Summary
- Peter and Susan Pevensie don’t return to Narnia in “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” due to their age and experiences.
- In the books, Peter is able to return to Narnia while Susan is forbidden from doing so.
- The films offer a more optimistic reason for Peter and Susan’s absence, suggesting that they have learned what they can from Narnia and it’s time for them to live in their own world.
Peter and Susan Pevensie didn’t return to Narnia for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The third Chronicles of Narnia movie, The Voyage sees siblings Lucy and Edmund Pevensie, along with their cousin Eustace, traveling over the seas of Narnia, and many viewers wonder why Peter and Susan aren’t with them. The first two Narnia movies centered on all Pevensie children. Peter and Susan, however, only appeared briefly in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader after they were told by Aslan that they would be unable to return to Narnia after their departure at the end of Prince Caspian.
While this was a bit of a shock to audience members unfamiliar with the source material, Peter and Susan leaving Narnia forever was consistent with C.S. Lewis’ novels. However, the reason Peter and Susan can’t return to Narnia differs between the books and the movies. While the Narnia novels have often been described as Christian allegory, author C.S. Lewis himself rejected this label, preferring to consider them “suppositional,” among the primary theories for why Peter and Susan don’t return to Narnia are their age and experiences, and the Christian metaphors throughout the books factor into both.
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Why Can’t Peter And Susan Return To Narnia?
Loss Of Faith Prevents The Oldest Pevensie Children From Going Back
The Christian themes in The Chronicles of Narnia books are clear, constant, and — by the definition of many scholars — allegorical. One of these Christian themes is the idea that many adults did have faith as children and merely let themselves grow out of it as they became older, choosing instead to follow the ways of the world and think too logically. As such, adults cannot enter Narnia, though there seems to be no fixed age limit — it’s merely when a person has “grown up,” as Susan and Peter do, that they can no longer enter.
In the Prince Caspian novel, Peter and Susan are told they can’t return to Narnia simply because they are “getting too old.” Later, in the final book of the Chronicles Of Narnia series, The Last Battle, Susan is said to be “no longer a friend of Narnia” and “interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations.” She speaks of Narnia as a place of make-believe that she and her siblings conjured during playtime as children. As one who has lost her belief in Narnia, Susan is the only one of her siblings who never truly return.
Peter finally does go back to Narnia at the end of The Last Battle and, upon arriving, asks how it was possible after being told he would never return. Peter is then told that he is in the true Narnia and that the Narnia he knew as a child was “only a shadow or copy.” The C.S. Lewis books never fully explain why Susan is forbidden from returning to the true Narnia and Peter is not, even though he had also presumably become occupied with the “real world” for much of the series.
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The Movies Had Their Own Reason For Peter And Susan Staying Out Of Narnia
The Cinematic Version Of Events Is Much More Wholesome
Aslan comforts the concerned Edmund and Lucy in The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader movie by saying that Peter and Susan won’t return to Narnia — not because they have done anything wrong, but because they “have learned what they can from this world,” and that “it’s time for them to live in their own.” This offers a more optimistic interpretation of Peter and Susan’s absence in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Peter and Susan may even desire to go back to Narnia, but Aslan knows that their adventures are now in adulthood and the real world.
Though Peter and Susan are told in both the books and films that they will not return to Narnia after the events of Prince Caspian, the films have left the door open just far enough to conceivably bring Peter and Susan back for either a fourth Chronicles of Narnia film or the upcoming Netflix Narnia series. However, this would be a wild deviation from C.S. Lewis’s original novels.
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There’s A Tragic Reason Peter And Susan Never Return To Narnia In The Books
Peter And Susan’s Narnia Stories Don’t End Well
The books offer a far less optimistic reason for Peter and Susan’s absence from Narnia when Edmund and Lucy return. Susan, specifically, is mentioned in the novels as having lost her faith in Narnia. Though all four of the Pevensie siblings share the experience of Narnia, Susan grows out of “playing pretend” with her siblings. Lewis’ work calls out Susan for growing up and moving on from her siblings. Her no longer “being a friend” to Narnia means that she no longer has faith.
She visits America with her parents while her siblings are still in England and attends a separate boarding school from the rest of them as well. At twenty-one years old, all three of her siblings and their cousin Eustace are killed in a train accident. When they are, the group meets Aslan again as they all die. Susan is the only member of her family not to be in the train accident. It’s a tragic ending for her and the rest of the children in The Chronicles of Narnia, since she not only doesn’t share the belief the rest of her family has but also loses them all in one fell swoop.