Eustace Scrubb

Eustace Clarence Scrubbis a fictional character inC. S. Lewis'sChronicles of Narnia.He appears inThe Voyage of the Dawn Treader,The Silver Chair,andThe Last Battle.InThe Voyage of the Dawn Treader,he is accompanied byEdmundandLucy Pevensie,his cousins. InThe Silver ChairandThe Last Battle,he is accompanied byJill Pole,a classmate from his school.

Eustace Scrubb
Narniacharacter
Will Poulteras Eustace in the 2010 film,The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
First appearance	The Voyage of the Dawn Treader(1952)
Last appearance	The Last Battle(1956)
Created by	C. S. Lewis
In-universe information
Race	Human
Family	Harold Scrubb (father) Alberta Scrubb (mother) Peter Pevensie (cousin) Susan Pevensie (cousin) Edmund Pevensie (cousin) Lucy Pevensie (cousin)
Nationality	English

Personality

Eustace is portrayed at first as arrogant, whiny, and self-centered. It can be gathered from Eustace's behavior, and the tone that Lewis used in describing his family and school, that Lewis thought such behavior silly and disliked it a great deal. In fact, at the beginning ofThe Voyage of the Dawn Treader,LucyandEdmunddislike visiting him and his parents, though that has mostly to do with Eustace's arrogant and unfriendly attitude, and he also calls his parents by their first names. However, the book deals with his rehabilitation (just asThe Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobedealt with Edmund's) and in the later books, he is an altogether better person, becoming a hero along with his friend Jill Pole, although he still sometimes tends to be a know-it-all. It is mentioned in theSilver Chairthat Eustace isafraid of heights,causing him to overreact when Jill goes too close to the edge of a cliff. In trying to stop her he falls. In other respects, Eustace displays great courage and a fair degree of discernment in facing the challenges that confront him in the Narnian world.

Biography

Prior story

According to Lewis'sNarnian timeline,Eustace was born in 1933 and is 9 years old when he appears inThe Voyage of the Dawn Treader;and byThe Last Battlehe is 16 years old.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Eustace Scrubb, as portrayed byDavid Thwaitesin theBBC production

Eustace is introduced at the beginning ofThe Voyage of the Dawn Treaderwith the opening line, "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." He is the only child of what Lewis describes as "very up-to-date and advanced people," who send him to a progressive mixed school. Eustace calls his parents by their first names (Harold and Alberta); his parents arevegetarians,nonsmokers,teetotallers,pacifists,and wear an unspecified special kind of underclothes.

Much of the narrative ofThe Voyage of the Dawn Treaderconcerns the personal growth of Eustace, as he is drawn into Narnia and aboard the eponymous ship along with Lucy and Edmund, and into adventures that bring him to realize how self-centred his attitudes are. Part of the story is told with extracts from his diary, where we see how skewed his point of view is. He describes the ship sailing in perpetual storm (though the weather is fine), and portrays the others as foolishly denying the supposed rough seas and refusing to face the "truth" of the situation. He complains when Lucy is givenCaspian's cabin, and comments to the crew that giving girls special treatment is actually "putting them down, and making them weaker". Moreover, he cannot accept that he is in the Narnian world: he imagines that he can "lodge a disposition" (or "bring an action" ) at a British consulate or a British court; and he is beaten byReepicheepfor treating the mouse as one might a circus animal.

Eustace wanders off by himself when the ship puts ashore on an unexplored island. He falls asleep on a deaddragon's hoard and finds himself transformed into a dragon by "greedy, dragonish thoughts" in his heart. He also finds himself in constant pain from Lord Octesian's arm bracelet, which he put on as a boy but is too small for a dragon's leg. Upon return to theDawn Treader,he is nearly attacked by the crew until Lucy asks if he is Eustace, to which he vigorously nods his head. Being a dragon changes Eustace; instead of behaving like his usual sulky self, he helps the travellers find food, shelter, and a tree to serve as a newmainmast.The problem comes when it is time to leave the island, as the ship cannot hold or maintain a dragon. Reepicheep displays sympathy to Eustace's plight despite the boy's prior cruelty to the mouse and they eventually become friends.

Eventually, Eustace meetsAslan,who returns him to human form by peeling off his dragon skin and sending him into a refreshing bath. Edmund shares his own redemption story with Eustace, observing that "you were only an ass, but I was a traitor." Eustace improves after this, and becomes a valuable member of the expedition. When the ship is in danger of being sunk by a giant sea-serpent, Eustace attacks the monster, using only a sword. When Eustace returns home after his adventures, his mother thinks he has become tiresome and commonplace, blaming the change on the influence of "those Pevensie children" — though everyone else thinks that he has become a much better person.

