Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #9: The Last Battle

Before reading The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis with my five- and six-year-old sons, I spent some time reviewing the storyline. Though I had read it more than once as an adult, I was still searching for something new about Susan. As you’ll see from the story summary below, her path does not follow that of her siblings or any of the other friends of Narnia. She is “left out,” so to speak, of their glorious ending, and I was worried about how to handle that with my sons.  

In my hunt to learn more, I was somewhat dismayed to find so much criticism of C.S. Lewis for his treatment of Susan. Perhaps the most pointed (and dramatic) was a short story called The Problem of Susan by Neil Gaiman, in which the author imagines her as a grown-up with all sorts of psychological problems.

“They’re all missing the point!” I thought.

So what is the point? Well, far be it from me to know exactly what C.S. Lewis had in mind, but I do think his faithful readers know he was a careful teacher, profoundly concerned with the interior life of his readers. As I’ll explain in the reflection, I think Susan was Lewis’s last and, perhaps, most important lesson.

THE STORY

The Last Battle is the only book in the series that starts off in Narnia. It begins with two talking animals: a donkey named Puzzle and an ape named Shift. They find a lion’s skin floating in a river, and Shift convinces Puzzle to put it on and pretend to be Aslan. Puzzle, who is very simple-minded and eager to please his bully of a friend, goes along with the ruse, and word gets around Narnia that Aslan is back.

King Tirian hears this news as well and hopes it to be true. But when a tree spirit stumbles into his presence and reports that her kind is being chopped down in Aslan’s Name by Calormene soldiers and then falls down dead herself, King Tirian is beside himself with anger. He sends Roonwitm a loyal centaur, to gather his army and sets off himself with the unicorn Jewel to confront the tree murderers.

When the King and Jewel arrive, they fall into a fit of passion at the sight of a Calormene soldier beating a talking horse and end up killing him. A troop of more Calormenes arrive on the scene immediately thereafter and arrest King Tirian in Aslan’s Name. Full of remorse, King Tirian and Jewel willingly accept Aslan’s punishment.

Only it’s not Aslan who punishes them; it’s Shift. King Tirian is bound to a tree, and Jewel is tied to the back of a stable in which the fake Aslan spends his time awaiting a nightly appearance before the gullible Narnians.

The appointed hour arrives, and Puzzle comes out in the lion’s skin and pretends to be Aslan. A great bonfire is ablaze, and King Tirian sees the donkey for what he is—an imposter. He implores Aslan, the True Aslan, to come to his aid and calls upon the children who helped Narnia throughout its history. Next, he has a vision of a gathering of people dressed very differently than himself, and one of them, a teenage boy who calls himself Peter the High King, demands to know what has happened to Narnia. But the vision vanishes, and King Tirian is left alone, sad and forlorn.

In addition to Peter, the gathering includes Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, a grown-up Digory (aka Professor Kirke), and a grown-up Polly (aka Aunt Polly). Susan’s conspicuous absence is eventually explained as being because she is “no longer a friend of Narnia.” The group had gotten together at the initiative of Aunt Polly so they could talk about their adventures in Narnia.

When they see King Tirian, they want to help him, but they don’t know how to get back to Narnia to do so. After all, only Eustace and Jill are presumably young enough to go. So they come up with an idea to retrieve the magic rings Professor Kirke and Aunt Polly had used as children. Peter and Edmund carry out the plan, which involves sneaking into Professor Kirke’s old backyard, and travel by train to bring back the rings. The remainder of the group, meanwhile, waits for them at the train station, but something happens that sends Eustace and Jill flying into Narnia. Though many days have passed in their time, they arrive in Narnia only moments after King Tirian had his vision.

After untying the King and feeding him a small meal, the trio sets off to arm themselves at a nearby garrison and disguise themselves as Calormenes. Newly fortified, they sneak back to the stable on a reconnaissance mission. Jill goes rogue, enters the stable, and takes Puzzle prisoner. Although King Tirian is angry with her disobedience, he is glad to have Puzzle. Now they can show Narnia that he is a fake. They go back to the garrison to await a more advantageous hour to expose the enemy.

Along the way, they rescue a group of Dwarfs forcibly bound for Calormen. The Dwarfs turn down the friendship of the King and say the Dwarfs are “for the Dwarfs.” They don’t want anybody’s allegiance, not even Aslan’s, and they walk away caring only for themselves. King Tirian had not anticipated such a response, and he begins to lose hope. Thankfully, one Dwarf comes back and joins their cause.

