The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: Chapter 16 “The Very End of the World”

C.S. Lewis Read-Along, Vol. 3, Issue 17

Background: C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia after having specific mental pictures. Once he began writing, however, he saw the stories as opportunities to help convey truths about Christianity.

Foreground: As much as he may want to go to the end of the world, Caspian has duties as king that he must fulfill. All through the Narnia books, Lewis shows readers that those who have the blessings of leadership also have the burdens of responsibilities.

Quote: “That was the very reason you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”

Become a paid subscriber to join with others gaining full access to the Lewis read-along (including this one), the latest news on Lewis, Tolkien, and adaptations of their works, and the full archives, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian read-alongs.

Pauline Baynes illustration

Background: “The Very End of the World”

Why did C.S. Lewis write The Chronicles of Narnia? The answer depends on the type of answer you’re looking for. He gives us one answer in this final chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In “It All Began With a Picture…” republished in On Stories, he said, “All my seven Narnia books, and my three science-fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head.” As an example, he notes that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe began with him seeing a mental picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and packages in a snowy wood.

In another essay from On Stories, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said,” he rejects the notion that he first set about writing the stories to “say something about Christianity to children.” Yet elsewhere, in letters and other essays, he explicitly explains how Narnia is about Christ.

This was not a contradiction for Lewis. In the initial development, Narnia wasn’t necessarily a Christian story. Lewis had images in his mind and set about writing a fairy tale about those images because that was the best vehicle for the story he wanted to tell. So, from that perspective, he didn’t set out to write Christian literature for children.

Once he began writing the stories, however, his faith naturally flowed into them. In the preface to God in the Dock, Walter Hooper described Lewis as the most thoroughly converted man he ever met. His faith naturally touched his fictional worlds. “At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord,” he wrote in “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s To Be Said.”

What pushed into the story was the character of Aslan. In “It All Began With a Picture …” Lewis describes having dreams of lions at the time of his developing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Outside of those dreams, he said he’s not sure where the lion could’ve come from. “But once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after Him.”

Here in the last chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan tells Edmund and Lucy that they won’t be coming back to Narnia. Lucy laments that it’s really Aslan Himself that they’re going to miss, but Aslan explains that they must get to know Him in our world.

“Are you there too, Sir?” Edmund asks. “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.”

This is why the fictional Lucy and Edmund came into Narnia to meet Aslan and then come to know Jesus. This is why C.S. Lewis brought his readers along with those characters on this journey so we can see Christ in Aslan.