He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. The story of how Eustace becomes a dragon but then is restored and changed for the better after an encounter with Aslan is, for me, the best picture anywhere outside of the Bible of repentance and conversion. There is a lot in the book for the reader to enjoy and mull over: One of the party, the talking mouse, Reepicheep, is also longing for something more – for “Aslan’s own country”. Together they sail east looking for seven good lords who had been loyal to Caspian’s father but who were driven away by the wicked King Miraz. The book opens with the memorable line “ There was boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” The book describes the adventures of two of the children we met earlier in the series, Lucy and Edmund, who, along with their initially odious cousin Eustace, are sucked from our world into Narnia to join King Caspian aboard his ship, the Dawn Treader at the start of a great adventure There are penetrating spiritual insights too. And since the story is something of an odyssey as the group travel East aboard ship, the different settings they encounter provide opportunities for C S Lewis to put his prodigious imaginative talents to good use. It’s a great story and important component of the Chronicles of Narnia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |