A couple weeks ago I visited my sister in Florida and watched the boats coming into harbor. This seemed oddly appropriate as I had begun reading through The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The main difference (aside from the make of the ships) was that the children in Dawn Treader were on a large ship for many months with much less plushy accommodation. Now to conclude my observation of the essential themes…
Pride/Vanity
Yet another theme which is worth mentioning, though it is not one of the main ones, is pride and vanity. This one is particularly poignant for me, having grown up in a household full of women (I have 7 sisters). How we looked and how we felt about ourselves based on our looks was always a source of anxiety, competition, and jealousy.
The moment in the book which best highlights this theme is when Lucy goes to find the magician on the island of the Dufflepuds. Her long-growing jealousy of her sister Susan comes to the surface when she stumbles on a spell to make her beautiful. Susan was formerly noted in the book as getting positive attention from others because she was a great beauty. Lucy sees in the magical book a resulting scenario from saying the spell where she could become even more beautiful than Susan.
“And Susan was jealous of the dazzling beauty of Lucy, but that didn’t matter a bit because no one cared anything about Susan now”
Lucy determines to say the spell, but when she looks back at the book she sees the face of a lion, growling and showing his teeth. Startled with fear, she quickly turns the page.
Lucy utters the next spell she is tempted by, however, and eavesdrops on her classmates. She hears the girls saying rude things about her and grows angry.
When she finally finds the spell she is looking for, the one to make the Dufflepuds (and all else invisible) visible, she casts it and Aslan appears. He informs her that he was one of the things the spell made visible as he had been there all along. He rebukes her for giving in to temptation to listen in on her classmates. Lucy realizes her motivations for saying the spells had been wrong.
Yet, the very reason Lucy has to find the book and say the spell is because the Dufflepuds had asked the magician to turn them invisible because they were embarrassed about the way they looked.
The magician explains only the Dufflepods considered themselves ugly, when the magician was sure he had made an improvement
Lucy, ironically, asks if they are conceited, to which the magician (when he finally shows up) replies:
“They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, and he’s taught all the rest to be. They always believe every word he says.”
Lewis exposes the way our vanity can become a source of false pride to us. Instead of having a healthy view of ourselves, we can overcompensate for our shortcomings by finding something about ourselves we think is worth admiring and focusing on it to the extent that we feel it defines us.
Lucy is prideful and vain just as much as the Dufflepuds. And even the Dufflepuds, as simpleton as they are painted, are not excused for being so. All must learn to have a right view of themselves.
Expiation
Expiation is a big word we don’t normally use. I am talking about the concept of removal of sin. Lewis displays this through the character of Eustace, who begins as a complaining, sniveling, demanding, bullying and patronizing individual.
One of the most gripping, heartwarming, and painful moments in the book is when Eustace finds himself turned into a dragon. This brings about a positive character change, as he becomes anxious to help others, instead of merely wallowing in self-pity.
One night the great lion Aslan comes to help him remove his scales. Eustace removes some layers himself, but Aslan has to remove the deep layers.
“So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’”
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt…”
Anyone who has done a bit of self-reflecting knows how painful it can be to own up to our own insufficiencies and wrongdoings. What is more painful, for the Christian, is to let God show us the depth of the wickedness, which goes deeper than we realize. He is also the only one who can remove it all, if we will let Him.
Classic Reads 