Chapter
4—
“Putting the Clock Back”:
Progress in The
Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”
After discussing the Moral Law and the
power behind it, in the opening chapters of Mere
Christianity, Lewis pauses to raise
for at least some readers the protest that this is turning out to be only
religion, which, after all, the world has tried already, and “you cannot put
the clock back.” Lewis writes in reply,
Would
you think that I was joking if I said that you can put a clock back, and that
if the clock is wrong it is often a very sensible thing to do? But I would
rather get away from that whole idea of clocks. We all want progress. But
progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you
have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If
you are on a wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to
the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most
progressive man. . . . If you look at the present state of the world, it is pretty
plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We are on the wrong road.
And if that is so, we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on. (p. 36)
The third of the Chronicles of Narnia relates closely
to this passage. Its plot is a series of literal and figurative “progresses,”
which explore simultaneously the unknown [ß p. 49] Eastern Seas and
a range of social, moral, and religious concerns. Running through these
progresses, unifying them, and giving them their distinctive flavor or feeling
is the theme of “voyaging.” It is the union of that plot and theme, of progress
and voyage, that has made The Voyage of
the “Dawn Treader” so appealing to many readers.
The
story is a progress, first, as an official journey, especially of a sovereign.
The Dawn Treader, under the
leadership of King Caspian, sails east in search of the seven loyal lords who
were sent off by the usurper Miraz to explore the unknown seas beyond the Lone
Islands. The sense of a king on an official progress through his realm comes
out particularly as Caspian enters Narrowhaven and the trumpeter cries at the
castle gate, “Open for the King of Narnia, come to visit his trusty and
well-beloved servant the Governor of the Lone Islands” (p. 43). The account of
this progress is embodied in the traditional
journey form, with its typical linear, episodic structure linked by a
central character, who organizes the expedition and provides courageous
leadership during it.
As a
journey-narrative, The Voyage of the
“Dawn Treader” is related to a long literary tradition. Its predecessors
range from the classical voyages of Odysseus, Jason, and Aeneas, to Celtic and
Germanic legends like the Voyage of Bram
and the Voyage of Maeldúin, to the
imaginary voyages of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries best remembered
by their satirical counterparts such as Gulliver’s
Travels. Many details in Lewis’s story derive, at least ultimately, from
that heritage. The voyage to scattered islands was a characteristic of the
Celtic imram, best know by the Voyage of St. Brendan. The storm, with
its symbolism of difficulties overcome, occurs for example in the Odyssey and the Aeneid. The gold on Deathwater Island is the temptation threatening
defeat, which appears in different forms in different stories, as Circe to
Odysseus and Dido to Aeneas. The Monopods are the usual encounter [ß p. 50] with exotic life
forms, and the episode of the Dark Island parallels the descent to the
underworld in the ancient and medieval works, which tests the hero’s prowess and
renews and strengthens him for the challenges to come. And the image of a
paradise cut off from the world by an ocean barrier occurs frequently in the
medieval journeys to Paradise.1
The
various impediments or near defeats faced by the characters point to the
broader significance of the journey tale, and to the more important link
between The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader” and its antecedents. In its archetypal
dimension, the journey has always been a tale about life as well as within
life. The hero’s journey also involves development in his character; it gives
him experience and insight, as well as adventure. So it is with The Voyage
of the “Dawn Treader.” The journey is one of growth and maturation for the
young king, who, despite admirable qualities, has a good deal to learn about
himself and the world. When the ship reaches Felimath and the children decide
to walk across the island, for example, the narrator comments, “If Caspian had
been as experienced then as he became
later on in this voyage he would not have made that suggestion” (pp.
30-31). He is gripped by greed on Deathwater Island and by jealousy when he
learns he is not to go on to the End of the World. But in a series of episodes,
he grows in wisdom, learning to rely on his mind, rather than his passions.
Lord Bern provides him a good example at Narrowhaven as do Reepicheep in the
adventure with the sea serpent and Lucy on Deathwater Island. The final and
perhaps decisive lesson is Aslan’s rebuke to his surliness and quick temper
near the End of the World. Caspian emerges from an encounter with Aslan in the
ship’s cabin a more humble and mature person: “When the others rejoined him a
little later they found him changed” (p. 210). That he is ready to confront
life is expressed in journey terms: “You’re to go on—Reep and [ß p. 51] Edmund, and
Lucy, and Eustace; and I’m to go back” (p. 210). His journey into experience
completed, Caspian is to return and marry the princess, which traditionally
symbolizes maturity, readiness to encounter life as an adult. The others,
having not yet completed their journeys, must travel on.
It is
crucial to the story, and to Caspian’s development, that the journey is a
voyage. The nature of the story, the quality of the response to it, would be
totally different if it were a journey by land. Partly, of course, the voyage
gives to the story the peculiar flavor of the sea, as it did to Lucy when she
first arrived on the Dawn Treader:
“When they turned aft to the cabin and supper, and saw the whole western sky
lit up with an immense crimson sunset, and felt the quiver of the ship, and
tasted the salt on their lips, and thought of unknown lands on the eastern rim
of the world, Lucy felt that she was almost too happy to speak” (p. 23). Beyond
that there is the sense of mystery and excitement that oceans have always
engendered: “The rest [of the old sailors] had only wild stories of islands
inhabited by headless men, floating islands, waterspouts, and a fire that
burned along the water” (p. 52). The voyage not only helps set the tone for the
story but also shapes its archetypal qualities. It relies on two images, of a
sea and a ship. The sea has traditionally symbolized the origin of life as well
as a danger and threat to life. These two sides of water are reflected by the well
on the top of Aslan’s mountain and the name of Deathwater Island, and by
Caspian’s reaction to the living water near the end of the voyage: “That’s real
water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I
would have chosen” (p. 199). A ship is a traditional symbol of a microcosm, a
miniature version of the world or a community. Lewis captures this sense of
compression and unity by making the Dawn
Treader a “little bit of a thing,” so small that, “forward of the mast,
there was hardly any deck room between the central hatch [ß p. 52] and the ship’s
boat on one side and the hen-coop . . . on the other” (pp. 22, 23). A voyage,
combining the images of sea and ship, is particularly well suited to the
archetypal journey into experience, as
the ship becomes a little world compressing the tensions and difficulties of
personal and social life and forcing them upon the hero, carrying him through a
symbolic journey, to encounter other difficulties and dangers and to prove his
worth. Caspian, like Ulysses (to whom he is compared on page 209), Aeneas,
Huckleberry Finn, and many other predecessors, is on a voyage which involves
physical, emotional, and spiritual testing and maturation: he is on a progress
through and beyond his kingdom, which enables him simultaneously to progress
toward manhood.
Progress
also appears in the book in other senses. It appears in a motif of social satire on the supposed
“forward course, development” of modernism. That theme deals first with the boy
who was “called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and
. . . almost deserved it” (p. 1). His parents “were very up-to-date and
advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotallers and wore a
special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture
and very few clothes on the beds and the windows were always open” (p. 1).
Eustace himself is a scientist and pseudointellectual: “Eustace Clarence liked
animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of
information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children
doing exercises in model schools” (pp. 1-2). Eustace’s own intellectual
training was at a modern, if not model, school: “Eustace (of course) was at a
school where they didn’t have corporal punishment” (p. 28). There he developed
a utilitarian attitude toward his studies: “Though he didn’t care much about
any subject for its own sake, he cared
a great deal about marks” (p. 24). All this is summed up by Eustace’s [ß p. 53] preference for
“liners and motor-boats and aeroplanes” over the trim and graceful Dawn Treader (p. 23).
The
satire on modernism is aimed particularly at his Sufficiency, the Governor of
the Lone Islands. Gumpas assures Caspian that the slave trade is “an essential
part of the economic development of the islands” (p. 47). When Caspian
disagrees, Gumpas replies that he has statistics and graphs to demonstrate the
economic problem involved.
“Tender as my years may be,” said Caspian, “I believe
I understand the slave trade from within quite as well as your Sufficiency. And
I do not see that it brings into the islands meat or bread or beer or wine or
timber or cabbages or books or instruments of music or horses or armour or
anything else worth having. But whether it does or not, it must be stopped.”
“But that would be putting the clock back,” gasped the
Governor. “Have you no idea of progress, of development?”
“I have seen them both in an egg,” said Caspian. “We
call it Going bad in Narnia. This
trade must stop.” (pp. 47-48)
This passage echoes the words quoted above from Mere Christianity,2 and it
draws in their point as well. In the slave trade in Narnia, as in education and
family life in our world, it is pretty plain some big mistakes have been made.
