The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

[sawyl]

Again, I thought I'd read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader relatively recently, but it seems not. Unlike the other novels, it's essentially a series of short episodic stories linked by the narrative of King Caspian's great voyage of exploration and his search for the seven lords, friends of his father's, who were exiled and sent east by his usurping uncle Miraz.

Staying with their appalling cousin Eustace, Edmund and Lucy find themselves whisked off on a Narnian sea voyage with their old friend King Caspian when a painting comes to life. Unfortunately Eustace is also caught up in the magic and immediate sets himself to being as disagreeable as possible: demanding to be take to a British Consulate; mocking Caspian's ship, the Dawn Treader, for not being the Queen Mary; stealing water rations when the supplies are low; and, worst of all, trying to swing Reepicheep the Mouse around by his tail.

Approaching its first real stopover — the Lone Islands, a long-standing Narnia protectorate — Caspian and the Pevensies go ashore, only to find themselves trapped by slavers. When Caspian is lucky enough to be bought by a local man, he realises that he has been freed by Lord Berne, the first of his father's missing lords, and with his canny advice, Caspian is able to stage a bloodless coup against the corrupt Governor Gumpus. Departing the Lone Islands, the Dawn Treader is driven before a great storm to an uninhabited island where Eustace undergoes a dramatic change for the better, finding Lord Octesian's arm ring in the process.

The episode in the Lone Islands is important because it shows Caspian in his guise as Odysseus, a wily and cunning warrior rather than someone who relies on brute force and strength of arms, while the scene in the governor's office has definite echoes of the Cleansing of the Temple. But the redemption of the appalling Eustace Clarence Scrubb is definitely the main business of the first part of the book. Having been physically transformed into something closer to his inner spirit, Eustace realises that what he actually wants is exactly what he can't have: the friendship of those he has gone to great lengths to alienate. It's telling that in his moment of despair, it is Reepicheep who keeps him company; for the Mouse's spirit is so great that he is able to step beyond the slights inflicted on him by Eustace to help him in his moment of greatest suffering.

With the repairs completely, the Dawn Treader presses on, encountering a great sea serpent and an island where the water turns everything it touches to gold. The island beyond appears to be inhabited by invisible voices. These voices blackmail Lucy into entering the magicians' house, there to read his great spell book and to find a magic to make them visible again. Lucy, brave as anything, agrees but in the process of leafing through the book, is tempted by all sorts of morally dubious spells before she finally finds one to make the islands inhabitants visible again. In the process she discovers that the magician is actually quite friendly and that the voices actually belong to a strange, single-footed group of not very clever dwarves.

Both islands are obviously intended to examine temptation. On Deathwater, the temptation is greed: realising that the enchanted spring offers the potential for unlimited wealth, Caspian loses his cool and almost comes to blows with Edmund until the power of the Great Lion breaks the spell. On the Island of Voices, Lucy is tempted to use magic obtain things she thinks she wants — beauty beyond all others, knowledge of what her friends are saying about her — only to discover, when she succumbs to the least of these, that it isn't what she wanted at all.

Still travelling east, the ship encounters a great patch of darkness encircling an Island of Nightmares from where they recover the traumatised Lord Rhoop. Further on further, the Dawn Treader arrives as the island of Ramandu, a retired star, where they find the three remaining lords — Argoz, Mavramon, and Revilian — bound in an magical sleep. Learning that they can only break the enchantment by travelling to the utmost east, Caspian's and his crew, almost all of whom volunteer to stay with him, travel on until they reach a great sea of lilies where the company finally separates: the Dawn Treader and her people to return to Narnia; the children to travel home; and Reepicheep to pass beyond the end of the world into Aslan's Country.

The finally encounters on the islands are somewhat overshadowed by the journey to the utter east, where the water is sweet like liquid sunlight and where strange and wild merpeople live below the surface. The journey through the sea of lilies feels like the suspended moment in a journey, while Reepicheep's ultimate departure is very touching — for all that the others are sometimes a little exasperated with his directness, Reepicheep is often just as clever as he is honorable and Lewis manages to avoid making him a tedious one-note character. The final encounter with Aslan, first in the form of the Lamb and then as the Great Lion coupled with his advice to Lucy that she can find him in England just as easily in Narnia if she uses the right name, comes across as a little heavy handed, but I suppose it never hurts to beat people over the head with idea!