Summary of Till We Have Faces
Till We Have Faces, a novel by C.S. Lewis, uses the love story of Cupid and Psyche as a foundation for a new tale set in the kingdom of Glome. The story is narrated by Princess Orual, the eldest of three sisters, who is limited by her “ugliness,” battered by her abusive father, and tormented by a love for her youngest sister, the beautiful goddess-like Psyche. It is Orual’s love and need for love that eventually sets a painful spiral of events in motion.
Fox, a Greek slave, tutors Psyche and Orual in philosophy and the fundamentals of life. The trio develops a strong bond. Their joy is tempered by the troublesome, meddling middle sister Redival, but even more so as Glome falls under the spell of sickness and poverty and the ever-looming attack of a neighboring kingdom.
As Glome becomes more unstable, the Priest of Ungit says a sacrifice is needed to correct the ills that have befallen the kingdom. Tabbed by the gods to lose her life to the Shadowbrute on Grey Mountain, Psyche accepts her role to save the kingdom and yield to a higher calling.
Finding Psyche alive after the planned sacrifice, Orual must decide if her beautiful sister is stricken with madness or truly has become the wife of a god as she claims. Orual’s decision to force Psyche to betray her husband results in Psyche’s exile and fills Orual with a guilt that she carries throughout her reign as queen. In the end, Orual must reconcile with her lost sister through divine visions.
Analysis
Although Till We Have Faces draws its inspiration from the myth of Cupid and Psyche, which explores a number of human faults including jealousy, lack of trust and envy, the primary human fault C.S. Lewis explores is lack of faith. Like Mircea Eliade...
... middle of paper ...
...ot be killed. Fastened to the tree she is vulnerable to the creatures of the woods and the Shadowbrute.
Through her autonomy, being unlike others and destined to live an ethereal and divine life, she demonstrates yet another goddess archetype: the virgin. She feels it is her sole destiny to go to the divine and does not fear sacrifice, but exults in her role as both conduit to the gods and a goddess herself. She has a longing to be with the gods and knows she is singular and special among the mortals of Glome. “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to the find the place where all the beauty came from —”
Like any woman, Psyche contains a quantity of personalities and cannot be wholly defined by one archetype. The closing pages of Till We Have Faces reveal that Orual is Psyche. The differences within, are universal to all.
Our opinion of the world, especially religious beliefs, shape who we become. C.S. Lewis retells the story of The Marriage of Cupid and Psyches in his book Till We Have Faces. In the original story, women are very shallow characters with little personality, power, or value. Lewis gives women more power and they become more godlike— Orual through her veil and Psyche through her moral goodness. This affirms the power and character of the gods.
As one of the most well known ancient Roman love poets, Ovid has demonstrated bountiful talents within his writing. When reading myths from his book titled Metamorphoses, you gain an enlightening insight of how he viewed mythology. To Ovid, love was the origin of everything. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that most of his poems relate to the theme of love. However, not all poets are the same and every re-telling of a myth has its own unique perspective. In this paper I will compare and contrast the myth of Medea in Euripides Medea and Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 7. I will then explain how Ovid’s approach to love and loss correlate to his general approach to myth as a whole. I will support my belief with evidence from Ovid’s Metamorphoses Book 14.
A human being is a complicated entity of a contradictory nature where creative and destructive, virtuous and vicious are interwoven. Each of us has gone through various kinds of struggle at least once in a lifetime ranging from everyday discrepancies to worldwide catastrophes. There are always different causes and reasons that trigger these struggles, however, there is common ground for them as well: people are different, even though it is a truism no one seems to able to realize this statement from beyond the bounds of one’s self and reach out to approach the Other.
Orual first feels the pain of the great gulf after the kingdoms subjects begin to perceive that the Princess Psyche is something more than a mortal, that she is somehow touched by the gods. Her beauty is remarkable, certainly, but it is not only her beauty that convinces the kingdom of her uniqueness. A certain radiance and artless perfection seem to emanate from the young women. The sick soon begin flocking in hordes to the palace gates to be touched by the "goddess". Psyche is praised and revered throughout the kingdom. Until, that is, the harvests turn meager ad the masses look for a scapegoat. Only one answer presents itself: a blood sacrifice. A perfect sacrifice. Psyche, the princess, the goddess. Orual raves in protest, nearly mad with pain, and falls into a temporary state of senselessness over the impending sacrifice of her beloved sister.
