This book is quite
unusual among the
Chronicles of Narnia.
It's
trippy.
Warning: major spoilers
Voyage of the Dawn Treader retains the
allegorical crypto-
Christian universe of the other
Narnia books, as well as the standard structure: the kids go along on a big
adventure, overcoming many dangers with
courage,
faith, and
dinvine intervention, and in the end
Aslan tells everyone the
moral. However, the other books seem mostly concerned with
ethical behavior,
self-cultivation, and the
transformative/
redemptive power of
Christ. The difference is that in
Voyage, Aslan doesn't come down to help the
benighted humans -- the humans go up to him.
This is the
mystical tradition in Christianity, the active reaching out towards God. Instead of needing divine assistance with their worldly affairs, the characters turn their backs on the world and directly pursue the
sacred in
abstract form. They're clawing their way back up the
tree of life! (to steal
someone else's
metaphor). As they move further into the
sacred, they become purified -- they have the peace and the far sight that comes with
enlightenment. Note that as they become farther from land (i.e., less "
grounded") they also become less bound to the material world, subsisting on
energy rather than matter. To see other versions of this archetype, compare the ending of
A Wizard of Earthsea, or the scenes in
Lord of the Rings when the characters are living off
lembas.
People familiar with the early
psychedelics movement in the 1960s will recognize the
clear white light!
The ending can be taken as a rejection of pure
hermeticism.
Caspian desperately wants to stay in the presence of the divine, but he is given the harder path of
integrating his mystical experience with the real world, and working to help create the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Reepicheep gets to experience the final
ascent, but he also dies*. Lewis definitely believed that we have a duty to others -- one which God wants us to fulfill, not shirk through
ecstatic navel-gazing.
Of all the Narnia books, this one does the most to recognize the
sacred in humanity. God is not something that comes down and saves us; it's something that is within us, something we can directly experience. This is a nice counterpoint to the other stories, which cast
Aslan as a bit of a
superhero.
*
Maiessa points out that Repicheep doesn't so much die as he literally and physically enters
Aslan's father's kingdom. I think the point is
moot, since it is later confirmed that he has gone into the afterlife, and he's separated from the affairs of the living in the same way that dead people are. However, it is significant in that he does it willingly, and no one acts or feels as if he's died.