They soon learn from a hawk named Farsight that Roonwit and his entire army have been killed by the Calormenes. No one is left to help them. They must choose to give up or fight on, and King Tirian says he will take the adventure Aslan has in store. He offers for Eustace and Jill to leave, saying they don’t need to die for Narnia, but the children refuse to leave. Besides, they don’t even know if they can get back since they had not used the rings in the first place.

A deep stillness sweeps across the land, and they suddenly see a terrible creature with the upper body of an ugly bird and the legs of a man. It’s Tash, the god of the Calormenes. His presence in Narnia is unprecedented and portends evil. Nevertheless, King Tirian’s small band ventures forth at the appointed hour in order to expose Puzzle as a fake and thereby convince the Narnians to stop listening to Shift and the Calormenes. Perhaps with their awakening, Narnia stands a chance.

Once again, they hope in vain. Two evil co-conspirators, a talking cat named Ginger and a Calormene soldier named Rishda, have effectively removed Shift from power, making him their puppet. Ginger and Rishda are much cleverer than Shift and, indeed, more nefarious in their intentions. They correctly understand the danger of Puzzle’s absence and decide to out him as a fraud themselves. So, they have Shift “warn” the crowd that a donkey is dressed in a lion’s skin pretending to be Aslan.

Though the Narnians are still fearful of Shift, they muster the courage to challenge him and ask for an audience with Aslan, who, allegedly is just inside the stable. Shift then makes a shocking revelation. He says there is no such thing as Aslan; there is only a god named Tashlan, a god who is both Aslan and Tash at the same time. This is the lie of all lies, but the Narnians don’t know what to think. Shift revels in their confusion and dares the Narnians to go into the stable one at a time and see Tashlan themselves. Really, a Calormene soldier is waiting inside to kill the Narnians as they enter.

Knowing the Narnians are scared to go in, Ginger goes in first as an example. He, however, has nothing to fear because the Calormene soldier knows not to kill him. But a strange thing happens. Ginger screeches loudly and runs out of the stable unable to talk. He’s been turned into a “dumb” cat. Next, a Calormene named Emeth goes in. A moment later he comes out, stumbles, and falls down dead.

From his hiding place, King Tirian sees that the man is not Emeth after all; some great mystery is at play inside the stable, but there is no time to wait and uncover it. The king reveals himself and calls upon the Narnians to fight with him against the Calormenes. Talking dogs and talking horses and a great many other talking animals join his side in what will be Narnia’s last battle. The tide seems to turn in their favor, but the Dwarfs stubbornly fight against everybody, still insisting that they’re only for themselves. They don’t want either side to win, so they pick off Narnians and Calormenes alike with their bows. Victory slips from their grasp.  

Jewel fights bravely but is killed. Eustace holds on a little longer, but he gets backed into the dreaded stable, and Jill and King Tirian are forced inside last of all.  

But the stable is unlike a stable on the inside. It’s another world entirely with lush green grass, a beautiful blue sky, and a crowd of humans crowned in royalty. It’s the friends of Narnia dressed in regal attire: the High King Peter, King Edmund, Queen Lucy, Lord Digory, and Lady Polly. Even Eustace and Jill appear as king and queen. Magically, they have all passed into Aslan’s Country. Jill and Eustace passed through the battle, but the others passed through a train crash. It turns out, that was the terrible jerk they felt at the train station.

A crowd of Dwarfs is also among them, but they cannot see the royals or any of the splendor that surrounds them. They see only the blackness of a dank stable.

Aslan appears, opens the stable door, and ends the world just outside of it with a tremendous roar just as He had once started it with a tremendous song. Spirits come flooding through the door as darkness washes over Narnia. When nothing is left, Aslan shuts the door and beckons everyone to follow Him further in and higher up. A great race follows in which the children alternately run and stop to talk to friends they had thought lost. They see Roonwit and Jewel and a repentant Puzzle. They see Emeth, who explains that another Calormene had tried to kill him when he walked into the stable but that he had bested him. It was the “bad” Calormene who came out and died. The reason Emeth had gone inside the stable in the first place was that he had begun to doubt his leader. He had served Tash faithfully all his life, and it didn’t make sense to him that Tash could be the same as Aslan. Given the chance to confront his god face to face, he wanted to know the Truth. Aslan rewards Emeth for his honor and service and says that every good thing he had done, though it was in Tash’s name, was really done for Aslan because Tash is unable to accept good works.

