Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Bravery
Christianity
Growing Up and Selflessness
Temptation
Summary
Analysis
Caspian and the others are washing themselves in the river, when all of a sudden, Edmund realizes he hasn’t seen Eustace in a while. Meanwhile, Eustace is still in the valley when he hears a crawling noise from somewhere behind him. He sees a creature and realizes with a fright that it’s a dragon. But as Eustace looks closer, he realizes the dragon is dead.
Eustace continues to learn how much more vulnerable he is when he doesn’t have his companions. The dragon, which turns out to just be a corpse, seems to represent the dangers of going off alone—that Eustace might himself end up like the dead dragon.
Themes
Eustace explores the dead dragon’s lair and finds a big horde of treasure. He puts on a gold armband that he likes, then falls asleep on the pile while the others continue to worry about him. Although some on the Dawn Treader, like Rhince, don’t miss Eustace, Edmund and Lucy are worried. Caspian insists that they must make every attempt to find Eustace.
Eustace grabs the gold armband on a whim, but it ends up having serious consequences. Caspian’s decision to search for Eustace, even though Eustace despises Caspian, reinforces Caspian’s selfless nature: he is willing to help even his enemies.
Themes
Eustace wakes up after a long nap and realizes that there are two live dragons with big claws nearby, one on either side of him. He tries to slip away, but each time he attempts to move, a dragon moves its claw to mirror him. Eustace runs away and hears such a commotion that he imagines the dragons must be chasing him. But when he gets to a pool of water, he realizes what’s happened: he himself turned into a dragon while he slept, and the claws he saw were his own.
Eustace’s literal transformation into a dragon underscores yet again how he is in danger of ending up like the dragon corpse, alone in the fog. As a boy, Eustace is motivated by primal desires like greed and the need to prove his strength, and his new form as a dragon reflects these aspects of his personality.
Themes
While Eustace is worried at first, he feels relieved that his new dragon body is so much stronger. He decides to head back toward Caspian and the others, feeling confident that he can convince them of his real identity, even in dragon form.
When Eustace saw himself in dragon form in the water, his beastly new form forced him to see flaws in himself that he overlooked before. This is the first step Eustace takes toward maturity, as he decides to admit his mistake and find his companions again.
Themes
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But when a dragon (Eustace) passes over the camp of the Dawn Treader crew, Caspian advises everyone to get their weapons ready. When the dragon gets close, Lucy realizes that it’s crying. Drinian warns her that crocodiles also cry but are still dangerous. Still, Lucy speaks to the dragon and realizes it can understand. When she goes to give some of her cordial to the dragon to heal its paw, the cordial reduces some swelling. Just then, Caspian notices a gold armband on the dragon.
Lucy is the most compassionate person on the Dawn Treader, willing to have empathy even for a fearsome dragon. Her willingness to help, even at her own risk, is a form of bravery that shows how much she has grown up over her previous trips to Narnia. Although this passage doesn’t reveal the dragon’s identity, the gold armband strongly implies that it’s Eustace and that Eustace’s impulsive decision to take the armband is what turned him into a dragon in the first place.
Themes
