Talk:The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

^{Reviewed version: October 8, 2006}

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Assessment comments

1 Discussion
2 Time
3 Alternate markup for the edition comparison table
4 Italics in title
5 Dragon
6 Chapters
7 Burnt Island
8 Embarrassment
9 Please make sure you know the story before you edit!
10 British/American differences

[edit] Discussion

"There are also symbolic references to Holy Communion (pictured as a feast hosted by a living star) and other Christian themes, but chiefly it works on the level of an exciting children's adventure story, and a re-working on the themes of the great sea-voyages of classical mythology, particularly the story of Jason and the Argonautica."

Could someone write a bit more about the "other Christian themes" alluded to in the passage above?

Well, I'm not certain I understand exactly what you mean. The last part of it should really be a different sentence, and I did just now break it apart. I haven't read the book in over a year, and I don't have it before me, so the following is from memory. A very long table was set out, each plate full of food, each cup full of wine. Whatever remained uneated at dawn (or perhaps dusk) was eaten by a flock of birds that flew in (as memory serves, from the west) and ate all the food so that nothing was left behind, and then flew away (in the same direction, so as memory serves, to the east). And just now, I understand what you mean by your question.

Other Christian themes: Well, the "other Christian themes" doesn't refer to the table, that I can tell, other than all that goes with the Holy Communion. And as well, all by memory, I can't think of any other specific Christian themes, but I do remember that there were some. Sorry I can't help you with that. You just have to read the book. :-) It is the most adventuresome and is very exciting. I read it for the first time when I was 22 or 23, and I enjoyed it immensely. Sorry I can't help you more than that. --D. F. Schmidt (talk) 18:04, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Couldn't this be an example of an immram? The title of the novel follows that typical pattern "Voyage of..." and immrams are intrinsically Christian. IrisWings 05:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Personally I think the use of John 3:16 should either not be linked or replaced by the word "thesis" only because it creates some confusion in its usage. DeathscytheH64 04:33, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Time

I deleted "The year is 1942." from the synopsis. Lewis is inconsistent: In Chapter 1, he says the events of LWW were "long ago, in the war years". In Chapter 2, Edmund says one year has passed since the events of Prince Caspian. Arrgh. —wwoods 05:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I think you're right on deleting the 1942 thing. It is unnecessary. But, in fact, C.S. Lewis later, in one of his books, made a timeline to his books, placing this story in England time 1942. --ANNAfoxlover

[edit] Alternate markup for the edition comparison table

British Edition	Pre-1994 American Edition
¶¶1-2 In a few moments [...] warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been. They blinked their eyes and looked about them. The brightness of [...] grime and sum. And then first one, and then another, began laughing. ‘I reckon we’ve made pretty good fools of ourselves,’ said Rynelf.	¶1 In a few moments [...] warm, blue world again. And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight pouring through your window and to hear the cheerful voice of an early postman or milkman down below and to realise that it was only a dream: it wasn’t real, is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to have the joy of waking; so they all felt when they came out of the dark. The brightness of [...] grime and scum.
¶¶3–6 Lucy lost no time [...] Grant me a boon.’	¶¶2–5 Lucy lost no time [...] Grant me a boon.”
¶7 ‘What is it?’ asked Caspian.	¶6 “What is it?” asked Caspian.
¶8 ‘Never to bring me back there,’ he said. He pointed astern. They all looked. But they saw only bright blue sea and bright blue sky. The Dark Island and the darkness had vanished for ever.	¶7 “Never to ask me, nor to let any other ask me, what I have seen during my years on the Dark Island.”
¶¶9–10 ‘Why!’ cried Lord Rhoop. ‘You have destroyed it!’ ‘I don’t think it was us,’ said Lucy.	¶8 “An easy boon, my Lord,” answered Caspian, and added with a shudder. “Ask you: I should think not. I would give all my treasure not to hear it.”
¶11–12 ‘Sire,’ said Drinian, [...] the clock round myself’	¶¶9–10 “Sire,” said Drinian, [...] the clock round myself.”
¶13 So all afternoon with great joy they said south-east with a fair wind. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.	¶11 So all afternoon with great joy they sailed south-east with a fair wind, and the hump of darkness grew smaller and smaller astern. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lsommerer (talk • contribs)