It is impossible to understand the innermost and ever complex thoughts, feelings, hopes, and reflections of others. To understand is to grasp the strife and pleasure of each moment’s depth through a set lens. Confined by my own lens, I have been and will always be the main character of my own book. Though I can never know another human’s cognitive glances, I can at least be mindful of the infinite complexity and reasoning of each human. Even the most empathetic cannot understand exactly how Claude Monet felt for Camille, how Beethoven felt for “Elise”, or how
The next testimonies are from the mother of the abducted wife who pleads for the authorities to find her missing daughter. Along the way the wife’s mother notes that her daughter is beautiful to be noticed, “Her complexion is a little on the dark side, and she has a mole by the outside corner of her left eye, but her face is a tiny, perfect oval (306). Also, that the daughter, Masago, is very bold for a woman her
Carla Arnell’s main focus in her review of Till we have Faces, is how she concludes that Orual is justice, not only in her life, but also in the lives of the citizens of Glome. She see’s Orual as seeking to make things right and begins the work of trying to organize and distribute the justice more fairly throughout her city. It is not until towards the end of Orual’s life that she discovers that her quest for justice is only an illusion, based on her ill placed sense of faith and trust in the things of this world. As she is divinely made aware of the truth of her endeavor, she is changed forever and finally able to take comfort in her finally understanding of the transcendent God and a vision of justice rooted in the transcendence.
The play, “Beauty”, explains the story about two foolish girls, fighting over a magical wish to receive a feature that each other has. Although it is heart wrenching that each of these girls are begging to change their features, it shows us the play’s underlying message;Their will always be problems that affect us. The author of the story, Jane Martin, shows us this simple message along with a comical aspect.
C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is told in the first person point of view of Orual, the protagonist. The use of first person allows the reader to gain insight on what Orual is thinking throughout the plot of the story, which helps the reader understand the actions Orual takes throughout the novel. For example, Orual’s thoughts when it was revealed that one of the daughter’s was the accursed were of anger. She thought that the king “had seen the arrow pointed at Psyche, had been afraid for her, fighting for her” (Lewis 54). This prompts Orual to sacrifice herself “to the brute instead of Istra” (Lewis 61). The story is told in media res. The narrator opens stating “I am old now” (lewis 3). The narrator continues on to tell her story through writing. Orual, the narrator goes back and begins her writing “with the day her mother died.” She continues her writing until it is caught up with present day. And the story continues one with Orual’s death. The
In Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis retells the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the point of view of Psyche's sister, with powerful insight into the nature of human affection and the relationship between human and divine. In the original myth, Psyche is the youngest of three princesses, so beautiful that men begin to worship her instead of Venus. The goddess avenges herself by commanding that Psyche be exposed on a mountain to die, but her son Cupid secretly rescues her, having fallen in love with her. He hides her in a palace where he visits her nightly, but he forbids her to see his face for fear of his mother. After a time Psyche is granted a visit from her sisters; seeing the splendor of her palace, they are jealous. They tell her that her "husband" must be some horrible monster, and they persuade her to disobey the god's command and light a lamp while he sleeps, to see if it is not so. This she does, but he wakes and rebukes her, and she goes into exile to be tested until worthy of her husband. Lewis's retelling makes the god's palace invisible to mortal eyes; thus Psyche's sister Orual, the narrator of the tale, can insist it is not jealousy but concern for Psyche that motivates her to act as she does. Told from Orual's point of view, the story shows her journey to self-discovery and understanding--her quest to find her face, for as she learns, the gods cannot "meet us face to face till we have faces"--until we know our own selves. Faces are thus a strong source of imagery and symbolism in the book. One's face is a reflection of one's soul and true character. It is, symbolically, one's identity. The faces of Orual and Psyche, of Ungit and her son the God of the Grey Mountain, give us insight into their ...
The second part of the second stage is the Madonna of Mercy. This Divine Goddess can resolve our problems and be with us all the time. She can also satisfy our deepest needs and open us to the heavenly gate of eternal and immortal life.
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” is written in an entertaining and adventurous spirit, but serves a higher purpose by illustrating the century’s view of courtly love. Hundreds, if not thousands, of other pieces of literature written in the same century prevail to commemorate the coupling of breathtaking princesses with lionhearted knights after going through unimaginable adventures, but only a slight few examine the viability of such courtly love and the related dilemmas that always succeed. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that women desire most their husband’s love, Overall, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” shows that the meaning of true love does not stay consistent, whether between singular or separate communities and remains timeless as the depictions of love from this 14th century tale still hold true today.
Beyond the shield of civilization and into the depths of a primitive, untamed frontier lies the true face of the human soul. It is in the midst of this savagery and unrelenting danger that mankind confronts the brooding nature of his inner self.
This short essay engages in a close reading of a passage of Emmanuel Levinas’s ‘The Face’ drawing on the concepts of identity and relational logics. Questions concerning the assumptions employed by Levinas about time, space and form of being will be asked of the text in order to create a dialogue with its meaning. The potential implications of these assumptions will also be explored through the consideration of hinge words and pivotal phrases. Tangible conclusions will not be drawn; however arguments will unfold which demonstrate the possibilities of this passage in regards to the creation of knowledge and the understanding of everyday ways of being.
Beauty and the Beast is probably one of the most well known fairy tales that the Grimms’ reproduced. In it’s original form it was a long, drawn out story that was catered to adults. The Grimms’ changed the story to be more understood by children and made it short and to the point. Unlike many of the other fairy tales that they reproduced, Beauty and the Beast contains many subtle symbols in its purest form. It shows a girl and how she transfers to a woman; it also shows that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The one major thing that separates this story from all the rest is that Beauty gets to know the Beast before marrying him.