The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

by

C. S. Lewis

Eustace Scrubb Character Analysis

Eustace is the cousin of Edmund and Lucy, although unlike them, he’s never been to Narnia before. Particularly at the beginning of the story, he is a selfish character who would be a bully but is not strong or brave enough. In Narnia, he is a reluctant traveler, refusing to accept the fact that he’s no longer in his usual world and even asking for the British Consul. He contributes to the Dawn Treader only when forced to, and when left on his own, he attempts to steal scarce water rations. But when Eustace’s greed leads him to steal a golden armband, he gets turned into a dragon, and this begins Eustace’s journey toward reforming himself. As a dragon, Eustace learns how much he needs his companions and how to better help them. With Aslan’s assistance, Eustace regains his human form and is reborn as a less selfish person. Although Eustace still has much to learn at the end of the novel, his character arc shows how even the most stubborn and selfish people can improve if they are willing to learn and accept help from others.

Eustace Scrubb Quotes in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The The Voyage of the Dawn Treader quotes below are all either spoken by Eustace Scrubb or refer to Eustace Scrubb. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Bravery Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

THERE WAS A BOY CALLED EUSTACE Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

Something very curious indeed had come out of the cabin in the poop and was slowly approaching them. You might call it—and indeed it was—a Mouse. But then it was a Mouse on its hind legs and stood about two feet high. A thin band of gold passed round its head under one ear and over the other and in this was stuck a long crimson feather. (As the Mouse’s fur was very dark, almost black, the effect was bold and striking.) Its left paw rested on the hilt of a sword very nearly as long as its tail. Its balance, as it paced gravely along the swaying deck, was perfect, and its manners courtly. Lucy and Edmund recognized it at once—Reepicheep, the most valiant of all the Talking Beasts of Narnia, and the Chief Mouse

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Reepicheep
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

There was not much difficulty in settling the matter once Eustace realized that everyone took the idea of a duel seriously and heard Caspian offering to lend him a sword, and Drinian and Edmund discussing whether he ought to be handicapped in some way to make up for his being so much bigger than Reepicheep. He apologized sulkily and went off with Lucy to have his hand bathed and bandaged and then went to his bunk. He was careful to lie on his side.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Reepicheep, Lucy Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Lord Drinian
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I got out all right into the big room, if you can call it a room, where the rowing benches and the luggage are. The thing of water is at this end. All was going beautifully, but before I’d drawn a cupful who should catch me but that little spy Reep. I tried to explain that I was going on deck for a breath of air (the business about the water had nothing to do with him) and he asked me why I had a cup. He made such a noise that the whole ship was roused. They treated me scandalously. I asked, as I think anyone would have, why Reepicheep was sneaking about the water cask in the middle of the night. He said that as he was too small to be any use on deck, he did sentry over the water every night so that one more man could go to sleep. Now comes their rotten unfairness: they all believed him. Can you beat it?

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb (speaker), Reepicheep
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

The fog lifted. He was in an utterly unknown valley and the sea was nowhere in sight.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Reepicheep
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb
Related Symbols: Gold Armband
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it—if you can understand.”

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb (speaker), Edmund Pevensie, Aslan
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Because,” said the Mouse, “this is a very great adventure, and no danger seems to me so great as that of knowing when I get back to Narnia that I left a mystery behind me through fear.”

Related Characters: Reepicheep (speaker), Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Aslan, Lord Revilian, Lord Argoz, and Lord Mavramorn
Related Symbols: World’s End
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter.

“Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen—if I’d known about it till now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Edmund.

“It—it’s like light more than anything else,” said Caspian.

“That is what it is,” said Reepicheep. “Drinkable light. We must be very near the end of the world now.”

Related Characters: Caspian (speaker), Reepicheep (speaker), Edmund Pevensie (speaker), Eustace Scrubb, Aslan
Related Symbols: World’s End
Page Number: 248
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”

“Oh, Aslan!!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.

