Dawn Treader: Dragony Selves Meet the Refreshment of Grace
If you don’t appreciate the water, being in it or on it, then the
setting of THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER may be a place of discomfort
from the first pages. If alternatively a journey experienced mostly on
or in the water is a real or imagined joy for you, then this episode of
the Chronicles of Narnia may wash over you with delight. However you
come to these pages, it is safe to say that it contains one of the most
impactful depictions of repentance, conversion, and baptism in fiction.
To begin we are introduced to a new and hard to like Son of Adam,
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
it.”
From the Outline of the Faith, the Catechism of the Episcopal Church
Eustace brings front and center the questions of nurture and nature and who we are. Are all humans beginning in utter depravity and some just smooth it over? Are we in the middle: neither good nor bad and it is circumstance and choice take the reigns? His characterization is colored by some of Professor Lewis’ likes and dislikes – he liked old things more than new things, plain food of his childhood more than ‘foreign’, and generally had issues with both the violence of older style schooling for boys, and the newer approaches as well. That said he could be like many people we have met, and raises the question of who are we from the start. Are we all born dragonish – lost in sin or do we become different parts dragonish by sin? And then, what does some of science say about this these days?
Our tradition, and Lewis’, trust that all of creation is made in love and is good from the start, but also lost and fractured, but there is rescue. Rescue that begins not from our own doing, but by the love and grace and action of God. However, we are also partners in this through moral formation, that is revealed through the whole of Scripture, the grace of God, discerned knowledge, and in turning to Christ. Moving from sin and immorality and cruelty and faithlessness to the constant journey of seeking to become one with God in Christ can be a momentary thing, but more often, a hard passage. This book illustrates the difficulty of just such a journey.
Illumination and Union for Eustace come through surrender and resurrection in the love of Aslan, the Christ figure. Here Lewis demonstrates clearly how the process of becoming includes the interplay of individual choice and the surrender to grace. As Eustace recounts his transformation to Edmund, he is told by the Lion to follow him up to the top of a mountain where there was a well in the middle of a moon-lit garden (88). Lion told the dragon he must undress before seeking relief in the pool for his sore leg. Eustace obeys and strips off his skin, by scratching it off. “It was a lovely feeling” (89). He does this three times as several layers of scales and skin come off. But it was no good. Then the Lion said . . . You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat on my back and let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart . . . it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. (90)
The Hero’s Journey of Eustace on the Voyage of Becoming: What Kind of Animal Do You Want To Be Elizabeth McLaughlin, 2004
As a tradition where infant and child baptism is more common than mature baptism, parts of his story of baptism are akin to what we intend in the liturgical, study, and prayer practices of Lent. To strip back the dragon-y layers of contempt and bitterness and selfishness and return, return to the child at the font through the feast with Christ in communion. Baptism is once and for all, Eucharist is the continual re-commitment to the same way of life. We come together to delight in each other, and to see Jesus, but also to exfoliate the truth again and again. Yet is is not our action alone that transforms. Here Rowan Williams explains:
Below is another excerpt from the outline of faith. How do you notice it connecting with Voyage, and then with your experience of the core sacraments of Baptism and Communion? And how about with the liturgies of Ash Wednesday and Holy Week? Further below is a bit of a radio program (re-read) and a doodle of that text from Professor Lewis. Do you see some of the examples in the lecture in the characters of Narnia?