C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is an
exploration of journeying on multiple levels. The physical journey which shapes
the plot of the book involves Edmund, Lucy and Eustace’s trip to Narnia where
they meet King Caspian and his crew aboard their ship, the Dawn Treader. They sail to the East in hopes of finding the seven
missing Lords of Narnia and exploring relatively uncharted territory. Individual
characters also experience their own arcs of growth throughout the course of
Lewis’s story. Reepicheep’s journey is one of fulfillment. He is able to pursue
a lifelong goal by sailing beyond the end of the world to what is considered
Aslan’s country. Caspian also shows this type of progress in terms of his
leadership skills as the reigning King of Narnia. Eustace Scrubb’s
transformation from a bad-tempered, closed-minded child to a more open, helpful
friend allows Lewis’s work to be classified as bildungsroman-type story too. After
his experience as a dragon and his symbolic “baptism” by Aslan, Eustace is
changed—his internal disposition is more pleasant and he begins to redirect his
energy toward positive ends, like supporting the crew. One of the most
interesting aspects of this novel is the way in which Lewis manipulates his
role as author. He injects himself into the text and allows the reader to see
herself as a traveler, as another character in the world of Narnia.
Lewis creates the
world in his novel, but frequently includes parenthetical interjections in
which he seems to give up that role. He claims that he isn’t aware of certain
aspects of his characters’ quest or that he can’t include certain information.
For example, in the third chapter of the text, he writes that he has “never yet
heard how these remote islands became attached to the Crown of Narnia; if [he
ever does… he] may put it in some other book” (38). In the chapter titled “The Magician’s Book,”
Lewis writes “I don’t know what the Bearded Glass was for because I am not a
magician” (148). Close to the end of Voyage,
after Ramadu and his daughter begin to sing, Lewis states: “I wish I could write down the song, but no
one who was present could remember it” (204) His abandonment of creative control validates
Narnia as a real space. Lewis isn’t creating an imaginary land, but wants to
assert that he is simply relaying the story and the facts of an adventure that
actually happened. Narnia exists and we have entered it.
Although the
physical text, just like the opening picture, is a representation of this world,
it allows readers to visit and explore it along with the characters. Lewis
makes the reader aware of her own personal journey through his direct addresses
to her in the text. Lewis includes the second person “you” in the text,
consistently reminding the reader of her actual presence in the novel. Beyond
Eustace’s coming-of-age story, Caspian’s development as a leader, Reepicheep’s
fulfillment of his dream, and other characters’ personal journeys, the reader
also experiences travel. In the closing scene of the novel, the children (as well
as the reader) are told that they will not return to Narnia because they “are
too old […] and must come close to [their] own world now” (247). Aslan isn’t
telling the children that they must abandon Narnia or their imaginations
forever. He is simply telling them that real-world application becomes
necessary. A reader, at any age, is able to experience this land in a very real
way and, therefore, is able to inform her “earthly” realities.
Lewis’s
denial of creative authority also poses a more philosophical question: who or what has ultimate control? This
question not only applies to the sphere of Narnia but also to the metaphysical
debates of our contemporary society. The character of Aslan is a vehicle that
Lewis provides as a symbolic and ambiguous response within this larger
discussion. The seemingly omnipresent lion acts as a guide to the characters and
has a distinctly spiritual element; however, he is never given an explicit
metaphorical meaning. He represents something larger than reality, an external
force with power in the mortal realm, but is never given a decisive title. In the last few pages of the text, Lewis
writes that “everything now felt as if it had been fated or happened before”
(244) but also suggests that Aslan has “another name” on Earth. Lewis
purposefully leaves the analysis up to the reader. It is actually unimportant
whether Aslan is meant to represent God, fate or a different higher being. He
grants the reader interpretive license in the same way that he acknowledges the
reader’s entrance into the text. For Lewis, the reader is not a passive agent but
an active player just like all of the other characters in his text and the
other readers of his novel. The Voyage of
the Dawn Treader confirms that art, in its many forms, is a gateway to
travel, both through the imagination and through the real places and adventures
that imagination creates.
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