I like it. Much clearer. I added one teensy paragraph marking for 3-6 in the left column. --Fbv65e del / ☑t / ☛c || 02:52, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Huh, I did this one first and didn't like it as much. But I put it here because I wasn't sure about not liking it as much. I just now edited it so that the paragraphs line up better. Looking at it now, I think you're right. I'll wait to see if there's more feedback then change it.LloydSommerer 03:10, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Putting other version here just in case we want it later... LloydSommerer 13:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

British Edition	Pre-1994 American Edition
In a few moments [...] warm, blue world again. And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been. They blinked their eyes and looked about them. The brightness of [...] grime and sum. And then first one, and then another, began laughing. “I reckon we’ve made pretty good fools of ourselves,” said Rynelf. Lucy lost no time [...] Grant me a boon.” “What is it?” asked Caspian. “Never to bring me back there,” he said. He pointed astern. They all looked. But they saw only bright blue sea and bright blue sky. The Dark Island and the darkness had vanished for ever. “Why!” cried Lord Rhoop. “You have destroyed it!” “I don’t think it was us,” said Lucy. “Sire,” said Drinian, [...] the clock round myself.” So all afternoon with great joy they sailed south-east with a fair wind, and the hump of darkness grew smaller and smaller astern. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.	In a few moments [...] warm, blue world again. And just as there are moments when simply to lie in bed and see the daylight pouring through your window and to hear the cheerful voice of an early postman or milkman down below and to realise that it was only a dream: it wasn’t real, is so heavenly that it was very nearly worth having the nightmare in order to have the joy of waking; so they all felt when they came out of the dark. The brightness of [...] grime and scum. Lucy lost no time [...] Grant me a boon.” “What is it?” asked Caspian. “Never to ask me, nor to let any other ask me, what I have seen during my years on the Dark Island.” “An easy boon, my Lord,” answered Caspian, and added with a shudder. “Ask you: I should think not. I would give all my treasure not to hear it.” “Sire,” said Drinian, [...] the clock round myself” So all afternoon with great joy they said south-east with a fair wind. But nobody noticed when the albatross had disappeared.

I agree, there's little difference between them unless you're looking very hard. Katana Geldar 02:04, 8 May 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Katana Geldar (talk • contribs)

Can someone clarify the significance of these differences. In all but a couple of cases, the difference is simply the replacing of double-quotes with single-quotes... is that correct? Is such a differece worth mentioning at such length? Why not a description of the substantive difference, plus a note that the American version uses single-quotes to denote speech? WI think that that miught be less confusing. Leeborkman 12:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Italics in title

The article currently states:

By English grammatical rules, both book titles and ship names are italicized when written. Since "Dawn Treader" is part of both, it is put in Roman text to signify this.

In agreement with this, I reverted an edit to The Chronicles of Narnia the other day that extended the italics to the full title. This was then changed back to a fully italicised title, but with quotes around 'Dawn Treader'; the edit comment (from Myopic Bookworm) stated, "you can't deitalicize if there's then no distinction from the context". It's a fair point, but we really ought to be consistent on how we present the title. Ideas? -- Perey 08:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not a grammatical rule, and the statement is therefore incorrect (though I have not yet altered it, pending discussion here). It is a useful but optional convention of typography. Even the cover image in this article illustrates the point that it is optional. If the book title is marked off by quotation marks as ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ then it is possible to use the italic convention for the ship's name; but Wikipedia style (and common practice) is to italicize book titles, and reverse typeface is then not a practical option, since The Voyage of the Dawn Treader runs into the following text. (You can get away with it at the head of this article because the book title is also in bold face as the subject of the article.) If you insist that the name of the ship must be distinct in some way (which is by no means obligatory), then the best option, in my opinion, is to retain the italic convention for the book title, and to use the alternative quotation mark convention for the ship's name: The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’. And this really is far too trivial a matter to be placed in the head of this article: if it's worth mentioning at all, it should be in a note tucked away nearer the bottom. Myopic Bookworm 11:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, that was I who put the note at the top of the page, because I also reverted an edit on The Chronicles of Narnia, like Perey. If we do decide to keep it, I agree it should be moved to the bottom. However, I don't believe you can rely on the cover art for technical rules (this particular cover has italicized "of the," solely because they are minor words which they decided to make a bit more fancy, while "Voyage" is definitely not in italics). I'm looking at the HarperTrophy edition of the book, which differs from the current one we have, because it clearly has set Dawn Treader in italics. Throughout the book, Dawn Treader is italicized as well. I don't believe that it matters whether the Roman text of the book title collides with the remaining text on the page, it is technically correct. Also, according to the MOS, ships and books are to be italicized. --Fbv65e del / ☑t / ☛c || 14:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Ahhh, I just went and italicised "the Dawn Treader" (making it the same font as "The Voyage of" on the Susan page, because when double-italicised, it is in the same font as the surrounding text. This formatting suggests that "the Dawn Treader" is neither part of the title nor a ship's name, so the effect is counter-productive. Let rules serve the meaning, not obscure it. btw, I'll change it back if you like ;-) Leeborkman 12:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