The worst of those mistakes are departures from the natural—Caspian’s comments
to Gumpas indicate that the salve trade does not produce “real” or “natural”
goods. Like the practice of charging interest on money, which was forbidden for
many centuries, it is condemned as an unnatural and cruel economic practice.
Similarly, family life has been undermined by unnatural practices. Eustace
“didn’t call his father and mother ‘Father’ and ‘Mother,’ but Harold and
Alberta” (p. 1). Regard for the natural distinctions between parents and
children has been lost and that, actually and symbolically, lies behind a
disintegration in family and society. We are on the wrong road; therefore,
going back to old values is the quickest way on.
A
third variation on progress also involves Eustace, [ß p. 54] whose adventure
exemplifies a progress to self-awareness through “going back.” From the first
Eustace is disagreeable (“Deep down inside he liked bossing and bullying”—p. 2)
and selfish (“Lucy gives me a little of her water ration. She says girls don’t
get as thirsty as boys. I had often thought this but it ought to be more
generally known at sea”—p. 62). The ultimate, and most humiliating, indication
of his character is the inability of the slave traders to get rid of him, even
thrown “in free with other lots”: “Though no one would want to be sold as a
slave, it is perhaps even more galling to be a sort of utility slave whom no
one will buy” (p. 51). Through his selfishness, laziness, and greed, Eustace—in
a wonderfully detailed and realistic scene—discovers he has turned into a
dragon. He spends several days in that state and comes to realize that all
along he has been “pretty beastly” and has behaved like a “monster” (pp. 91,
76).
At
that point Aslan takes him to a pool in a garden on a mountain. The water in
the pool, Eustace later tells Edmund, “was as clear as anything and I thought
if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the
lion told me I must undress first” (pp. 88-89). Three times Eustace peels off
his dragon skin and three times it grows right back.
“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—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 down on my back to let him
do it.
“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. . . . Well, he pulled the beastly
stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times,
only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much
thicker, and darker, and more knobbly looking than the others had been. . . .
Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender
underneath now that I’d no skin on—[ß p. 55] and threw me into the water. It
smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly
delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the
pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . .
.
“After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me—”
“Dressed you. With his paws?”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did
somehow or other: in new clothes—the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact.
And then suddenly I was back here.” (pp. 90-91)
Like the death scene of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, this episode is permeated with
Christian ideas and symbols. The use of number three, the inability of Eustace
to change himself, the water into which he is plunged, and the new clothes
unite to make this event the Narnian equivalent of rebirth and baptism. The
archetypal overtones of the water image reinforce the Christian meanings. The
use of water to symbolize purification draws upon the inherent virtues of water
as a cleansing agent. And the use of water (especially immersion into and
rising out of water) is effective in symbolizing rebirth because of the
traditional associations of water with death and life. This stage of Eustace’s
spiritual journey, then, which began as he fell into the briny waters of a
picture at home, culminates in the well of life on a mountain in Narnia. Eustace
in Narnia, like so many persons in our world, was a rebel who must lay down his
arms: “Laying down your arms, surrendering, . . . realising that you have been
on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground
floor—that is the only way out of a ‘hole.’ This process of surrender—this
movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance” (Mere Christianity, p. 59). In the words
of the story, after his experience on Dragon Island Eustace “began to be a
different boy” (p. 93). He had been on the wrong road, he did an about-turn and
[ß p. 56] returned to the right road, and now he can
begin to progress.3
A
fourth variation on progress is that of Lucy, a progress toward maturity and
toward spiritual maturity in particular. At first glance Lucy might not seem to
need such growth. She is, after all, unselfish to all, generous to a fault with
Eustace, and even potentially sacrificial when seeking to make the Dufflepuds
visible. And, as Edmund mentions in telling Eustace about Aslan, “Lucy sees him
most often” (p. 92). But Lucy, like the others, is young; she too needs to grow
through experience. The central episode in Lucy’s development comes at the
Magician’s house, especially as she looks in the Magician’s Book. Several details
suggest that the book, at one level, is a symbol of life. “There was,” for
example, “no title page or title; the spells began straight away” (p. 128).
