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 country is from your own world.” Granted, the idea of divine transcendence is a part of Christian mysticism and contemplative spirituality — but it’s only a part, it needs to be balanced with the paradoxical but equal true understanding that God/Christ/heaven are immanent, entirely present in our world, our bodies, our lives. So… The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tells a beautiful and wonderful story, but it’s built on an incomplete understanding of mystical theology, and that needs to be recognized.

My other gripe with the book is a bit more prosaic, but it still needs to be mentioned. Lewis, very much a cultural conservative, tends to have a moralistic understanding of what “being a Christian” is all about, so much of the story’s conflict centers on the “naughtiness” of Eustace, and his eventual repentance and conversion after his greediness turns him into a dragon. Even worse, Lewis tries to jokingly pass off Eustace’s nastiness on the fact that his parents were…