As the friends of Narnia climb further in and higher up, they realize the land looks like Narnia, only more like Narnia. It turns out, the Narnia they had known before was merely a shadow of the more beautiful Narnia in Aslan’s Country. They eventually come to the garden in which Digory had picked the apple for Aslan in The Magician’s Nephew. They eat of the tree and have more happy reunions with the likes of Mr. Tumnus and other old friends. They even find their own parents there! As it turns out, they had been on the train, too, and now they are all together in Aslan’s Country, a world without end.

REFLECTION

So ends The Chronicles of Narnia, but we are left to wonder what becomes of Susan. In a letter to a boy named Martin dated January 22, 1957, C.S. Lewis explained, “The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan. She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s Country in the end—in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense.’”

This quote, which is included in Letters to Children, sheds light on C.S. Lewis’s thinking about Susan. Let’s look at three of his points and see what lessons unfold.

“Silly and Conceited”

It’s sad to hear Susan described this way, especially when we think about her having once been a Queen of Narnia. Nonetheless, we remember how in The Horse and His Boy she allowed herself to be courted by the Prince of Calormen, a deceptive man who coveted her beauty above anything else. We remember, also, how she did not want to see Aslan when he first appeared to guide the children to Aslan’s How in Prince Caspian, suggesting she was trying to shut Him out of her life. So, too, do we remember how she was sent to America at the beginning of The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” because she was considered “the pretty one.” Presumably, being seen and admired in a foreign country was within her limited “skill-set,” making her (and her parents) seem rather shallow.

Poor Susan! Through a mixture of nurturing and her own willful decisions, she grows “silly and conceited.” In other words, she is too consumed with her own ego to have any room left for Aslan.

“She Grew Up”

In another of C.S. Lewis’s letters to children, he expressed that he did not think age mattered all that much. He felt people could be old and young at the same time in their being. His view is much like the idea of an old person being young at heart or a young person having an old soul, but we need to take these popular images a little further.

To be young at heart in the Lewis sense of the phrase doesn’t mean that one loves toys beyond the normal age. We would call that childish. Instead, being young at heart means being child-like in spirit, or having a simplicity of mind that allows one to see the obvious. (Think of The Emperor’s New Suit.) Susan “grows up” in spirit because she pretends that Narnia was just a game of make-believe. She was there. She saw it for herself. Yet, she closes her heart to it in the end because Narnia does not fit into the “reality” she prefers, a reality, we might add, that feeds rather than checks her ego. In short, Susan decides Narnia is all nonsense and thereby rejects the Truth Aslan had directed her toward.

“Time for Her to Mend”

C.S. Lewis probably brought much consolation to Martin with these words. Thankfully, all is not lost for Susan. While Narnia is closed to her because Aslan ended that world, she can still get to Aslan’s Country in “her own way.”

And the ways are many—if she chooses to look for them! Aslan mostly appeared to the children in the form of the Lion, but he also appeared at times in other forms. At the end of The Voyage of “The Dawn Treader,” He appeared as a Lamb because He wanted the children to be able to recognize Him better in their own world as the Lamb of God, who is Christ. Susan was not present in that scene, of course, but the point remains that Aslan, as the Logos Incarnate, is bigger than Narnia. He transcends all of creation. As such, He can be found wherever one looks. The problem, then, for Susan is whether or not she wants to find Him.

The Lesson

Now we arrive at the lesson. Much like an anti-fairy tale in which the ending is somewhat of a warning, I think C.S. Lewis used Susan’s character to tell his readers that “happily ever after” is found through Christ alone. The choice is ours whether to follow the path of Susan or the path of the friends of Narnia. Aslan, though a King Himself, does not treat His people as slaves, nor does He force His Will upon them. His way is to invite. Although Susan has not accepted Aslan’s invitation at the end of the series, His invitation remains for the extent of her mortal life.

In a letter to a young girl named Pauline Bannister dated February 19, 1960, C.S. Lewis indicated that since Susan was still alive in this world, her story was not yet over. Nevertheless, he said, “I could not write that story myself. Not that I have no hope of Susan’s ever getting to Aslan’s Country; but because I have a feeling that the story of her journey would be longer and more like a grown-up novel than I wanted to write. But I may be mistaken. Why not try it yourself?”