Also, “You couldn’t turn back. The right-hand pages, the ones ahead, could be
turned; the left-hand pages could not” (p. 133). More specifically, it
symbolizes Lucy’s life. As Lucy gazes at a page, she sees “a picture of a girl
standing at a reading-desk reading in a huge book. And the girl was dressed
exactly like Lucy” (p. 129). What she sees in the book is “much more than a
picture. It [is] alive” (p. 132). Within that book of life are a variety of
opportunities to do good (“How to remember things forgotten”—p. 129) or evil
(“How to give a man an ass’s head”—p. 129); and a variety of temptations, some
of which hold little or no appeal for Lucy, others which attract her and could
well catch her in their “spell.” It is the latter that develop her character
the most. The temptations of pride and curiosity try her greatly, and she even
yields to the latter to her sorrow and loss.
But
the Magician’s Book is not only a book of life—of experience and temptation; it
is also a Book of Life. Lucy encounters a series of pages which are more like a story than a spell. In them she reads “the loveliest story [she] ever read
or ever shall read in [her] whole life” (p. 133). [ß p. 57] She does not
remember the story after she finishes, but she can recall a few details: “It
was about a cup and a sword and a tree
and a green hill” (p. 133). These symbols, clearly Christian, suggest that “the
loveliest story” is the story of Christ. Just as myths of our world can be
realities in Narnia, as for example Father Christmas and Bacchus,4
so what is reality in our world becomes myth in Narnia.5 To read
that story is a useful part of Lucy’s spiritual maturation in Narnia. But if
she were to stay in Narnia, reading that story would not be enough: she would
need to grow closer to God in his Narnian incarnation as Aslan. As Aslan said
to Lucy in Prince Caspian, “Every
year you grow you, will find me bigger” (p. 136), and her understanding of him
as Aslan would need to grow every year as well.
For
persons living in our world and reading the Narnian myths, the situation is
just the reverse. The Narnian myths can be a means—but no more—of drawing us
nearer to the divine realities in our world. That is made clear at the end of
the voyage, when, in a scene which raises its Christian and archetypal
symbolism to the level of high myth, the children see a lamb cooking fish on
the sea shore.
“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.6 “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 [ß p. 58] 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 to 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 you.
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.” (p. 215-16)
It
is a powerfully evocative passage, full of Christian symbols (light, lamb,
lion, river, door), biblical allusions (the passage as a whole alludes to John
21:4-19, and “I am” is the name revealed by Yahweh to Moses in Exodus 3:14),
and archetypal symbolism (a river is a traditional symbol of death and a bridge
of the passage to another world). In reading it, however, one does not tend to
isolate such features and consider their individual effects: all its components
unite to let the passage appeal
directly to the emotion and the imagination. It contains, as great myth
always does, more than the author could have intended and conveys, through
story and symbols, things the author could not have put into words. For readers
of the Narnian stories in our world, this episode and the other Narnian myths
can be a beginning, a useful part of their spiritual growth, as Lucy’s reading
of the story of Christ in Narnia was for her. But for them, as for Lucy,
reading the myths of the other world is not enough. Further progress toward
spiritual [ß p. 59] maturity requires getting
to know Aslan by his earthly name and learning to know him as a reality in our
world.
Reepicheep’s adventure, the final
variation on “progress,” is a progress in the sense of a journey toward Aslan’s
own country. All his life he has desired to reach that goal. He tells Lucy,
When
I was in my cradle a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke this verse over me:
Where
sky and water meet,
Where
the waves grow sweet,
Doubt
not, Reepicheep,
To
find all you seek,
There
is the utter East.
I do not know what it means.
But the spell of it has been on me all my life. (pp. 16-17)
The
“spell” Reepicheep mentions seems close to the pang of longing which haunted
Lewis throughout his early life and which elsewhere he calls “Joy”: “An
unsatisfied desire which is in itself more desirable than any other
satisfaction.”7 He describes that desire briefly in Mere Christianity: “Probably earthly
pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the
real thing. If that is so, . . . I must keep alive in myself the desire for my
true country . . . ; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that
other country and to help others to do the same” (p. 120). Such longing is felt
most often by persons with romantic inclinations. It is significant, therefore,
that Reepicheep is a romantic hero. He
is brave—“the most valiant of all the Talking Beasts of Narnia” (p. 11)—and
idealistic: “We did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour
and adventures” (p. 152). His mind is “full of forlorn hopes, death or glory
charges, and last stands” (pp. 55-56). He knows, as Lewis came to know
eventually, that the object he longs for is not this world but another world.
To “go on into the utter east and never return into [ß p. 60] the world,” to find
unity with Aslan in his country, is his heart’s desire (p. 179).
