Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1951)


Okay, good – the whole “green mist” thing was an invention for the movie.  I didn’t want to believe I’d forgotten such a big plot point!  While I get why the film wanted a unifying thread connecting the various vignettes, I don’t think the book needs it.  This is an enjoyable adventure yarn, and although it doesn’t have as well-formed a plot as many of the other books in the series, the characters serve it well and it offers up a number of memorable sequences.

Stuck in the country with their insufferable cousin Eustace, Edmund and Lucy are thrilled to find themselves transported to Narnia once more (less thrilled to do so with Eustace in tow.)  There, they meet up again with Caspian, now king of Narnia and leading a sailing expedition to seek out a number of lords who’d been forced to flee during Caspian’s uncle’s usurpation.  Along the way, they have a number of strange and fantastical adventures.

As I said, there’s no mysterious malevolence building to a climactic battle here, and there’s no driving plot beyond Caspian’s search to find the seven lost lords.  And really, that’s okay.  It’s not the type of book that needs it.  All it really needs is the characters, the Dawn Treader, and the series of adventures they encounter during their journey.  I wouldn’t call it the best book in the series, but for me, it’s one of the most memorable.  Vignettes like the Dufflepuds, the golden statue, and the dragon stuck with me years after my mom first read me the book and I first saw the old-school BBC miniseries. Even before checking out the more recent film, I still had crystal-clear remembrances of, say, Lucy reading the Magician’s book and Reepicheep in his coracle.

And Eustace being a colossal pain, because yeesh.  It’s funny – when I compare him with Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, he’s obviously not as bad.  As Edmund remembers here, he did some horrible stuff in that book, whereas Eustace’s main crimes are basically having no imagination and generally being a self-centered complainer.  However, as big as Edmund’s actions were, and as much as Lewis doesn’t pull any punches with him, it is pointed out that he’s at least partially under the thrall of the White Witch, and even apart from that, his never personality never grates as much as Eustace’s does.  That said, he comes by his character development honestly in this book, and I buy where he ends up compared to where he started.  I’m looking forward to rereading The Silver Chair to get reacquainted with this version of Eustace with Pole.

There’s nice variety in the little tales here, adventure and intrigue with moral lessons mixed in and a little humor for good measure.  I like the sense that while, yeah, there’s the whole thing with the lost lords, this is mostly about Caspian, the Pevensies/Eustace, and the crew exploring uncharted waters because they’re there.  Great spirit of exploration and the seeking of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  (Side note:  I would’ve appreciated the mention of more Narnians in the crew.  I get that there are still a lot of Telmarines in Narnia, but Caspian is king to all and it would’ve been nice to see more of a mix, to get a glimpse at how the various peoples of Narnia are coming together more under Caspian.)

Warnings

Brief thematic elements and some scary scenes.

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