Happy Birthday, Dawn Treader!

The year 1952 in England has gotten a lot of attention lately, with the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Her seventy-year reign, the longest ever for a British monarch, began with the death of her father, King George VI, on February 6, 1952.

But on September 15 of that year, C. S. Lewis published the third of his seven Narnia books: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. So happy birthday, Dawn Treader!

People who know me know that I love this book, which I consider a flawed masterpiece of Christian literature written for children (of all ages). Let’s get the “flawed” bits out of the way. Lewis was philosophically very much a Platonist, and that shapes the story, giving it an unfortunate feel of “to find God you must leave the world.” This works on two levels: the children who are the stars of the story — Lucy, Edmund and Eustace — leave our world (symbolized by their homeland, England), to embark upon their adventure in the magical land of Narnia, but then even in Narnia itself, the children accompanied by King Caspian and the crew of the good ship Dawn Treader have to sail to the very end of the world merely to get a glimpse of “Aslan’s Country” (for those uninitiated into the mysteries of Narnia, Aslan the Lion is the symbol for Christ in these tales). This is redeemed somewhat at the very end of the story, when Aslan tells the children, “For you the door into Aslan’s…