Though Reepicheep is on a
pilgrimage, it is not one toward maturity: his faith in Aslan is sure, his
commitment is total. The strength of that commitment makes Reepicheep, in a
sense, rather than Caspian, the guiding spirit of the expedition. He is the
first to approach the dragon when it lands by their camp, the one who is
consulted about whether Lucy should look for the Magician’s Book, and the one
whose idea saves the ship from the sea serpent. It is Reepicheep who replies to
the terrifying voice which comes out of the blackness near the Dark Island. His
words not only inspire the rest of the crew but also are the strongest
influence on the “voyaging” quality which shapes the tone of the book and
lingers as its most lasting effect: “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 and Peepiceek will be head of the talking mice in
Narnia” (p. 184). Reepicheep does “want acutely . . . something that cannot be
had in this world” (Mere Christianity, p. 119) and he has
committed himself completely to reaching the place where that want will be
satisfied.
Perhaps it is inevitable, given his
commitment and his spirit, that he should be the first to partake of the food
on Aslan’s Table. The table is on an island near the end of the world. “On the
table itself there was set out such a banquet as had never been seen, not even
when Peter the High King kept his court at Cair Paravel. There were turkeys and
geese and peacocks, there were boar’s heads and sides of venison, there were
pies shaped like ships under full sail or like dragons and elephants, there
were ice puddings and bright lobsters and gleaming salmon, there were nuts and
[ß p. 61] grapes, pineapples and
peaches, pomegranates and melons and tomatoes” (pp. 165-66). The table is the
Narnian equivalent of the Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, of Christianity. It is a
table of remembrance (the stone knife lying on it, the same one “the White
Witch used when she killed Aslan at the Stone Table long ago,” has been
“brought here to be kept in honour while the world lasts”—p.173) and a table of
nourishment, physically (for “all were very hungry”—p.174) and spiritually, for
only those who “believe” in its goodness eat at it (p. 173). And it is a magic table,
“eaten [by birds from the East], and renewed, every day” (p. 174). The table
appears at the end of the voyage: “It is set here by [Aslan’s] bidding . . .
for those who come so far” (p. 174). It is, apparently, a reward for those who
have come this far in their pilgrimage, but is also a source of strength for
those who desire to journey further, to—and beyond—the very end of the world.
Reepicheep, of course, does desire
to go further, and as he nears his goal, the images of sea and ship return. The
sea is the Silver Sea, a body of sweet water covered with lilies, a traditional
symbol of life. The ship is a coracle, “a tiny boat, barely four feet long” (p.
95), with room only for Reepicheep—in this final stage of his journey toward
spiritual fulfillment, toward union with Aslan, he must “go on alone” (p. 213).
The sense of “voyaging,” with its peculiar overtones of romance and nostalgia,
is powerful at the end of the voyage, created especially by two images always
associated with “joy” for Lewis, mountains and music. As Reepicheep leaves the
children to go on in his coracle and bids them good-bye, he tries to be sad for
their sakes, but he quivers with happiness. “Then hastily he got into his
coracle and took his paddle, and the current caught it and away he went, very
black against the lilies. But no lilies grew on the wave; it was a smooth green
slope. The coracle went more and more quickly, and beautifully it rushed up the
wave’s side. For one split second they saw its shape [ß p. 62] and Reepicheep’s on the
very top. Then it vanished, and since
that moment no one can truly claim to have seen Reepicheep the Mouse. But my
belief is that he came safe to Aslan’s country and is alive there to this day”
(p. 213). His progress is complete and his longing for Aslan’s Country and
Aslan himself has been perfectly fulfilled.
In an essay written in 1958 Lewis
asks “Is Progress Possible?”8 The answer is that in the social areas
the essay is considering, progress may be possible, but only at the cost of
personal freedom. Spiritual progress, however, is a different matter. Lewis
wrote in Mere Christianity, “There
are three things that spread the Christ life to us: baptism, belief, and that
mysterious action which different Christians call by different names—Holy Communion,
the Mass, the Lord’s Supper” (p. 62). The Narnian equivalents for these,
reinforced by a sense of longing for spiritual fulfillment, influence the
different spiritual journeys of Caspian, Eustace, Lucy, and Reepicheep in The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader.”
Starting at different points, arriving by the end of the story at different
levels, they illustrate that in the spiritual realm, in contrast to the social,
progress is possible and that it invariably involves retreat. Going back to
find the right road is not just the quickest, but the only way on. [ß p. 63]