In today’s episode we finish our discussion of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
S3E38: “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Book, Part 2” (Download)
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (iTunes, Google Play, Podbean, Stitcher, TuneIn and Overcast), as well as on YouTube.
More information about us can be found on our website, PintsWithJack.com. If you’d like to support us and get fantastic gifts, please join us on Patreon.
The roadmap for Season 3 is available here.
Time Stamps
00:00:00 – Entering “The Eagle & Child”…
00:00:12 – Welcome
00:00:57 – Drink-of-the-week
00:01:21 – Quote-of-the-week
00:02:23 – Patreon Toast
00:02:48 – Pirate Jokes
00:04:00 – Crossover announcement
00:04:52 – Recap
00:05:25 – Chapter 8
00:13:20 – Chapter 9
00:28:30 – Chapter 10
00:36:02 – Chapter 11
00:38:13 – Chapter 12
00:42:28 – Chapter 13
00:45:05 – Chapter 14
00:52:39 – Chapter 15
00:54:21 – Chapter 16
01:02:20 – “Last Call” Bell
01:02:51 – Closing remarks
YouTube Version
After Show Skype Session
This Season, after each episode, Matt and I will be recording a short Skype conversation about one particular topic that was raised during the podcast. In today’s episode we talk about the three main scenes we loved in the book:
Show Notes
• Once again I was joined by Cabin Boy Matt “Scurvy-infested bilge drinking swab” Bush.
• Once again, I was drinking Captain Morgan Rum and Matt was drinking Doors White Label Tea.
• The quote-of-the-week was from Aslan:
[Aslan spoke:] “[In your world] I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• We toasted Travis Barnes:
“Travis, may you find the Utter East and find Aslan’s country like Reepicheep”
Toast for Patreon supporter, Travis
• I told some pirate jokes.
• VIII. TWO NARROW ESCAPES
• IX. THE ISLAND OF THE VOICES
“Getting dark now; always does at night… Ah, you’ve come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain’t it?”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 9)
• X. THE MAGICIAN’S BOOK
It was written, not printed; written in a clear, even hand, with thick downstrokes and thin upstrokes, very large, easier than print, and so beautiful that Lucy stared at it for a whole minute and forgot about reading it. The paper was crisp and smooth and a nice smell came from it; and in the margins, and round the big coloured capital letters at the beginning of each spell, there were pictures.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 10)
It was about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill, I know that much
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 10)
“Oh, Aslan,” said she, “it was kind of you to come.” “I have been here all the time,” said he, “but you have just made me visible.” “Aslan!” said Lucy almost a little reproachfully. “Don’t make fun of me. As if anything I could do would make you visible!” “It did,” said Aslan. “Do you think I wouldn’t obey my own rules?” After a little pause he spoke again. “Child,” he said, “I think you have been eavesdropping.” “Eavesdropping?” “You listened to what your two schoolfellows were saying about you.” “Oh that? I never thought that was eavesdropping, Aslan. Wasn’t it magic?” “Spying on people by magic is the same as spying on them in any other way. And you have misjudged your friend. She is weak, but she loves you. She was afraid of the older girl and said what she does not mean.” “I don’t think I’d ever be able to forget what I heard her say.” “No, you won’t.” “Oh dear,” said Lucy. “Have I spoiled everything? Do you mean we would have gone on being friends if it hadn’t been for this—and been really great friends—all our lives perhaps—and now we never shall.” “Child,” said Aslan, “did I not explain to you once before that no one is ever told what would have happened?” “Yes, Aslan, you did,” said Lucy. “I’m sorry. But please——” “Speak on, dear heart.” “Shall I ever be able to read that story again; the one I couldn’t remember? Will you tell it to me, Aslan? Oh do, do, do.” “Indeed, yes, I will tell it to you for years and years. But now, come. We must meet the master of this house.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 10)
Like the Magician’s hall, they look back and see things have changed – the mist has disappeared.
• XI. THE DUFFLEPUDS MADE HAPPY
Lucy followed the great Lion out into the passage and at once she saw coming towards them an old man, barefoot, dressed in a red robe. His white hair was crowned with a chaplet of oakleaves, his beard fell to his girdle, and he supported himself with a curiously carved staff. When he saw Aslan he bowed low and said, “Welcome, Sir, to the least of your houses.” “Do you grow weary, Coriakin, of ruling such foolish subjects as I have given you here?” “No,” said the Magician, “they are very stupid but there is no real harm in them. I begin to grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometimes, perhaps, I am a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic.” “All in good time, Coriakin,” said Aslan. “Yes, all in very good time, Sir,” was the answer. “Do you intend to show yourself to them?” “Nay,” said the Lion, with a little half growl that meant (Lucy thought) the same as a laugh. “I should frighten them out of their senses. Many stars will grow old and come to take their rest in islands before your people are ripe for that. And to-day before sunset I must visit Trumpkin the Dwarf where he sits in the castle of Cair Paravel counting the days till his master Caspian comes home. I will tell him all your story, Lucy. Do not look so sad. We shall meet soon again.” “Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?” “I call all times soon,” said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away and Lucy was alone with the Magician. “Gone!” said he, “and you and I quite crestfallen. It’s always like that, you can’t keep him; it’s not as if he were a tame lion…” “Come,” said the Magician. “All times may be soon to Aslan; but in my home all hungry times are one o’clock.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 11)
This made Matt think of the movie, The Dark Night.
