The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader- Greed. Eustace steals and hoards treasure, which causes him to turn him into a dragon. 

I like your idea of taking each of the Biblical deadly sins and matching it with one of the Narnia books, and certainly the example of Eustace becoming a dragon is an especially forceful consequence of his greed!  

In the book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, however, there is a separate episode—that of Goldwater / Deathwater Island, which presents an even greater temptation to greed—a temptation to which Eustace seems to show no interest in at all. Instead it is two of Narnia’s most exemplary heroes, Edmund and Caspian, who are caught up in the irresistible allure of the magical pond until Aslan brings them to their senses. The fuzzy resolution of this episode has always struck me as a somewhat weak spot of the Dawn Treader book. 

Not every church tradition emphasises the 'Seven Deadly Sins'. However all churches would agree that Sin itself is deadly ("the wages of sin is death", says Paul in Romans).

Therefore we can find sins and their effects throughout the Narnia books; in some cases the consequence of a sin would be death or a very nasty outcome. In several places we see the direct intervention of Aslan, usually undeserved. Matching just one major sin to each book is unlikely to be easy or agreed to by others.

Posted by: @coracle

Not every church tradition emphasises the 'Seven Deadly Sins'. However all churches would agree that Sin itself is deadly ("the wages of sin is death", says Paul in Romans).

Therefore we can find sins and their effects throughout the Narnia books; in some cases the consequence of a sin would be death or a very nasty outcome. In several places we see the direct intervention of Aslan, usually undeserved. Matching just one major sin to each book is unlikely to be easy or agreed to by others.

 

Totally agree — it's as misguided an exercise as Michael Ward's "Planet Narnia" theory. I'm always stunned at how popular that is, given that it goes squarely against everything Lewis himself ever said about his works — as if we can't trust the actual author as an authority on what he did and didn't intend! — and how easy it is to unpick. You can find the supposed attributes of several of the planets in ANY of the seven books. In just the same way, you can find examples of several of the "seven deadly sins" in any of them too. So it's as pointless to speculate that each book has one particular sin as its theme, as it is to speculate that each book has the astrological meaning of a specific planet as its theme.

I realise I'm putting this a bit bluntly, but again, if you read what Lewis himself had to say about people searching for hidden meanings in his own and others' works, it's absolutely clear that this isn't how he wrote the Narnia books and it isn't how he intended them to be read and interpreted.

In any case, picking out just one specific sin as the supposed "theme" of each Chronicle misses the fact that there are many examples in each of them, all of which are vital to the plot. LWW may contain the most obvious example of gluttony, with Edmund and the Turkish Delight, but Edmund is also just as guilty of greed (wanting to be a prince), envy (especially towards Peter), pride (refusing to admit he was wrong about Lucy and the wardrobe), plus dishonesty and treachery — not in the official list of deadly sins, but just as serious as any of them. In fact, I'd argue it's not Edmund's gluttony in itself that drives the plot; that's just the way the White Witch initially hooks him in. If he'd been greedy for sweets but hadn't been harbouring deeper and more malicious sinful tendencies, I'd guess she wouldn't have got very far with him.

And so on with that and the rest of the books. But one of the strengths of the Chronicles, I think, is that Lewis for the most part doesn't go naming these sins or giving us obtrusive sermons on them. He just gives so many memorable examples, throughout the books, of all kinds of self-centred thoughts and actions and the consequences that come from them. We're mostly left, as readers, to take this in and draw our own conclusions! 

@courtenay well said! I think we must remember Lewis's reasons for writing these stories.

@courtenay 

I think gluttony is considered one of the seven deadly sins is that if food (like Turkish Delight) was all we ever think about, it can get out of hand. For Edmund, his craving for Turkish Delight got in the way of his relationship with his brother and sisters. 

@jasmine_tarkheena in my opinion the story doesn't depict gluttony. We see a troubled boy who teases his sister, and resents his older brother's authority.  Something had happened to him at school which changed him from the nice kid he was (see the comment near the end, where Edmund is healed by Lucy's cordial - he became his old self again). It's war time in England, sugar is rationed, and suddenly a beautiful lady offers him anything he wants. He chooses his favourite sweets, and eats the whole lot (like a lot of children and teenagers). There's something unnatural in it (mentioned later by Mr Beaver) and his longing for more is akin to addiction rather than gluttony. He sees a way to get what he wants, with a promise of being in charge one day - a desire for power. 

