For Week 11, we discussed Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Lewis used the sun and dragons as his theme and motif for Aslan in this chronicle, as Apollo is the sun god and also known as the dragon slayer.
I reminded them to remember that every author and screenwriter has messages that they want to say. Often they hide this message in symbols, motifs and themes. Lewis loved to do this and had multiple layers of messages, as we have seen in this class. It is a lot of fun to find clues and figure things out. This class is giving them the tools to see these messages in the books they read and the movies they watch. Sometimes the messages aren't desirable or supportive of our worldview. This is part of being TJEd-ers, to seek out what the author is saying and decide if it's truth or not. What each of us does with that message, is up to us. I told how I recently watched an (unnamed) animated movie and picked up on parts of an undesirable theme. I researched it, and found that yes, the director did intend that meaning. I researched further and found more parts of the theme that I didn't recognize because I'm not that familiar with it. The point was, is to look for messages in everything, using these tools, and learn from it.
If your child hasn't finished Voyage of the Dawn Treader, encourage him/her to do it. We will be discussing Eustase's hero journey and lessons learned on each island. When the books aren't read, discussions turn more into crowd control, than meaningful lessons. :)
Note: The movie is significantly different than the book.
