Eustace Scrubb

A character in The Chronicles of Narnia written by C.S. Lewis. Eustace begins as a sarcastic antagonist in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, tormenting Lucy and Edmund Pevensie about their obsession with the "fictional" Narnia. When he finds himself joining them in Narnia, he has a conversion experience with Aslan after his "greedy, dragonish thoughts" turn him into a dragon itself.

He returns to Narnia with classmate Jill Pole to rescue Caspian's son in The Silver Chair, then again with Pole for The Last Battle of Narnia, at the death of that world.

One of the more unfortunately-named characters in children's literature.

The character of Eustace Scrubb, while on the one hand a commentary on "progressive" parenting and schooling--he is self-centered, cruel, spoiled, and, and is at one point described as heading towards an interest in vivisection, which Lewis deplored--Eustace is also the author at a young age.

To begin with, his name. "Once there was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." Lewis hated his own name--Clive Staples Lewis--and prefered to be called "Jack." He gave Eustace a horrible name to parallel his own.

Secondly, there is the subject of Eustace's general religious nature--namely, that he has none. Lewis was an atheist until he was an adult; it was ony after World War I that he even began to question this stance. Eustace represents Lewis' youthful, atheistic, abandoned self.¹.

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1. It is interesting to note that the figure who encouraged his atheism--a college professor, IIRC, and mentor--was later to become the model for Digory Kirk.