 

The Horse And His Boy- Pride. Bree and Rabadash think highly of themselves as better than the rest.

Jasmine Tarkheena, to go back to your post which started this  thread, note that the final two chapters of the book The Horse and His Boy are, respectively, “How Bree Became a Wiser Horse”, and “Rabadash the Ridiculous”.  The seven deadly sins are alive and well in The Bulldog, but O Lord, grant me grace to recognize and repent of them!

@reshpeckabiggle 

There is that. I guess The Last Battle could also have some pride in there. Shift keeps telling Puzzle, "I am much cleverer than you are" or when he talks to the Narnians, "I'm not an ape, I'm a man. If I look like an ape, I'm a hundred years old and so wise. I'm the only person now that Aslan is ever going to speak to." Even Rishda has some pride in him, which is pretty typical for a upper class Tarkaan.

Our pastor did a sermon about gluttony. It is a sin we don't really think about. While it most of the time it implies food, he mentioned that gluttony can also mean an addiction, like drugs, alcohol, candy, caffeine.

In talking about Narnia, in Edmund's case, Turkish Delight could be view as an addiction. And boy, did it get the best of him?

I wonder if they ever drank tea in Narnia. I never considered drinking it a sin even though it has caffeine. There is no mention of smoking as far as I know, although the old Professor Digory Kirke is sometimes shown in the movies and pictures with a pipe.  Lewis himself probably smoked and drank so I guess he didn’t regard that as a sin as long as it was done in moderation. His brother Warnie had a drinking problem, but to my knowledge Lewis never had that addiction.  My guess is that Narnia was generally free from the addictions that we have in our world.

@narnian78 

They did drink tea in Narnia (Mr. Tumnus and Lucy, the Beavers and the Pevensies, and Father Christmas gives the Beavers and Pevensies some tea). Tea is a favorite British beverage, so CS Lewis would have known about tea.

Drinking itself is not sin, but it can become a sin if it gets out of hand. As for smoking, well, it was the 1940's in our world, so people didn't have problems with smoking at the time.

Posted by: @narnian78

I wonder if they ever drank tea in Narnia. I never considered drinking it a sin even though it has caffeine.

Whichever way you look at it, tea isn't mentioned in the Bible — it was discovered / invented in China some time during the first millennium BC, but I don't think it spread as far as the Middle East until well after Jesus' time! — and I don't believe any other caffeinated drinks were known in that region in Biblical times either. Or even if they were, they don't rate any mention in the scriptures and obviously weren't considered taboo.

Posted by: @jasmine_tarkheena

They did drink tea in Narnia (Mr. Tumnus and Lucy, the Beavers and the Pevensies, and Father Christmas gives the Beavers and Pevensies some tea). Tea is a favorite British beverage, so CS Lewis would have known about tea.

Yes, and in the immortal words of the man himself (I have them on a bookmark): "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."  

(Hmmm, I might just go and put the kettle on now myself. I never used to drink tea back in Australia, but one picks up strange habits in England... )

@courtenay 

Tea or coffee are not mentioned in the Bible. Wine and beer, is though. It does teach not to drink so much to be drunk. Jesus drank wine, but I'm sure he did it in moderation.

There are wines mentioned in the Narnia series, and I'm sure they would have to drink them in moderation.

As I have mentioned before, there are different concepts of the sin of "lust", and the two major ones are lusting after someone and lust for power.

In The Last Battle, there is the concept of the lust for power in Shift. Shift insists to Puzzle that he pretend to be Aslan, "We'll set everything right in Narnia." But his real plan was to have authority over Narnia. Then of course, that doesn't turn out so well for him. Even Rishda had a lust for power, and he may have wanted to seize control of Narnia. He decided to use manipulation in order to get it.

In The Horse and His Boy, Rabadash wants to marry Susan. When he finds out that she has turned him down, it makes him want her all the more. It's not explicitly written, being a children's book, but when you read about how Rabadash says, "I must have her as my wife!" and about how he plans to do it, it makes you go like, "Whoa! He'd actually go that far as attacking Archenland and Narnia in order to get Susan as his wife!?"

While kids may not understand the concept, parents might be able to see it in between the lines. Though I think CS Lewis did a good job of managing of keeping it within the lines (that is to say, not give it a lot of details).