I compared the Wizard to Melchizedek from the Bible.
A few months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner: they said it saved time afterwards. I’ve caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 11)
…they were jumping in all directions and calling out to one another, “Hey, lads! We’re visible again.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 11)
“Visible we are,” said one in a tasselled red cap who was obviously the Chief Monopod.
“And what I say is, when chaps are visible, why they can see one another.” “
Ah, there it is, there it is, Chief,” cried all the others.
“There’s the point. No one’s got a clearer head than you. You couldn’t have made it plainer.”
“She caught the old man napping, that little girl did,” said the Chief Monopod. “We’ve beaten him this time.”
“Just what we were going to say ourselves,” chimed the chorus. “You’re going stronger than ever to-day, Chief. Keep it up, keep it up.”
“But do they dare to talk about you like that?” said Lucy. “They seemed to be so afraid of you yesterday. Don’t they know you might be listening?”
“That’s one of the funny things about the Duffers,” said the Magician. “One minute they talk as if I ran everything and overheard everything and was extremely dangerous. The next moment they think they can take me in by tricks that a baby would see through—bless them!”
• XII. THE DARK ISLAND
“Do we go into this?” asked Caspian at length. “Not by my advice,” said Drinian. “The Captain’s right,” said several sailors. “I almost think he is,” said Edmund. Lucy and Eustace didn’t speak but they felt very glad inside at the turn things seemed to be taking. But all at once the clear voice of Reepicheep broke in upon the silence. “And why not?” he said. “Will someone explain to me why not.” No one was anxious to explain, so Reepicheep continued: “If I were addressing peasants or slaves,” he said, “I might suppose that this suggestion proceeded from cowardice. But I hope it will never be told in Narnia that a company of noble and royal persons in the flower of their age turned tail because they were afraid of the dark.” “But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that blackness?” asked Drinian. “Use?” replied Reepicheep. “Use, Captain? If by use you mean filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as ever I heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.” Several of the sailors said things under their breath that sounded like “Honour be blowed”, but Caspian said: “Oh, bother you, Reepicheep. I almost wish we’d left you at home. All right! If you put it that way, I suppose we shall have to go on. Unless Lucy would rather not?” Lucy felt that she would very much rather not, but what she said out loud was, “I’m game.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 12)
“Mercy!” cried the voice. “Mercy! Even if you are only one more dream, have mercy. Take me on board. Take me, even if you strike me dead. But in the name of all mercies do not fade away and leave me in this horrible land.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 12)
Lucy leant her head on the edge of the fighting-top and whispered, “Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now.” The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little—a very, very little—better. “After all, nothing has really happened to us yet,” she thought. “Look!” cried Rynelf’s voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by a searchlight. Caspian blinked, stared round, saw the faces of his companions all with wild, fixed expressions. Everyone was staring in the same direction: behind everyone lay his black, sharply-edged shadow. Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. Drinian steered after it not doubting that it offered good guidance. But no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, “Courage, dear heart”, and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan’s, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 12)
Meditation in a Toolshed
In the same way when Lucy looks back
• XIII. THE THREE SLEEPERS
Caspian, and began shaking the nearest of the three sleepers. For a moment everyone thought he was going to be successful, for the man breathed hard and muttered, “I’ll go eastward no more. Out oars for Narnia.” But he sank back almost at once into a yet deeper sleep than before: that is, his heavy head sagged a few inches lower towards the table and all efforts to rouse him again were useless. With the second it was much the same. “Weren’t born to live like animals. Get to the east while you’ve a chance—lands behind the sun,” and sank down. And the third only said, “Mustard, please,” and slept hard.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 13)
a door opened in the hillside, and light appeared in the doorway, and a figure came out, and the door shut behind it. The figure carried a light, and this light was really all that they could see distinctly. It came slowly nearer and nearer till at last it stood right at the table opposite to them. Now they could see that it was a tall girl, dressed in a single long garment of clear blue which left her arms bare. She was bareheaded and her yellow hair hung down her back. And when they looked at her they thought they had never before known what beauty meant.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 13)
“And what are we to do about the Sleepers?” asked Caspian. “In the world from which my friends come” (here he nodded at Eustace and the Pevensies) “they have a story of a prince or a king coming to a castle where all the people lay in an enchanted sleep. In that story he could not dissolve the enchantment until he had kissed the Princess.” “But here,” said the girl, “it is different. Here he cannot kiss the Princess till he has dissolved the enchantment.” “Then,” said Caspian, “in the name of Aslan, show me how to set about that work at once.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 13)
• XIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE WORLD
The “Orans” position, facing the East.