In the interests of clarity, if The Voyage of the Dawn Treader appears in a sentence which doesn't indicate where the title ends, then italicizing the whole thing is the way to go. But if the title is set off, e.g. by bolding or a wikilink, then the partial italicization is a nice touch, IMO. And often it's easy to rephrase a sentence, e.g. by putting the title at the end, or adding the publication date: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952) to the same effect.

No offense to grammarians, but why is this discussion summed up in the first paragraph of the article? Most people just don't care about this sort of thing -- let alone putting it in the lead-off paragraph. I would get rid of it altogether and replace it with a couple of sentences about what the book is about. 68.8.110.219 02:19, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Because well-meaning but slow-thinking people keep changing it. Myopic Bookworm 11:28, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I have a copy of this book that has "Dawn Treader" set in single quotation marks in the title on the cover; perhaps that could be a compromise solution that would eliminate the need for the note? (It's an older American edition from a boxed set using the original ordering of the books.) 1995hoo 01:27, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the title of this book should probably be written completely in ital with the ship's name in single quotes. I have a couple reasons for this. First, whether ship names are ital or not doesn't matter; this is the title of a book. Second, you shouldn't follow the rules of your style book to the point where you're confusing the reader. It's better to write clearly than get hung up on a bit of style. And I think putting single quotes around the ship's name gets the point across quite well.

I know this is a fairly late entry to this, but typographically, underlining has been used as an alternative to italics for both book and ship titles (usually when italics were not available). So, might it be an option to underline Dawn Treader within the italicized title (i.e. "Dawn Treader" would be both italicized and underlined), such that it is set off from both the (only italicized) rest of the title, and the (romanized) text? John Darrow (talk) 22:11, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dragon

The part about Eustace being turned into a dragon should probably be in the plot summary. I haven't read the book in a while so I'll let someone else handle it.--roger6106 22:51, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with you. Wow, I've never said that before!

[edit] Chapters

I think the chapter listings for the Chronicles of Narnia books should be removed. I started a discussion at Talk:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe#Chapters--roger6106 03:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Consider it done. They are unneccessary. b_cubed 03:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY "THEY ARE UNNECCESSARY?!?!" I THINK HE SHOULD "B CUBED"! I happen to think that the chapters are very useful.

Yeah the Chapters are very usefull and should be put back on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.13.238.105 (talk) 00:01, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Burnt Island

In the plot, where it mentions all the islands the crew goes to, there is a mention of "Burnt Island". What is Burnt Island? I don't remember reading this in the book.

I don't have a copy handy, but I think it was a small island east of the dragon's island. Within flying range, evidently.

—wwoods 06:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

this is from soumyadeep,

 in the third part of narnia what happened peter and suzan  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.7.77.179 (talk) 10:06, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Embarrassment

"I am... but there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there." I COMPLETELY missed the Jesus/God reference —Preceding unsigned comment added by David Cat (talk • contribs) 22:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please make sure you know the story before you edit!

I just had to edit a section in this article that mentions plot details that do not occur at all in the novel. Whoever wrote the part where Caspian goes ashore towards the end with Susan, Edmund, Eustace and Repicheep must have ben smoking hobbitweed. Katana Geldar 11:15, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] British/American differences

In the table of differences between British and American versions, entires 2,3 and 6 seem to be identical apart from the single/double quotations. Is there a reason they are there? DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:42, 22 May 2008 (UTC)