The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The “Hero’s Journey” is a type of narrative structure that focuses on a hero who embarks on a grand adventure, overcomes a series of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and returns home victorious or significantly changed by the experience. This trope is especially prevalent in mythology and in contemporary fantasy literature, both of which share an emphasis on quests and fantastical elements. In children’s literature, canonical examples of the hero’s journey can be found in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), among many others.

Each book in The Chronicles of Narnia is an example of the hero’s journey structure. Indeed, almost every story revolves around one or several protagonists who enter Narnia through a magic portal, undertake a quest to right a wrong or defeat an evil enemy, and eventually go back to their own world with new maturity and confidence. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in particular, the evolution of Eustace Scrubb from a sullen, spoiled boy to a decent human being exemplifies the transformative power of the hero’s journey, and true to form, Lewis employs a uniquely Christian twist as the catalyst for the character’s internal changes.