#undragons your quest

[poizonedapplez]

Darkspawn 🔪🩸

[archivingheartbeats]

I swear, I did my very best

To be the answer to your quest,

The one who held the pearl that you had never seen.

I wanted to be your heart's kin,

To let and be let deeper in,

To meet beyond the Door out someplace wild and green.

You said you were a flying ship,

I sought to be your harbour.

When you thought you were a Badger,

I moved house to your cete.

I called myself a dragon,

Said I'd burn down a village for you,

Or be undragoned by you, as you would.

But by the end, you thought that we were never-should,

Were never-should.

[e-louise-bates]

Been thinking about Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and its nature as a story about journeys. Not just the physical journey the ship is on, but the inner journeys each of our main characters experiences. Lewis even described it as a spiritual journey, with Reepicheep as the main example. It’s a pilgrimage that changes each of them.

Reepicheep and Eustace are the most obvious examples here. Reepicheep is questing for Aslan’s Country, and when he reaches it in the end, he throws away his sword, the very symbol of who he is (well, that and his tail), in order to be unencumbered on the final stage.

Then there’s Eustace, who first transforms into the worst version of himself, an literal, physical dragon to match his dragonish inside, and then is transformed by Aslan into a human, whose journey afterward is one of steady upward growth. He’s not magically perfect, but he consistently tries to do better, even if it’s in small ways and even if his attempts fail at times (breaking Caspian’s second-best sword on the sea serpent ...)

But what about the other three? What is their inward journey that matches up with their outward one?

For Caspian, it’s growing into his kingship. It’s learning to accept responsibility. It’s growing less like Miraz, and more like Aslan. We see him in all his pomp and glory in rescuing the other and ending the slave trade in the Lone Islands, but ultimately sailing off and leaving them to clean up after him. Then comes Deathwater, where he falls right into temptation, sliding oh-so-easily into pride, selfishness, and greed. He recovers from that, but the effects linger, leading him to the ultimate struggle as they near the World’s End, when he attempts to abrogate his kingly responsibility in order to pursue a personal quest. Here, the ultimate good for Reepicheep is shown to be not the ultimate good for Caspian--he has to learn how to behave as a king. He is even described as looking like Miraz at one point during the argument, and it isn’t until he sees Aslan’s face that he truly repents and accepts the whole burden of kingship--going back when you’d rather go forward; being responsible when you’d rather have an adventure; following duty even if it means saying goodbye to your friends. That’s Caspian’s journey.

Lucy’s is a bit more subtle. We know that she still “needs” something from Narnia when they arrive, or she wouldn’t have had the adventure. Likewise, we know that she gained whatever it was she needed by the end, or she wouldn’t have been told her time in Narnia was at an end. So what was it? I think it’s fairly obvious that her crisis, the turning point of her journey, came on the Dufflepuds’ Island, with perhaps a secondary crisis at the Dark Island. So let’s look at those.

We see the courage of Queen Lucy the Valiant when she takes the Dufflepuds’ challenge to undo the invisibility spell. And then we see something interesting: she faces an enormous temptation to make herself beautiful/desirable. When she sees Aslan’s face in the middle of the spell, she resists that temptation, but falls to a lesser one, to find out what her friends really think of her. Shortly after that, she makes Aslan visible, shows her true beauty in her joy at seeing him, repents of her wrongdoing, is forgiven and also accepts the consequences. So what’s the underlying theme here? The Disney movie would have it that Lucy needs to love herself. Accepting yourself and not comparing yourself to others is certainly laudable, and certainly Lucy needs to learn the difference between false worth and true worth, but I don’t think that’s the only thing Lewis is getting at here. I think that for Lucy, growing up is bringing a whole lot of new challenges that she hasn’t had to face before, and her particular struggle is seeing Aslan even when it looks like he’s not there. Keeping her focus on him even when she’s tempted to fall into the trap of wanting worldly approval, of finding value in other people’s opinion of her rather than finding her value in Aslan alone. This need to see Aslan even when it looks like he isn’t there is emphasized by the Dark Island, where she is tempted to fall into despair, but retains enough faith to call upon Aslan--and he comes to lead them out of the pit of nightmares. In Prince Caspian Lucy learned to follow Aslan even when no one else could see him: now she has learned to follow him even when she can’t see him.

And Edmund? Edmund is even harder to read than Lucy, in large part because he faced his major spiritual crisis back in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and he’s only continued to grow in steadfast faith ever since. Yet clearly, as with Lucy, there was something more he needed to take from Narnia before he was ready to leave it behind for his own world. We don’t see much of the story from Edmund’s perspective: when Eustace is undragoned is about it. The only other times he’s not wholly in the background are at Deathwater, on Ramandu’s Island, and chiding Caspian at the end. I will admit it’s difficult for me to pick up on any kind of thread that holds these four instances together. We see him at his best with Eustace, reassuring him and pointing him toward Aslan. He’s at his worst with Caspian on Deathwater, holding his position as one of the ancient Four above the other king’s head. His past with the White Witch makes it hard for him to trust Ramandu’s Daughter, especially with the Witch’s knife reminding him of that past, and then we see him as not a king but a counselor, a mentor, reminding Caspian of his duty, at the World’s End. So what’s Edmund’s journey? The best I can come up with is moving from a kingly role to a priestly role, letting go of past glories to stand as a guide to others; but I’ll admit that doesn’t seem to take into account his discomfort on Ramandu’s Island. If anyone else has any ideas, I’ll gladly hear them.

The other crucial bit about VDT is the sun motif, Sol in the medieval cosmology, that which transforms all baser metals to purest gold. (I am heavily influenced here by Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia.) Even as Deathwater transformed living things to deadly gold, so Aslan’s influence throughout the story transforms all the characters to living gold--people who live in the brightness of the true Sun all the rest of their days. Reepicheep gives up earthly glory for eternal bliss. Eustace accepts the painful transformation offered by Aslan to be reborn into a new person. Caspian lets go of false pride and lust for adventure to become a true king. Lucy turns from false promises of worldly value for the value found in following Aslan. Edmund, if nothing else, becomes a little more like Aslan on this journey.

So it is that the voyage of the Dawn Treader is also a voyage of sanctification for the people aboard it, and that far from being a disjointed series of meaningless vignettes, there is a strong thread of transformation holding it all together.

[rock-the-illuminary]

You may undragon my quest this once, this is an excellent Luminary

Darkspawn 🔪🩸