I hope Pauline took his suggestion and wrote something beautiful. My sons and I have. In our version, Susan gets married and has children, and they teach her to be child-like again. Together, they find their way to Aslan’s Country in an all new adventure complete with an ivory horn and plenty of archery. It’s a simple storyline but a True one. We find the Logos Incarnate most readily when we become like children, full of wonder and longing for Truth.

FINAL THOUGHTS

C.S. Lewis wrote so well to people of all ages, not simply because he was full of wisdom but because he could make it so plain. Now many weeks after having finished The Chronicles of Narnia, my sons and I are still making references to the characters and their adventures, not merely to relive the fun but to explain other things that come up.

“It’s just like when Digory looked at Aslan face to face for the first time,” one of us will say. Or, “Doesn’t that remind you of when no one believed Lucy?” The connections to the everyday adventure of raising children in the Faith are endless.

What’s more, I read this blog series to my sons in draft form, and they provided unexpected fact checking. They remembered with pristine accuracy what happened in individual scenes, while I sometimes lumped details together. I was amazed. They saw themselves as guardians, so to speak, of the storyline. Happily, they are simultaneously becoming guardians of the Truth it represents.

I think C.S. Lewis would have liked that.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)
Posted on by Stephanie McGann

Narnia #7: The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” gave new depth to the world of Narnia. When I read it to my five- and six-year-old sons, we felt like part of the crew, searching for the end of the world right along with them. As we sailed further and further into the deep unknown, I kept asking my sons, “Should we keep going?”

Their answer was always a definitive, “Yes!”

With C.S. Lewis as our captain, I knew we were heading somewhere special. While my sons were dying to know what the end of the world would be like, I was happily absorbed in the “sights” along the way and kept questioning them about the nature of the journey itself. I’ll share some of our discussion highlights in the reflection that follows my summary of the story.  

THE STORY

The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” begins about a year in our time after the adventure in Prince Caspian, and we find Edmund and Lucy staying with their cousin, Eustace Scrubb, son of Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold. Lucy and Edmund are not particularly happy about this. Susan got to travel to America with their parents because “she was the pretty one,” and Peter was studying for a big exam with help from Professor Kirke. Edmund and Lucy don’t feel merely left out; they feel stuck. Eustace is painfully irritating and constantly trying to get them into trouble. The reasons for his sour temperament are many, but they mostly have to do with a progressive upbringing that has indoctrinated him in “all the wrong books.”

Just as Edmund and Lucy are enjoying a little time alone talking about Narnia, Eustace breaks in on them and starts making fun of them in a superior sort of way that he hardly deserves. Though he knows all sorts of information, it is readily obvious he doesn’t know much of anything actually worth knowing. In the midst of their quarrel, the three children get sucked into a painting of a ship that is hanging on the wall. Lucy and Edmund are thrilled because they immediately realize Narnia magic has hold of them, but Eustace is terrified.

They find themselves struggling to swim in a great ocean beside the very ship they had seen in the picture. With a little help from the crew, they climb on board and recognize Prince Caspian. He has embarked on an expedition to the end of the world where he hopes to find Aslan’s Country. Along the way, he hopes to recover seven lords, once loyal to his father, who had set off on a similar adventure during the false reign of Caspian’s evil Uncle Miraz.

Eustace, in utter disbelief, acts extremely ungrateful to crew for saving him and begins an incessant rant about wanting to go to the English consulate. That, of course, is impossible, so he settles into a cabin below deck and sulks for days and days.

And so begins a story that is more like a series of quests than the other Chronicles. We’ll take them each in order, though it makes for a longer summary than some of the others in this blog series.  

The Dawn Treader’s first stop in on the Lone Islands, an archipelago Edmund and Lucy had traveled to during their reign in Narnia and that had been under Narnia’s domain since the days of the White Witch. Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and a danger-loving, talking mouse named Reepicheep decide to paddle a boat to shore ahead of the Dawn Treader and disembark on the far side of the main port. They end up being taken prisoners by a slave trader named Pug. Luckily, a kind man named Lord Bern, who turns out to be one of the seven lords whom Caspian had set out in search of, facilitates their release. From there, Caspian storms the palace and sets things right, leaving Lord Bern to remain as his vassal in charge of the Lone Islands.

They continue Eastward into the unknown for the next several days, and the story begins to focus on Eustace. More bitter than ever about his predicament, he refuses to leave his cabin and journals about his miseries, albeit from a very shallow perspective. When they finally sight land, he wants to get away from everyone in order to avoid helping—the ship needs to be repaired and the supplies replenished. Eustace ends up taking a nap far from the crew and wakes up in the presence of a dragon. Luckily, the dragon dies before his very eyes. But a storm hits, and he seeks shelter in the dragon’s cave. He is amazed to find it full of treasure and puts on a golden bracelet, which had belonged to another of the seven lords—Lord Octesian. He drifts back to sleep only to awaken as a dragon himself.

