Till It Erases

Orual's Final 'Post'

2006-04-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

“I ended my first book with the words ‘no answer.’ I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face, questions die away. What other answers would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.” (Till We Have Faces, 308)

Is it significant that Orual dies while she's writing more words?

Who is the God of the Mountain?

2006-04-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

When I read the concluding chapter of Till We Have Faces, I trembled when Orual stood before the god of the mountain because instead of Orual looking up at him, it was I who realized my own facelessness. In light of the description of his majesty, all my insecurities and doubts seemed to fade away:

“Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy and overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. I was no one … Psyche herself was, in a manner, no one. I loved her as I would once have thought it impossible to love, would have died any death for her. And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and oh, gloriously she did) it was for another’s sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes.” (TWHF 307)

My question for thought is this: who is this, if it is not God? Who else would be so glorious, so all consuming, yet all giving and all powerful? Who else would give us the ability to love himself wholly while giving us the power to love others more deeply than ever before?

Scene Selection

2006-04-03T15:17:00.000-07:00

My thanks to all of you who posted. There is much to discuss, but at this point, I would like to call our attention to a specific scene in Till We Have Faces that I find very rich. Some of you have already alluded to it:

“ ‘I know you love me, Pysche,’ I said, ‘And I think I should not live if you didn’t. But you must trust me too’. She said nothing. And now I was right on top of the terrible thing, and it almost struck me dumb.

‘You spoke last time,” I said, “of the day we got the thorn out of your hand. We hurt you that time, Psyche. But we did right. Those who love must hurt. I must hurt you again today. You cannot go your own way. You will let me rule and guide you.’

[Orual tries to persuade Psyche to leave the god, her husband, because he might not be a god. Psyche does not comply.]

‘An end of this must be made,’ I said. ‘You shall do it. Psyche, I command you.”

‘Dear Maia, my duty is no longer to you.’

‘Then my life shall end with it,’ said I. I flung back my cloak further, thrust out my bare left arm, and struck the dagger into it till the point pricked out the other side.” (TWHF 163-4)

Love is self-sacrificing. Orual’s self-butchery is certainly not love, however much she believes it to be. Her move is out of jealousy for the purpose of manipulation. Psyche, utterly cut to the heart, hotly replies that she will do it, but that her husband will know she was tortured into obeying Orual, and will forgive her. Christ’s love is starkly opposite to Orual’s “love,” and Pysche is indeed correct about His divine grace and forgiveness.

Realizing My Facelessness

2006-04-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

The first time I read C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, I thought it was a great story, but part of me felt unsatisfied because I knew there was something deeper in it that I had not understood. However, the second time I read it, I finished it sobbing.

In the Literary Encyclopedia, Peter Schakel states that this work was:

C. S. Lewis's last work of fiction, and the one he considered his best. It was not well received initially, probably because of its difficulty and its differences from his earlier narratives, and remains the least popular of his fictional works, though it is the most highly praised by literary critics.

From my own experiences, I see this to be true. The more I studied C. S. Lewis’s life and context, the structure of myth and the actual text itself, the more its deeper meanings began to surface.

I am interested to hear from others who have read this work. Did you like it? Did you hate it? Tell me why.

I'll Never Post on a Blog!

2006-03-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

A year ago I was making some sort of hard and fast statement like, "I'll never make a blog. If I wanna say something to somebody, I'll just go ahead and say it to them in person." My how I always have to eat my words. Now you can too!

One of my teachers was telling our class that God made words for communication. We use them to hide. The point of this blog is not to hide behind words--this will not be a superfluous, tedious representation of English major "isms."

Well, where words are plentiful, there are bound to be worthless ones. To avoid that, my hopes are that 1. there will be short posts and 2. that the worthless will someday be wonderfully lost in cyberspace (as my title implies) and the good will remain stuck in the mind to both challenge and encourage even years from now.

-qwerty-