Narniathon: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C. S. Lewis

Here we are on volume 3 of the Narniathon readalong.  I think this is often a favorite with readers; I know it is with me.  It's got so many adventures!

Edmund and Lucy are to spend the summer with their detestable cousin Eustace, who plans to sneer at them the whole time.  But they are immediately pulled into Narnia instead; they land in the ocean, right near a beautiful little sailing ship.  It's King Caspian X's ship; it's been three years and his reign is going well, so they're mounting an expedition to visit Narnia's island possessions, which no Telmarines have visited in generations.  After that, they plan to sail as far east as they can, to see if they can find the edge of the world.  (Edmund and Lucy are quite surprised to find out that this world is, in fact, flat, and Caspian thinks it's amazing that they're from a round world.)

It's a perfect setup for a series of adventures.  I don't know that you could call them picaresque, though, because there is a progression.   They start off in the real world, and solve real difficulties as they find that the Lone Islands, neglected by their government, have become a center of slave-trading.  Then a huge storm drives them for days, and the islands become steadily more fantastical.  Eustace, who has been an enormous pain, undergoes a transformation into a dragon, which helps him to reform and leads to his rebirth under Aslan's ministration.  They don't meet humans any more, but sea serpents and retired stars (and Dufflepuds).  They find the Dark Island, where nightmares come true, and see Aslan vanquish it.  And finally, they do get to the edge of the world, and only the children and Reepicheep may continue on.

The star of this story is not really Caspian; it's Reepicheep, the dashing leader of the talking mice.  He just steals the show.

This is also a story where Lewis' place and time become fairly obvious, with quite a few cracks about Eustace, his family (who are non-smokers and teetotalers, which just shows you how awful they are), and his school, which doesn't have corporal punishment.  Some of these comments are pretty embarrassing now, but so will we be in 70 years.

I've always thought of this as one of the best Narnia books.  It has so many memorable images and events, and I've always just really liked it.  And I hope I never find that Dark Island.

The 'planet' behind this story is, of course, the sun.  Wikipedia says that the sun symbol in astrology ☉is based on Apollo's round shield with a boss in the center, which I've never heard, but sounds neat.  Its metal is gold, and the Latin word for gold, aurum, comes from Aurora, the Greek goddess of the dawn.  The Sun's characteristics are wisdom, liberty, and fortunate events, and it has generally been considered a very masculine kind of planet, with the Earth as his corresponding feminine.  In Dante, the sun is over the heaven of theologians and philosophers.  The Dawn Treader is named for its journey towards the sunrise, and everything in the story shows increasing light and splendor.  Images of Aslan are not red in this story; they are gold, and Caspian's flat gold disc with Aslan's head embossed on it is given special prominence.  In the illustrations, Caspian is always shown wearing a tunic with a sunburst design on it, and he ends up marrying the daughter of a star.

Not all the images of gold are positive; Lewis shows the dark side (ha!) of gold too.  When Eustace finds a dragon's hoard of gold, he is transformed into a dragon himself because of his greed.  Deathwater Island has a magic pool that turns anything to gold, and which also influences those nearby with greed and violence.  The slave-traders of the Lone Islands are also greedy and gold-hungry (if we're going to assign one of the Seven Deadly Sins to each book, this one is clearly avarice!).  Dragons abound; besides Eustace, there is a massive sea serpent greedy for lunch, which breaks the Dawn Treader's dragontail decoration.  Dragons go along with Apollo, who is a dragon-killer.