Narnia- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

My family and I saw a great movie last night, C.S. Lewis's "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", I highly recommend seeing this movie. It was pointed out to me, that C.S Lewis rarely spoke about the meaning of his books, because he wanted the work to stand on its own feet. But for this book, in an interview he was asked, "What's the point of the Dawn Treader?", and his answer, "Oh, the Dawn Treader, well that's about the spiritual life,". Its so true, and so beautiful. Because there is no major outside evil force like the "Lion, witch and the wardrobe," The main enemy in this book, is inside the characters, the struggles that each of them face. I wanted to point to 4 instances in the movie that we can all learn from,-

1.) Lucy's Struggle- Her major struggle was her desire to be more beautiful. The question she needed answering was, where is her worth? Is your worth tied up in your inherent dignity as a child of God? Or is your worth tied up in your brains, your strength, your beauty? Because if it is, then your happiness will always be fleeting, and as Lucy found out, jealousy will always be right behind you, keeping you away from your mission, because there's always someone smarter, stronger, more money, and more beauty, etc.

2.) Eustace and the Dragon- In Eustaces desire for greed, desire to be above others, he actually became like a dragon, only desiring gain. Before he knew it, he was a dragon. But there was no way out, no amount of money could buy his original self back. But Aslan came to the rescue, Eustace could not remove the scales, so Aslan does it free of charge. This is Jesus with His gift of grace, its totally free and open to everyone, and He can lead us back to ourselves, back to our senses.

3.) Edmund and the desire for manhood- I think the most powerful scene in the movie is at the very end, where Edmund is given a way out of the struggle by the White Witch. She says to him, "Edmund all you want is to be a Man, come with me and I will make you a man," He decides to overcome his fear, and stay to fight. I thought, wow, that sums up the whole struggle for a man. Every man is tempted to believe that the way to manhood is within sexual triumphs, but that is not it at all. The way to manhood is that we stay and fight as a servant. That we give ourselves away, and grow in virtue and self control.

The perfect character is really Reepicheep, the heroic mouse. He is small, but he knows that greatness is alive within him, so he has no fear. He knows that Aslan is never very far away, so fear is pointless anyway. But the greatest part of this character is that he sees the greatness alive in others as well. Its one thing to know that greatness is alive in our own hearts, its another to see it in everyone we meet. As C.S. Lewis was fond of saying, "There are no mere mortals,".