The Silver Chair

Eustace returns to his progressive school where he is now labeled a misfit, due to the changes in him wrought duringThe Voyage of The Dawn Treader.Where before he was a crony and tale-bearer to the gang of bullies who are given free rein at the school, he is now one of their targets, but has the courage to withstand them. He befriends fellow misfitJill Pole,and their desire to leave the school draws them into Narnia. This unlikely friendship (given that Eustace had bullied Jill before his experience in Narnia) is strengthened throughout the story. Following the custom of their school, Eustace and Jill address each other by their surnames, "Scrubb" and "Pole".

The two journey to the far north of Narnia, and the world below it, to recover the lost heir to the throne and to thwart the plan of theLady of the Green Kirtleto overthrow the kingdom. Though he still has faults, mainly stubbornness and rash decision-making, Eustace displays little of his former odiousness, and he and Jill begin to develop affection towards one another. He wholeheartedly rejects the insipid philosophy offered by the Lady in favour of the Narnian life that he has grown to love. He helpsPrince Rilianto escape the underworld and return toNarnia,just in time to meet Rilian's agedfatherbefore the latter's death. Caspian was now an old man, as 50 years had passed since Eustace had first been in Narnia.

Eustace and Jill return to Aslan's Country, where Caspian is resurrected and restored to the youth and strength that Eustace remembers from his earlier visit to this world. At the end of the story, Caspian is briefly translated into Eustace's world, something that Caspian has wanted ever since he met Eustace's cousins 53 years earlier. Here he and Aslan help the two friends to scare off the school bullies and set in motion a chain of events that leads to the school's becoming a well-managed place of learning.

The Last Battle

Eustace and Jill are sent to Narnia shortly before its destruction to help young KingTirianrally supporters for one last battle to save Narnia. The friends show great courage and wisdom but the Narnian forces ultimately go down to defeat.

Meanwhile, a railway accident in England has resulted in the death of Eustace and Jill, along with Lucy, Edmund, and Peter, as well as Polly and Digory. They find themselves in Aslan's country, dressed as royalty. They all look on as Aslan brings the world of Narnia to an end. Thereafter they encounter many of the characters they had known in the old world, as they climb "further up and further in" to live in eternal happiness in the Real Narnia.

Themes

WriterPhilip Hensherobjected to the description of Eustace and his family, regarding it as evidence of supposed anti-intellectual and anti-progressive leanings.In Lewis' essayThe Abolition of Man,he argues that modern education is producing "men without chests" – people whose lives are divided between the purely cerebral and the purely visceral, without any middle ground of sentiment or imagination—and Eustace (in his initial state) is clearly intended to be one of these. In the same essay, however, Lewis denies the suggestion that he is attacking intellect as such, and in his book onMiracleshe even argues for thescholasticbelief that the intellect is our participation in the supernatural world. Similarly, he was not against progress in the sense of objectively justifiable social improvement, but did oppose purely fashionable progressivism, and in particular what he called "chronological snobbery",the view that the superiority of modern values can always be assumed automatically and without investigation.

Portrayal

Inthe BBC production,Eustace was portrayed byDavid Thwaites.In the 2014 BBC audiobook dramatisations of the books, he is portrayed byMarco Williamson.Will Poulterplays Eustace inthe Walden Media film adaptation,directed by Michael Apted.Among the alterations for the film is that when Eustace is turned into a dragon, he proves his true identity to Edmund by flying him to where he has used his fire breath to carve the sentence, "I am Eustace" on the ground. Once establishing his identity, the agonizingly undersized bracelet Eustace was wearing when he was transformed into a dragon is quickly removed with Lucy's help (In the book, Lucy eased the pain with her cordial but the arm bracelet was not removed until Eustace resumed human form.). Afterward and still in his dragon form Eustace accompanies theDawn Treaderon its quest to the next islands and earns the respect of the crew first by towing the ship when it is caught in magically imposed doldrums and later aiding the crew in battle against thesea serpenton the Dark Island, but gets injured. It is here that Aslan restores Eustace to normal, but only by scratching off the dragon's skin. Eustace's final redemption comes when he races to lay the seventh magic sword at Aslan's Table, unleashing the swords' power to defeat the evil of Dark Island and saving his friends.

The Oh Hellos,a folk rock band, wrote a song "The Lament of Eustace Scrubb" on their 2012 albumThrough the Deep, Dark Valley.

References

• Ford, Paul F. (5 July 2005). "Eustace Clarence Scrubb".The Companion to Narnia: A Complete Guide to the Magical World of C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.HarperOne.ISBN0-06-079127-6.
• Goldthwaite, John,The Natural History of Make-believe: A Guide to the Principal Works of Britain, Europe and America:OUP 1996,ISBN0-19-503806-1,ISBN978-0-19-503806-4