T. S. Lewis Till We Have Faces

Many people in today’s society believe that his or her own way of thinking is the best for everyone and every situation. This is not the case if one or both parties are stubborn and will only agree with his or her terms. Orual from Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis has a difficult personality that renders her ability to understand the gods of the 700 to 450 B.C. time period she thinks have wronged her for not listening to her when in fact she is the one to have not listened. In the novel Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C. S. Lewis the character Orual has an obstinate attitude that influences her actions and relationships with those she loves and reflects on how people behave in modern civilization and its consequences.

Figurative language is another important factor for the story. In the story, he talked about wickedness in a person’s body. “Your wickedness makes you as it were as heavy as lead.” This will make you think that the amount of wickedness in one’s body is equivalent to the weight of lead. This might persuade people to go be “reborn” since they would want to get rid of most of that wickedness. Another example is the comparison of a person to a spider. “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider.” Edwards use this to say that we’re no different than spiders in God’s eyes. We could be squished or dropped to our doom in a mater of seconds. Edwards also compared God’s wrath to the great waters. “The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present, they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and

Eve’s hunger to become independent from Adam and all she is commanded to do is similar to Satan’s situation in that their yearn for power and singular identity lead them to revolt against their creator. Her desire to separate from Adam is first seen when she is introduced to the audience in her state of narcissism. She sees a reflection of herself in a pond and is in awe of her beauty “of sympathy and love,” (IV, 465) which shows the parallelism to Satan’s own arrogant vanity. He catches on to this similarity they share and decides she will be an easy target of persuasion. He quickly takes charge and plans how he will lead her to eat the apple from the “Tree of Knowledge,” which is the only tree that God prohibited to pick fruit from. Satan first catches her attention by being a serpent who speaks; something she had never encountered before. He smooth talks her into really listening to him by focusing his words around her and how much better life could be if she just took a bite

As a life long Cincinnati Bengals fan, I have listened to Marvin Lewis speak several times in clinics and other coaching conventions. He has a sound concept of defense, and what it takes to be successful at the highest level. I also appreciate what he has done for the team I root for, as we were mired in a decade long of embarrassing seasons before his arrival. He has brought stability, consistency, and pride back to our franchise.

The book, Till we Have Faces chronicles the life of Orual, who struggles with her relationship with the gods and with the people closest to her . . The reader is able to better understand  her  internal struggles as  she is the narrator of the book. Because the story  is written from Orual’s  point of view the reader sees  life  through her eyes. They experience her biases and the way her emotions, perspectives, and prejudices warp her views on her life and ultimately the world, allowing them to understand her even better. . The reader is brought into Orual’s thought processes and emotions. When Orual reflects on herself, the reader is able to reflect with her and see where she might have been wrong in her thinking. Throughout reading,  Till We Have Faces, I felt more and more able to personally relate to  Orual. As the story unfolded, I realized that many  of the similarities in our life and world views revolved around our selfishness and need for control.

To understand this novel, one has to be familiar with the classic Christian stories in the Book of Genesis. One particular story they have to be familiar with is the story of Adam and Eve. Adam was created on the sixth day that Earth was and he was created in God’s image. He was put into the Garden of Eve and was given everything he could possibly need. The same day, Eve was created out of Adam’s own rib. They were to spend eternity in the beautiful Garden of Eve. One day, Eve had an encounter with a snake in the forbidden tree. The snake promised Eve that if both she and Adam were to eat from the forbidden tree, they would have the same power as God. Eve believed this and brought Adam to the forbidden tree. When they ate fruit from the tree,

Both Adam and Eve were tricked into believing that the fruit will present them with a more fulfilling existence, but instead it proved lacking and disappointing. Furthermore, the narrator soon after says, “ Thousands of greedy individuals abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed upstairs and downstairs, spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.” (Borges 115) The “greedy individuals” the narrator speaks of are a symbol of humankind’s dissatisfaction with its existence, and its constant need to search for something more divine. Thus, the narrator describes Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace, which was “spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.”

The novel, “Till We Have Faces” by C.S Lewis, is a reiteration of the famous myth of Cupid and Psyche. In this first partitioned piece of the novel, the book takes perspective from the ugly stepsister; Orual, who lives in the kingdom of Glome (Connects to Hellenistic Greece). Orual has a single parent: her father, who takes no pride in associating himself with either of his daughters. Additionally, Orual has a wise old slave named Fox who plays as the deuteragonist. Psyche is introduced into the novel as the tragic hero. Soon after Psyche is introduced, the kingdom of Glome begins to crumble: plagues curse the land, a lack livestock, and grain along with a drought that outlasted any other. Psyche is said to be the poison tainting their land, and they must offer her up to the god’s to restore peace, “We must find the Accursed. And she must die by the rite of the Great Offering” (Lewis 54).

