Book Review - 'The Chronicles of Narnia' by C.S Lewis - Book Five: 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'
‘The Chronicles of Narnia - The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ by CS Lewis
“You can’t know… You can only believe – or not.”
‘Lucy and Edmund, with their odious cousin Eustace, journey on board the gallant ship Dawn Treader to the Eastern Seas in search of the seven lost friends of King Caspian the Ninth. On this extraordinary voyage of discovery they encounter a dragon, a sea serpent, a band of invisible people, a magician, and also the great Aslan himself, who makes them a very special promise.’
The story begins in our world with one of my favourite opening lines – ‘There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.’
He’s a cousin of the Pevensie children, two of whom will be spending the summer with him and his parents; the two unfortunates being Edmund and Lucy.
The children’s father is going to America on a job and their mother will be accompanying him along with Susan. Peter, ‘working very hard for an exam’ is spending the summer with Professor Kirke (whom we met in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’).
Edmund and Lucy don’t get on with Eustace at all and he doesn’t think much of his cousins either.
Being of a practical mindset, he has no time for make-believe things and, having overheard the four siblings talk of it before, loves teasing them about Narnia, which he believes is a made-up place.
When we join Edmund and Lucy, they’re in the room Lucy will be using for the duration of their stay and both are looking at a picture on the wall, ‘the only picture in the house that they liked… It was a picture of a ship… sailing straight towards you. Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide-open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail… a rich purple… The sides… were green…’
They both agreed it looked ‘“a very Narnian ship.”’
To their annoyance, Eustace appears and begins to tease them about Narnia.
Then, something starts to happen with the picture.
‘The things in the picture were moving… Down went the prow of the ship into the wave and up went a great shock of spray… Lucy felt her hair whipping round her face as it does on a windy day… but the wind was blowing out of the picture towards them. And [then]… came the noises… the smell, the wild, briny smell…’
All three children find themselves swept ‘off their feet’ and drawn ‘down into the sea.’
Thankfully, the ship that had been in the picture is right there, larger than life, and they’re rescued.
It turns out the ship they’re on belongs to their friend, Caspian the Tenth, now King of Narnia, and the name of the ship is Dawn Treader.
After introductions are made on both sides and the newcomers given dry clothes, we get an idea of the passage of time.
When Edmund says that a year has passed in our time since their previous visit to Narnia, Caspian replies that that was three years ago in Narnian time.
Having established peace in Narnia, Caspian is now fulfilling an oath he’d made to ‘“sail east for a year and a day to find my father’s friends or to learn of their deaths and avenge them if I could.”’
When his uncle, Miraz, had been ruling Narnia, he’d sent away seven friends of Caspian’s father who would have supported Caspian’s claim to the throne; they’d been sent ‘“to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands.”’
Of course, Edmund and Lucy are eager to travel with him.
Eustace, on the other hand, refusing to believe he’s in a whole other land, is anything but a willing guest.
While the ship’s company are all new characters, apart from Caspian, there is another returning character from the previous book – Reepicheep, the valiant mouse, there to fulfil his own quest.
We follow the Dawn Treader as she voyages east, stopping at different islands, all unexplored once past the Lone Islands.
In setting this book in unknown parts of Narnia, Lewis has the perfect excuse to dive deep into his imagination, which he seems to have done with great delight.
As the characters encounter beautiful and perilous lands, mysterious inhabitants, deadly creatures, I was reminded of the voyages of Sinbad.
Lewis includes little seafaring nuggets of information, such as, ‘On a sailing ship the wind is coming from behind, and anything smelly is put as far forward as possible.’
And, of course, his descriptions…
‘… saw the whole western sky lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the Eastern rim of the world…’
‘It was a Darkness…For a few feet in front of their bows they could see the swell of the bright greenish-blue water. Beyond that, they could see the water looking pale and grey as it would look late in the evening. But beyond that again, utter blackness as if they had come to the edge of moonless and starless night.’
‘… the smell of the fruit and the wine blew towards them like a promise of all happiness.’
Lewis shows us how favourite characters like Lucy are far from perfect and make mistakes as all humans do.
Eustace adds an element of humour without meaning to, and his character development, while not as profound as Edmund’s in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, is a good one.
I enjoyed his reaction on finding himself in what he believes to be a wholly made-up place, and I think his shock and horror is portrayed quite realistically as are his attempts to come up with plausible explanations to satisfy his unmagical mind.
The Christian allegory gets stronger with each book, but, again, personally, instead of overshadowing the story, I found it added another layer, which added to my enjoyment.
This is just my opinion, but I feel it’s a personal choice, to either look for the allegory or to simply read the book as a Narnian seafaring adventure.
As much as I enjoyed this book, I do have one minor quibble and that is the pacing.
We take a while to get going with the adventure proper as Lewis spends long chapters on a couple of islands, yet much less time is given to other, more intriguing islands and creatures, and there is a feeling of having to up the pace as we approach the end.
To be honest, when I started this, I didn’t dive into it with much enthusiasm as I seemed to remember not enjoying it that much on my previous reading.
But, again, like with the previous book, I enjoyed this more than I remembered.
The next two are not as unknown to me as I’d like them to be as those who have read the books and are very familiar with them do discuss the story in places I’m not expecting to find spoilers… like Pinterest!
But such is life, and I shall not let little spoiler-y snippets diminish my enjoyment of the last two books.