isn’t Dawn Treader the perfect name for a ship?), setting out on a voyage of adventure, Eustace turning into a dragon, Lucy sneaking through the magician’s house, the whole gang meeting a retired star.

These parts I remembered so clearly that I was surprised to realize I’d also forgotten whole swathes of the book, not least that the Dawn Treader is not merely sailing in search of adventure, but on a definite quest: King Caspian is looking for the seven lords whom his evil uncle King Miraz sent away.

And it was delightful to revisit the adventures I’d forgotten, like the Dark Island, which is an island where dreams come true: not daydreams but dreams, the kind you have at night, and the moment they crew understands, they are all pulling for the open sea as fast as the oars will carry them.

All except Reepicheep, of course. The valiant mouse has never known fear in his life, and he’s all for going full speed ahead! God, I love Reepicheep. But for once he’s overruled, and it’s probably for the best, for how would he ever reach the edge of the world if the whole crew was lost in nightmares?

And the description of the edge of the world is so beautiful: the sea turning to sweet water, covered in lilies, and Reepicheep riding the wave right over the edge, presumably into Aslan’s country. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

Even more than Reepicheep (just as much as Reepicheep? It seems wrong to rank them…) I love Eustace, who gets one of the best introductions in literature: “There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Bold words from a man named Clive Staples Lewis! (But I strongly suspect that some of Eustace’s more priggish aspects were drawn from Lewis’s own youth.) I was delighted to rediscover that early on he keeps a diary, in which he attempts to present himself as The Only Rational Man on the Ship, in a way that makes it clear that he’s an unbearable shipmate and even his cousins must be fantasizing about tossing him off.

But I think my favorite scene in the book is the one where Lucy reads from the magic book. It’s just so atmospheric, Lucy standing alone in this empty room in this seemingly empty house to read, tempted by the spell to make herself unspeakably beautiful, giving in to the spell to learn what your friends really think of you - do you think that spell always takes you to hear the worst thing your friend ever said about you? For, as Aslan says, what Lucy hears isn’t really what her friend thinks of her, but what she thought the older girl wanted her to say.

And of course reading the most wonderful story in the world, which she can’t remember afterward… a mixed blessing, that last. The cup and the sword and the green hill, all fading away like a story in a dream. A little like reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader perhaps, except that we get to remember it.