In the story “Till We Have Faces,” CS Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche through the eyes of Psyche's older sister, Orual. Using the viewpoint of Orual gives a different view into the story since her relationship with the gods is nonexistent in the beginning. The gods have taken the only one she loves, Psyche, and Orual, ultimately, uses the book as a complaint aimed towards the gods because she is jealous. Throughout the story, there are many glimpses into the jealous nature of Orual. When we first see Orual, it seems that her jealousy is stemming from wanting to be as beautiful as Psyche and blaming the gods for her ugliness, however later on, after Psyche is taken from the gods, her jealousy seems to stem from Psyche no longer needing

One example of pathos and loaded language in the story was when Edwards stated, “The Gods that hold you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked” (Edwards 48). This quote produces a sense of emotion because as one is held under a scorching furnace, God is the one that is preventing he or she from falling. This would give sinners the feeling where God is their only hope. This quote also has a loaded word in it: “abhor.” “Abhor” portrays God’s hatred and is ready to let one fall into the pit of hell. This proves that Edwards believes everyone is born evil unless one converts, because in his opinion, God is the one preventing them from going to hell. The next quote also shows pathos: “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood” (Edwards 47). When Edwards compares how God’s wrath is like a bow and arrow ready to be struck right into your heart, it gives a horrific feeling because as one “sins” more, the string will be pulled back further. This quote describes how furious

  In the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which gives them greater powers of perception but also causes their expulsion from Paradise. The story creates a link between clear vision and the ability to perceive the truth‹which, in this case, causes mankind to fall from a state of blissful ignorance to one of miserable knowledge. In the Merchant's Tale, vision and truth do not enjoy such an easy relationship. Vision is obstructed at both the metaphorical and the literal level, and the subversion of the fabliau genre challenges the idea of truthful representation. The Merchant's Tale destabilizes the notion of representation itself,

     C.S. Lewis’s book Till We Have Faces is about the myth of Psyche and Cupid. However, in the original tale Psyche is a very naive girl who is greatly influenced by her two wicked older sisters. In this rendition of the tale, Psyche’s sisters are not evil and Psyche is not a mindless fool as she has been portrayed in earlier tales.

When someone is as beautiful as the goddess Psyche, it is easy to compare one's self to the her and feel unworthy. In C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Psyche is a beautiful girl, and some say she is even more beautiful than a goddess. Her beauty does not seem over the top; she appears to have the most natural and perfect appearance. Psyche has a sister, Orual, who feels ugly and unworthy compared to Psyche and her beauty. These feelings become so intense that she becomes angry with Psyche and the gods. In Till We Have Faces, Orual experiences this envy until she realizes that she, too, is just as beautiful as Psyche, and her inner peace is restored as she abandons the anger she has been holding on to for so long.

What resonates in Milton's description, however, are not the enumerated similarities between Eden and Enna but that which Milton leaves unmentioned—the striking comparison between Eve and Proserpina, between Satan's seduction of "our mother" and Dis's ravishment of Ovid's goddess. Milton does not explicitly compare Proserpina to Eve, yet the obvious parallel between these two innocent gardeners preyed upon by dark forces is a potent subtext. Indeed, upon completing his

Bradley Lewis’s Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM, and the New Psychiatry: the Birth of Post-psychiatry, tried introducing contemporary humanistic theory based on post-psychiatry in chapter two. Bradley tried to explain that the concept of post-psychiatry could be supported by discussions through three philosophical approaches: referential, relational and pragmatic. Bradley described that new psychiatry pandered to Gross and Levitt’s science-war and went with the referential theory. The reference theory approach emphasizes the objective fact itself and does not depend on people’s interpretations. Therefore, in the new psychiatry, diagnosis of a person will be based on whether the person satisfies a criterion of a certain disease or not. Bradley pointed out that the risk of taking the referential theory approach in psychiatry might strongly lead to the imposition of doctrine such that there was “a truth” in the world. Bradley also introduced the relational theory’s flexibility, which was from the connection not with a fact in the real world but concepts in human’s different interpretations or communities. The relational theory, in psychiatry, led the idea that there was no “one truth” and allows to have multiple interpretation as truths. The relational theory took account of humanities and would not label a person