Wednesday, February 13, 2013

The Dark Island



And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.
--Chapter 12, British edition 
One of my greatest issues with the film adaption is the addition of the green mist plotline, but I hadn't previously considered the loss of the original Dark Island. It's one of my favorite parts of the book, and the audio version by Focus on the Family's Radio Theatre is absolutely brilliant. You can faintly hear the death of Aslan in the background,  the sharpening of the White Witch's knife, and other strange noises. When they begin to despair, Lucy calls for Aslan, and an albatross appears. The bird leads the ship into bright daylight.
In the British version,
And all at once everybody realized that there was nothing to be afraid of and never had been.
 The original American text reads differently,
 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. 
Furthermore, the Dark Island completely disappears in the British, whereas it merely disappears from sight in the American text. Most publishers go with the British text, which I prefer.  No matter how many nightmares I have of Weeping Angels or returning to high school,  fear is groundless when you really understand the power of God.

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