Lost at Sea
Robin Phillips on the Dawn Treader’s Voyage of Self-Discovery
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is probably the slowest of all of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, yet it is the richest and the most subtle. Unfortunately, the attempt to generate a blockbuster movie out of the story has resulted in a jerky succession of disconnected adventures.
To his credit, director Michael Apted has tried to bring continuity to the various adventures, yet he does this by introducing a storyline completely alien to Lewis’s book. The ship’s voyage is transformed into an apocalyptic struggle of good against evil, as the company on board the Dawn Treader must find seven swords and lay them on Aslan’s table to prevent an evil green gas from destroying all of Narnia.
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Robin Phillips has a Master’s in Historical Theology from King’s College London and a Master’s in Library Science through the University of Oklahoma. He is the blog and media managing editor for the Fellowship of St. James and a regular contributor to Touchstone and Salvo. He has worked as a ghost-writer, in addition to writing for a variety of publications, including the Colson Center, World Magazine, and The Symbolic World. Phillips is the author of Gratitude in Life's Trenches (Ancient Faith, 2020), and Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation (Ancient Faith, 2023). He operates a blog at www.robinmarkphillips.com.
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