“Sir, …will you tell us how to undo the enchantment which holds these three Narnian Lords asleep.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 14)
“I will gladly tell you that, my son,” said the Old Man. “To break this enchantment you must sail to the World’s End, or as near as you can come to it, and you must come back having left at least one of your company behind.”
“And what is to happen to that one?” asked Reepicheep.
“He must go on into the utter east and never return into the world.”
“That is my heart’s desire,” said Reepicheep.
Materialism and reductionism.
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 14)
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of. And in this world you have already met a star: for I think you have been with Koriakin.”
“Is he a retired star, too?” said Lucy.
“Well, not quite the same,” said Ramandu. “It was not quite as a rest that he was set to govern the Duffers. You might call it a punishment. He might have shone for thousands of years more in the southern winter sky if all had gone well.”
Reepicheep declares his commitment, which I compared to Joshua.
“My own plans are made. While I can, I sail east in the Dawn Treader. When she fails me, I paddle east in my coracle. When she sinks, I shall swim east with my four paws. And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world in some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 14)
He wasn’t the sort of man who could enjoy talking to Ramandu and Ramandu’s daughter (nor they to him), and it rained a good deal, and though there was a wonderful feast on the Table every night, he didn’t very much enjoy it. He said it gave him the creeps sitting there alone (and in the rain as likely as not) with those four Lords asleep at the end of the Table. And when the others returned he felt so out of things that he deserted on the voyage home at the Lone Islands, and went and lived in Calormen, where he told wonderful stories about his adventures at the End of the World, until at last he came to believe them himself. So you may say, in a sense, that he lived happily ever after. But he could never bear mice.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 14)
Video series.
“Lady,” said Caspian, “I hope to speak with you again when I have broken the enchantments.” And Ramandu’s daughter looked at him and smiled.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 14)
• XV. THE WONDERS OF THE LAST SEA
Very soon after they had left Ramandu’s country they began to feel that they had already sailed beyond the world. All was different. For one thing they all found that they were needing less sleep. One did not want to go to bed nor to eat much, nor even to talk except in low voices. Another thing was the light. There was too much of it. The sun when it came up each morning looked twice, if not three times, its usual size.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 15)
• XVI. THE VERY END OF THE WORLD
After that for many days, without wind in her shrouds or foam at her bows, across a waveless sea, the Dawn Treader glided smoothly east. Every day and every hour the light became more brilliant and still they could bear it. No one ate or slept and no one wanted to, but they drew buckets of dazzling water from the sea, stronger than wine and somehow wetter, more liquid, than ordinary water, and pledged one another silently in deep draughts of it. And one or two of the sailors who had been oldish men when the voyage began now grew younger every day. Everyone on board was filled with joy and excitement, but not an excitement that made one talk. The further they sailed the less they spoke, and then almost in a whisper. The stillness of that last sea laid hold on them.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 16)
Compared it to The Great Divorce landscape.
“If it please your Majesty, we mean shall not,” said Reepicheep with a very low bow. “You are the King of Narnia. You break faith with all your subjects, and especially with Trumpkin, if you do not return. You shall not please yourself with adventures as if you were a private person. And if your Majesty will not hear reason it will be the truest loyalty of every man on board to follow me in disarming and binding you till you come to your senses.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 16)
“Quite right,” said Edmund. “Like they did with Ulysses when he wanted to go near the Sirens.”
Caspian’s hand had gone to his sword hilt, when Lucy said, “And you’ve almost promised Ramandu’s daughter to go back.” Caspian paused. “Well, yes. There is that,” he said.
“Please, Lamb,” said Lucy, “is this the way to Aslan’s country?”
“Not for you,” said the Lamb. “For you the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.”
“What!” said Edmund. “Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?”
“There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.
“Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?”
“I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.”
“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Before we go, will you tell us when we can come back to Narnia again? Please. And oh, do, do, do make it soon.”
“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”
“Oh, Aslan!!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.
“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”
“It isn’t Narnia, you know,” sobbed Lucy. “It’s OK. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”
“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.
“Are—are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.
“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 16)
Only two more things need to be told. One is that Caspian and his men all came safely back to Ramandu’s Island. And the three lords woke from their sleep. Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. The other is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.
C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chapter 16)
• We thanked our Patreon supporters, particularly John, Rowdy and Kate.
