It is such a profound book. I get something out of it every time I read it. "How can we see the gods face to face, till we have faces?" Wow.
I know. "Wow!" And I agree, every time I read it, I find something new. The first time I read it, I totally identified with Orual, when she recognized herself as the cruel, bloated spider living on everyone else's blood ... The next time, of course, I identified with Psyche with her joy in the "invisible" world of her marriage ... This time, I think, I felt for both of them, and saw them both in myself. Which I think is where the story leaves you, because they are the same, both Psyche. One is Psyche from the beginning, beautiful and by nature able to receive the god when he comes for her, while Orual grew into her being Psyche through the "death" of her old self, through the many long years of half-life ...It is such a profound book. I get something out of it every time I read it. "How can we see the gods face to face, till we have faces?" Wow.
Good points Timmy. I hadn't thought of it that way.Timmy of Oz said:He also bought up the debate with Anscombe. I kind of agreed with him, not because I felt Lewis had failed so much in the debate, but that Lewis had come to a point in his life that he lost interest in always defending the logic of his faith and was going into a more existential path of his faith. He was following his mentor George MacDonald more. Following the poet and the mystic in himself. In TWHF you see that in the end Urual saw how little the Fox (the logical side of Lewis) had to offer in understanding Gods and how much more the common person or the priest had to offer. Joy Davidman also was an existential poet, it was no wonder that Lewis and her hit it off so well. We all, when we are young in our faith, want to defend our faith to others with logic and the like so that they will think well of our decisions to follow our new faith. Yet latter in our walk we come to an inner faith that doesn't need to be defended, we follow the Christian mystic more than the Christian apologist. It is clear that Lewis' work does change latter in his life. I don't even feel he would have written all the CON if not for that change.
CSL said that TWHF was his "spiritual autobiography," so I don't think we need to look far for the inspiration for Orual. One the the beauties of the book is, I think, that at different times in your life and spiritual walks, it is easy to identify with the various characters. The first time I read it, I couldn't look at Orual and say, "What a selfish, grasping witch!" because I understood and empathized with her. Je sui Orual! If, like Lewis, I wanted to write a "spiritual autobiography," of course it would start out with a self-justifying, covetous old sinner ... I wouldn't have to look for another model for that...CF said:I can't add much to this, except to say that even slight acquaintances and brief observations can give material to a novelist. The character of Orual is obsessed with justifying herself and controlling others.... and frankly, you could meet five or six persons like her in any random city on a given day. Maybe Mister Lewis had encountered LOTS of pushy, obsessive people.