Dawn Treader: 12-week countdown

On December 10, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the third installment of the film adaptations of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, opens at theaters around the world.  I started thinking this week that this is only three months, or roughly twelve weeks away.  To get myself ready for the film I decided to go back and read the book.  I also thought it might be helpful for those of you who subscribe to this Examiner site if I wrote a small synopsis each week of a chapter from the book as a countdown to the opening of the film.  If I combine a couple of the chapters, I can take you through the story in twelve weekly articles and together we can get ready for the next trip to Narnia. 

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the next story, chronologically, in The Chronicles of Narnia series after Prince Caspian.  Roughly a year to a year-and-a-half has passed in England since the children returned from Narnia.  (I should point out that there is some debate about this timing since Lewis makes a reference in Chapter One to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe taking place a long time ago during the war.  This would imply a later setting for Dawn Treader.)  It is 1942 and Lucy and Edmund, the two younger of the Pevensie children, have gone to spend the summer with their Aunt and Uncle, Harold and Alberta Scrubb, and their cousin Eustace.  Meanwhile, Peter is away preparing for exams with Professor Kirke, and Susan is spending the summer in America with Mum and Dad. 

The book opens with one of the classic lines of the entire book series:

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.  

Eustace is a piece of work.  Lewis describes him as a boy who:

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.

Eustace is a little twit, but is about to embark on a life-changing adventure that lies at the heart of Lewis’ magical book.

Chapter One is entitled, “The Picture in the Bedroom.”  Early in the chapter we find  Edmund and Lucy talking about Narnia in Lucy’s room in the Scubb's house .  The two have been examining a picture which is hanging on the wall of the room when Eustace intrudes.  It is a picture of a ship on the sea – a very Narnian looking ship.  In his description of the ship, Lewis includes a tongue-in-cheek aside informing his readers that if they are going to continue to read the story they had “better get it into your head that the left of a ship when you are looking ahead, is port, and the right is starboard.” 

With the intrusion of Eustace, the observation of the picture takes a dramatic turn.   The ship in the picture begins to move, as do the waves.  Suddenly, wind begins to blow out from the picture and sea water comes crashing into the bedroom.  The picture begins to grow larger, or the children begin to grow smaller, but whichever scenario the reader adopts as an explanation, the children first find themselves standing on the frame of the picture and then being swept by a big blue wave into the sea. 

Thus, Lucy and Edmund, along with the gobsmacked Eustace, find themselves back in Narnia, and in short order, on board the Dawn Treader, captained by none other than King Caspian.  While Caspian provides hot, spiced wine to warm up Edmund and Lucy, the whining Eustace pleads for “Plumtree’s Vitaminized Nerve Food”.

In Chapter Two we will discover the Dawn Treader’s mission, and begin the marvelous adventure contained in the pages of the book. 

Why not read the book with me?  I’d love your comments as we take the journey together.  And we can share the countdown to December 10!