His miserable existence has gotten that much worse, but he manages to find the crew and convey in his dragon way that he is Eustace. In his new form, Eustace begins to see the world differently and even makes friends with Reepicheep, whom he had previously deplored. Aslan eventually peels off all Eustace’s dragon skin to reveal his human form once more. The crew leaves the island, now dubbed Dragon Island, and presumes the dead dragon was in fact Lord Octesian.

After narrowly escaping a sea serpent, their next stop is on another unchartered island. Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheep set off by themselves to explore it and discover Narnian armor by a water bank. They rightly guess it was one of the seven lords, but they have no idea at first what could have happened to him. Next, they discover a life-size statue of a human made of gold at the bottom of a pool. When they try to fish it out, they realize that the water itself can turn things into gold. The statue must have been a person.

No sooner do they realize how dangerous the water is, than they also realize how valuable it is. Caspian and Edmund fight over who has the right to the pool, but then Aslan appears and they come to their senses. Reepicheep aptly names the island Deathwater, and the crew leaves with all haste.

On the next island, they encounter invisible creatures. According to their Chief Voice, a terrible magician has made them ugly, and, since they couldn’t stand the sight of themselves, they found another of his spells and make themselves invisible. The creatures no longer want to be invisible but are now too scared to seek out the magic book because they have not seen the magician in all that time. They worry he is also invisible and could sneak up on them at any minute.

The Chief Voice threatens to kill Caspian’s crew if Lucy doesn’t find the spell for them. She accepts the task and, after a strange dinner with the invisible creatures, makes her way through the magician’s house and into his study. She finds the magic book and becomes absorbed with several spells. She nearly recites one that would make her the most beautiful woman in the world—even more beautiful than Susan—but a small picture of Aslan suddenly appears in the book. His image helps her overcome that temptation and most of the others, and she eventually finds the one to make things visible again. When she does, she sees Aslan in the room with her. He was there all along, but He, too, had been invisible.

Next, she meets the magician, who turns out to be a kind man in the service of Aslan. They look upon the once invisible creatures and see that they are funny looking monopods. Lucy does not think they are ugly at all! Happy at last, the creatures, which are called Dufflepuds, bid Caspian’s crew a fond farewell.

Their voyage takes them next to the Dark Island, which haunts the crew with their worst nightmares. They stay only long enough to rescue a man who had been stranded on the island and terrorized by its darkness for years upon years. His name is Lord Rhoop, and he is another of the seven lords. Sadly, he is but a shell of his former self.

The next stop is an island on which they find an exquisite banquet set before three sleeping men, whom Caspian determines to be the last of the seven lords. Their names are Lords Revilian, Argoz, and Mavramorn. A beautiful maiden appears and explains that the three men had arrived there seven years prior and gotten into a fight about whether to continue their voyage or return home. One of them grabbed a knife, which was the very Knife of Stone the White Witch had once used to kill Aslan, and thus the three men fell asleep.

After the maiden tells this story, her father, a retired star named Ramandu who bears the shape of a human, tells Caspian’s crew that the only way to wake the sleepers is for someone to offer his life in their stead by going to the End of the World and never coming back. Reepicheek is quick to accept this adventure, and Caspian arranges to have Lord Rhoop rest in a peaceful slumber beside his former comrades and so find healing from his nightmares.

The ship travels further East, and the world around them changes. The Sun grows bigger and brighter, and they are able to see far into the distance. The water also becomes clearer, and Reepicheek discovers that it tastes delicious. The crew begins drinking it to sustain them. It has a magical property that fills them so completely they neither thirst nor hunger for anything else. Eventually, the ship is unable to go farther because the ocean is covered with flowers like lilies.

Caspian, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, and Reepicheek form a smaller party and continue first by boat and eventually on foot. They finally come to the “end” which is marked by a wall of water. There, they must bid farewell to Reepicheek, and they watch him paddle up the wall of water and out of sight. The brave mouse has a smile on his face and knows that he has arrived in Aslan’s Country at last.

Moments later, they see a Lamb and join Him in a simple meal. Then, the Lamb turns into a Lion, and they recognize Him as Aslan. Aslan explains that He has many forms, and He appeared to them as a Lamb just then so they might better recognize Him in their own world, to which they must now return. Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund that they will not be able to return to Narnia again. Like Peter and Susan, they have grown too old. But He comforts them with the knowledge that He will still be with them and lead them into His country. He opens a door in the sky, and Edmund, Lucy, and Eustace walk through and find themselves back in the bedroom from which they had originally departed.

Caspian returns to his crew, marries Ramandu’s daughter, and lives out his days as King. As we’ll see in the next story in The Chronicles of Narnia, his adventures are not quite done.

REFLECTION

C.S. Lewis used lots of spatial imagery in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” to reveal the infinite nature of Aslan, which is to say God. After I pointed out the imagery to my sons the first few times, they started recognizing it on their own and trying to explain it to me. Though they are little, Lewis’s beautiful images made it relatively simple for them to understand that Aslan’s ways are further and deeper and higher than ours.

Distance

The first motif, distance, was fairly easy to visualize as the “Dawn Treader” traveled farther and farther away from Narnia into the unknown. (The map at the beginning of our edition of the book was especially helpful.) As an adult who had read the story before, I still found myself feeling a little nervous every time the ship would shove off from an island. Like the crew, my sons and I continually wondered how much farther it would take to reach the end of the world. After some particularly difficult adventures along their voyage, we questioned if they had not already gone far enough. Prince Caspian was particularly sensitive to this feeling among his crew and offered them points of return. But thanks to his leadership and the inspiring valor of Reepicheep, they refused to stop short of their destination.

Behind this motif of distance is both the reality of God’s infinite nature and our calling to pursue it without end. This brings us to another question: Did Prince Caspian and his crew reach the end of the world?

The answer, though simple in literal terms is more complex figuratively. Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, Prince Caspian, and Reepicheep did reach the end of Narnia, but as we know from reading The Magician’s Nephew, Narnia is one world among many. Moreover, as we’ll learn from reading The Last Battle, Narnia is only a reflection of Aslan’s Country, which is a world without limits, like Heaven. So in that sense, none of them—not even Reepicheep—reach the end of the True World. Instead, they are merely continuing their journey further and further toward (or into, in the case of Reepeicheep) Aslan’s Country.

Depth

The second motif is depth. It captured our imagination most in relation to Eustace’s dragon-days. As we know, he was brought up so poorly that he knew nothing of dragons, let alone their very existence. That is a little ridiculous on face value, but it is meant to be symbolic.

Since dragons symbolize evil, what Eustace really knows nothing about is evil. Literally, his ignorance of dragons is what lets him get “caught” by one. But figuratively, his ignorance of evil is what makes him so rotten all the time. He had always been like a dragon on the inside, so his physical transformation was merely the final expression of his true character. Luckily, it was also his chance to discover just how real evil is and how it had crept into his very being.

That’s where Aslan comes in. He alone was capable of peeling away all the layers of badness that had built up on Eustace because He alone could see into the depth of Eustace’s heart. Aslan purified Eustace by restoring him to his innermost self, the boy he was made to be at his birth.

Height

Our final motif of height centers on Reepicheep, who reportedly was one of C.S. Lewis’s favorite characters. Small in stature, he is nonetheless larger than life. He was the bravest and most adventurous of the crew. While everyone else was scared to be left behind at the end of the world, he readily volunteered, knowing it to be his destiny.

In his final moments, we saw him paddling up a wall of water that marked the outermost limit of the Narnian world. Not only was that an awesome image for my sons and me to visualize, but it also lifted our thoughts toward the resurrection of the body. Reepicheep literally went up to Aslan’s Country, showing that his steadfast loyalty to the Lion, most especially in the face of danger, was worth it. Better still, he went up with a smile, making himself a model for the small crew who stood by as witnesses. All of them—even Eustace—want to follow after Reepicheep because his destiny is so spectacular.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Reading The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” was an incredible adventure in itself. It allowed my sons and me to contemplate the Eternal in a way that inspired wonder and awe without the worry and fear that might otherwise accompany it.

Likewise, C.S. Lewis affirmed yet again that God will always be there to help us through the trials of the world and lead us to Heaven if we accept Him as our Captain. With this beautiful understanding in mind, we eagerly looked forward to starting his next book, The Silver Chair.

(Here is another of my six-year-old son’s sentence diagrams, which I instructed him through during our reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. For more on a classical approach to learning grammar, visit my series here.)