How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools. (1.2)
One of the first things the narrator tells us about Eustace is that he has terrible taste in reading. Don't be like Eustace. Shmoop is here to help.
Quote #2
What Eustace thought had best be told in his own words, for when they all got their clothes back, dried, next morning, he at once got out a little black notebook and a pencil and started to keep a diary. He always had this notebook with him and kept a record of his marks in it, for though he didn't care much about any subject for its own sake, he cared a great deal about marks. . . . But as he didn't seem likely to get many marks on the Dawn Treader he now started a diary. (2.54)
Because Eustace can't seem to take control over his position on the Dawn Treader or his relationships with Caspian, Lucy, and Edmund, he takes narrative control instead. In his diary he can put his own slant on the Dawn Treader's adventures and activities. If he had wireless access, we're sure he'd be blogging, too.
Quote #3
Caspian nodded to Bern and then stood aside. Bern and Drinian took a step forward and each seized one end of the table. They lifted it, and flung it on one side of the hall where it rolled over, scattering a cascade of letters, dossiers, ink-pots, pens, sealing-wax and documents. Then, not roughly but as firmly as if their hands were pincers of steel, they plucked Gumpas out of his chair and deposited him, facing it, about four feet away. (4.12)
Governor Gumpas shores up his power base in the Lone Islands with a show of bureaucratic business – not just business in the sense of "serious managerial stuff," but business in the sense of "busy-ness." When Caspian objects to the slave trade, Gumpas starts to channel the King's objections into the busywork of council meetings and legislative procedure. For Gumpas's, writing is a mechanism for ensuring that nobody can change the status quo.