Any story can have a "deeper meaning." It can be symbolic, and yet not be allegorical. Most of the stories in the Bible have deeper meanings but that doesn't make them allegorical. How in the world are you defining allegory? Because it's much more complex than this. Lewis explicitly stated over and over in his letters that the Narnia series was NOT allegorical. And he also explained why. Click here for a definition of allegory.

In VDT, they're not supposed to avoid the islands. Why? Because those islands represent the trials and temptations of this life. You can't avoid either. Instead, you're tested through them and the experiences make you stronger. I see the ship as just a vessel carrying them through life. If you want to compare it to Noah's ark or something, maybe. Not sure about that though. Still, the ship has all kinds of people on it, right? Well, the symbolic / archetypal theme I'm seeing is the "ship of life" or even the "ocean of life" -- the journey. Think Homer's Odyssey. Click here for archetype. And here for symbolism.

I know we can't avoid them, but we should try to. We also should try to keep ourselves to God's commandments, but that's hard for us too, but we still have to try.

Really my English teacher told me that I should write something about the word allegory in this chapter and told me what it was. And you can say about my English teacher whatever you want, but she is a very fine teacher who knows everything about English and writers like Lewis, and everything he has written and meanings in it
She really helps me with my English and my research.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. Trying to keep God's commandments is hard sometimes. Why? Because of trials and temptations! The minute you become a Christian, actually even before, the devil is on your back--tempting you! If Jesus couldn't avoid temptation in His life on this earth [and it was more than just His 40 days in the desert], can we? No! God has allowed the devil to tempt us in this life, so He can deliver us and strengthen our faith. It's the same with trials and temptations. They make us STRONGER spiritually. Avoiding all 3, even trying to, = very weak Christian.

I'm not trying to ridicule your English teacher.

Here is C. S. Lewis on allegory...
1. The Allegory of Love: "Allegory, in some sense, belongs not to medieval man but to man, or even to mind, in general. It is of the very nature of thought and language to represent what is immaterial in picturable terms. What is good or happy has always been high like the heavens and bright like the sun. Evil and misery were deep and dark from the first. . . .On the one hand you can start with an immaterial fact, such as the passions which you actually experience, and can then invent visibilia to express them. If you are hesitating between an angry retort and a soft answer, you can express your state of mind by inventing a person called Ira with a torch and letting her contend with another invented person called Patientia. This is allegory."
2. Letter to Mrs. Hook: "By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, in Bunyan a giant represents Despair."

And here is Lewis on why the Narnian Chronicles aren't allegorical...
1. Letter to Mrs. Hook: "If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents Despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?'"
2. Letter to Sophia Storr: LWW "is not, as some people think, an allegory. That is, I don't say, 'Let us represent Christ as Aslan'."
3. Letter to some American 5th graders: “You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books ‘represents’ something in this world. Things do that in The Pilgrim’s Progress but I’m not writing in that way. I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia.'"

Narnia is supposition, not allegory, even though Lewis uses some symbols. What's the difference? Letter to Mrs. Hook: "Allegory and such supposals differ because they mix the real and the unreal in different ways. Bunyan's picture of Giant Despair does not start from supposal at all. It is not a supposition but a fact that despair can capture and imprison a human soul. What is unreal (fictional) is the giant, the castle, and the dungeon. The Incarnation of Christ in another world is mere supposal: but granted the supposition, He would really have been a physical object in that world as He was in Palestine and His death on the Stone Table would have been a physical event no less than his death on Calvary."

Kind of unrelated, but I remember the last scene in the book, where the Pevinsies and Eustace and Reepicheep are standing on the beach with lamb-Aslan, and he's cooking fish over an open fire and says "Come, have breakfast." Recently, I was at a Bible study at my church and we were reading one of the gospels. There was a story we read (sorry, I don't remember it very clearly) and I think it was the one about how they were fishing all night and caught nothing, then Jesus told them to cast their nets in the water again and they would catch some. Then they caught too many for thier small boat, and another boat had to help them. So we kept reading and it said how they counted the fish and got on shore again, and then Jesus stood on the shore and started cooking the fish over an open fire, and said to his apostles, "Come, have breakfast." When I heard that, I immediately caught the connection to the ending scene of VODT. Jesus (Aslan) standing on the shore cooking fish over an open fire, asking his apostles (Reepicheep, Edmund, Eustace, Lucy) to "Come, have breakfast." Not very huge, important symbolism, just a little smallish example.

You're right 9fingerfrodo And if I remember well (it's been a while since I read VDT for the last time), that was also the beginning of the talk between Aslan and the children in which Aslan tells the kids they can find him in their own world too, but then with another name.

I really hope they put this scene in the film