“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”

Related Characters: Lucy Pevensie (speaker), Edmund Pevensie (speaker), Aslan (speaker), Eustace Scrubb
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:

“Only two more things need to be told. One is that Caspian and his men all came safely back to Ramandu’s Island. And the three lords woke from their sleep. Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. The other is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Lucy Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Ramandu’s Daughter, Alberta
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Voyage of the Dawn Treader LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader PDF

Eustace Scrubb Quotes in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The The Voyage of the Dawn Treader quotes below are all either spoken by Eustace Scrubb or refer to Eustace Scrubb. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Bravery Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

THERE WAS A BOY CALLED EUSTACE Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

Something very curious indeed had come out of the cabin in the poop and was slowly approaching them. You might call it—and indeed it was—a Mouse. But then it was a Mouse on its hind legs and stood about two feet high. A thin band of gold passed round its head under one ear and over the other and in this was stuck a long crimson feather. (As the Mouse’s fur was very dark, almost black, the effect was bold and striking.) Its left paw rested on the hilt of a sword very nearly as long as its tail. Its balance, as it paced gravely along the swaying deck, was perfect, and its manners courtly. Lucy and Edmund recognized it at once—Reepicheep, the most valiant of all the Talking Beasts of Narnia, and the Chief Mouse

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Reepicheep
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

There was not much difficulty in settling the matter once Eustace realized that everyone took the idea of a duel seriously and heard Caspian offering to lend him a sword, and Drinian and Edmund discussing whether he ought to be handicapped in some way to make up for his being so much bigger than Reepicheep. He apologized sulkily and went off with Lucy to have his hand bathed and bandaged and then went to his bunk. He was careful to lie on his side.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Reepicheep, Lucy Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Lord Drinian
Page Number: 36
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I got out all right into the big room, if you can call it a room, where the rowing benches and the luggage are. The thing of water is at this end. All was going beautifully, but before I’d drawn a cupful who should catch me but that little spy Reep. I tried to explain that I was going on deck for a breath of air (the business about the water had nothing to do with him) and he asked me why I had a cup. He made such a noise that the whole ship was roused. They treated me scandalously. I asked, as I think anyone would have, why Reepicheep was sneaking about the water cask in the middle of the night. He said that as he was too small to be any use on deck, he did sentry over the water every night so that one more man could go to sleep. Now comes their rotten unfairness: they all believed him. Can you beat it?

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb (speaker), Reepicheep
Page Number: 77
Explanation and Analysis:

The fog lifted. He was in an utterly unknown valley and the sea was nowhere in sight.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Reepicheep
Page Number: 85
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

He had turned into a dragon while he was asleep. Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb
Related Symbols: Gold Armband
Page Number: 97
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it—if you can understand.”

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb (speaker), Edmund Pevensie, Aslan
Page Number: 113
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Because,” said the Mouse, “this is a very great adventure, and no danger seems to me so great as that of knowing when I get back to Narnia that I left a mystery behind me through fear.”

Related Characters: Reepicheep (speaker), Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Aslan, Lord Revilian, Lord Argoz, and Lord Mavramorn
Related Symbols: World’s End
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

The King took the bucket in both hands, raised it to his lips, sipped, then drank deeply and raised his head. His face was changed. Not only his eyes but everything about him seemed to be brighter.

“Yes,” he said, “it is sweet. That’s real water, that. I’m not sure that it isn’t going to kill me. But it is the death I would have chosen—if I’d known about it till now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Edmund.

“It—it’s like light more than anything else,” said Caspian.

“That is what it is,” said Reepicheep. “Drinkable light. We must be very near the end of the world now.”

Related Characters: Caspian (speaker), Reepicheep (speaker), Edmund Pevensie (speaker), Eustace Scrubb, Aslan
Related Symbols: World’s End
Page Number: 248
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

“Dearest,” said Aslan very gently, “you and your brother will never come back to Narnia.”

“Oh, Aslan!!” said Edmund and Lucy both together in despairing voices.

“You are too old, children,” said Aslan, “and you must begin to come close to your own world now.”

Related Characters: Lucy Pevensie (speaker), Edmund Pevensie (speaker), Aslan (speaker), Eustace Scrubb
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis:

“Only two more things need to be told. One is that Caspian and his men all came safely back to Ramandu’s Island. And the three lords woke from their sleep. Caspian married Ramandu’s daughter and they all reached Narnia in the end, and she became a great queen and the mother and grandmother of great kings. The other is that back in our own world everyone soon started saying how Eustace had improved, and how “You’d never know him for the same boy”: everyone except Aunt Alberta, who said he had become very commonplace and tiresome and it must have been the influence of those Pevensie children.

Related Characters: Eustace Scrubb, Caspian, Lucy Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie, Ramandu’s Daughter, Alberta
Page Number: 269
Explanation and Analysis: