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“Till We Have Faces” is definitely C.S. Lewis’s most beautiful and thought provoking work of fiction. It is a retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche. Like Lewis’s retelling, Psyche in the Greek myth is the most beautiful of the three sisters, but instead of just Orual visiting Psyche after the sacrifice both sisters come, and unlike Orual they could see her palace. The two sisters became very jealous of Psyche’s beautiful palace and of all the riches and happiness Psyche now possessed. They spitefully devised a plan and convinced Psyche to look on her husband’s face, which she was forbidden to do because he was a god and he did not want her to know. In “Till We Have Faces” Orual also convinces Psyche to look upon her lover’s face, but she did not do this out of spite. She does this thinking she is doing what is best for her beloved sister and not seeing that the way she was acting as not out of love. In both stories Psyche is punished for her disobedience and is sent tearfully wandering and searching for her lost love and is required to complete many difficult tasks in order to be reunited with him once more.
C.S. Lewis splits his story into a book one and a book two. Book one is Orual’s accusation against the gods. She is accusing them of wronging her by taking Psyche away from her and taking her happiness. She argues that if the gods had allowed her to see them and to see Psyche’s palace she spoke of, that she would have believed Psyche and they both would be happy. She writes of many people that shaped her into the woman she became.
The king, Orual’s father, was a very selfish and hateful man. He is a perfect example of the Trickster archetype. He cares nothing for his three daughters or for anyone else. He even...
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... hate. Now in the end of her life she finally sees who she really is, she sees her face. She states, “I saw well why the gods do not speak openly to us, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
The lessons in this book are definitely hard pills to swallow. Many people struggle with believing in God because we cannot see Him and Because He allows difficult circumstances into our lives. How can God speak to us, as humans, if we do not see ourselves for what we truly are? We are ugly sinners and are not worthy of His beautiful love and of His divine guidance. Until we can let go of our selfish desires and can see ourselves for what we are we cannot understand all that He means for us to. How can we meet God face to face until we have faces?
Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus can be argued that it is related loosely to Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth. This comparative and contrasting characteristics that can be seen within both plays make the reader/audience more aware of imagery, the major characters, plot, attitudes towards women, and themes that are presented from two very different standpoints. The authors Sophocles and Dove both have a specific goal in mind when writing the two plays. In this paper I will take a closer look of the two, comparing and contrasting the plays with the various elements mentioned previously.
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.
With a new century approaching, Bruce Weigl's twelfth collection of poetry, After the Others, calls us to stand on the millennium's indeterminate edge. This book, opening with the last four lines of Milton's "Paradise Lost," parallels our departure from this century with Adam's fearful exit from Eden, beyond which is "all abyss, / Eternity, whose end no eye can reach" ("Paradise Lost"). Weigl posits that we stand at the century's uncertain gate naked, cold, and greedy; he refers often to a looming future, to give our collapsing present more urgency. We've forgotten, he says, how to love and live simply, how to write honestly and well.
Cancer affects Hazel Grace, Augustus Waters, and their families deeply, it represents the lost, hope, and surprise of cancer often, but this is not only true in books,it also affects people in real life, parents start to view their kids differently, and the children start to view themselves as nothing but disease, and the culture they once had starts to change. Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace each have their own struggles, Hazel suffers from thyroid cancer and is terminal, Augustus had been cured, but it popped back making his body full of cancer, he as well ending up with terminal cancer. Often organizations and people would give them a little bit more because they are kids who had inevitability of death to look to. They both having to deal with the fact that they never knew what was coming, or if Hazel would lose Augustus first or if Augustus will lose Hazel first, though eventually that fact became obvious. Their families treat them in a way if they were healthy, they wouldn’t be treated in such a way. In real life there are hundreds who suffer cancer, but less who are terminal. Families have to learn how to deal with this, especially when the person is an adolescent. There are point where The Fault in Our Stars shows how different society becomes for those with cancer, and this is true in real life. Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace experiences and cancer let us view the world of cancer for several.
She has a very strong belief this and Thanks God that he didn’t make her like any of those people below her. Even goes as far as debating lives if God would have a given her a choice between any of the people she thinks she is better than. A trip to the doctor’s office for her husband’s ulcer brings a new “revelation” for Mrs. Turpin. While observing the people in the waiting room, she analyzes them and gives them titles in the groups below her. White- trash, ugly and so on. There is one girl in the room though who seems to really have something against Mrs. Turpin. Every comment she makes seems to upset the young girl and make her agitation to rise. It disturbs and also confuses her because she can’t understand why the girl who doesn’t even know her would want to ac so rudely towards such a kind a giving woman such as her. “All at once the ugly girl turned her lips inside out again. Her eyes fixed like two drills on Mrs. Turpin. This time there was no mistaking that there was something urgent behind them.” Continuing on in conversation with the white- trash an outburst of thanking the lord aloud causes the young lady to suddenly hurl the book she was reading at Mrs. Turpin and jumping across the table and attempting to choke her. The nurse and doctor try to contain the young girl while slowly giving her a shot in the arm to calm her insanity down.
My Side of the Mountain is a remarkable novel written by Jean Craighead George (1991). It addresses issues such as nature, independence and adventure. In the book, Sam Gribley, a boy from New York, runs away from home to live in the woods. Throughout this essay, I am going to talk about the things and the character traits that a person such as Sam needs in order to accomplish his or her goals. In the book, Sam’s goals were to reach indepence and to survive using the resources in the woods. For example, when Miss Turner, a close friend of Sam, tried to change Sam’s mind about living in the woods, Sam said to her, “That’s just what I want. I am going to trap animals and eat nuts and bulbs and berries and make myself a house.” (George, 1991, p. 22). Another example is that Sam expressed that he wanted to dress a piece of clothes made by him using the hide of a deer (George, 1991, p. 60). At the end of the book, Sam accomplished his goals, he thought, “I was self-sufficient, I could travel the world over, never needing a penny, never asking anything of anyone.” (George, 1991, p. 173). From my point of view, all human beings have goals. The only difference is the nature of those goals. Goals can be represented in terms of money, love, health, etc. I also think that goals are a necessity for us. They impulse our lives and give it a sense of direction. It is very important knowing your objectives in life because you can focus all your energy on reaching those objectives. In this way, the path towards reaching your goals will be easier to travel as you will see the goal itself and not the pain you have to stand in order to reach it.
... sins, but she can’t take back what she did so she will forever have blood on her hands. This guilt and all of the lies she has told is giving her true trepidation and in the end she decided to end her terror by taking her life.
...manic depressive state which leads her to her suicide. She no longer has a will to repress any untold secrets from the past or perhaps the past. Since she has strayed far from her Christian beliefs, she has given in to the evil that has worked to overcome her. She believes she is finally achieving her freedom when she is only confining herself to one single choice, death. In taking her own life, she for the last time falls into an extremely low mood, disregards anyone but herself, and disobeys the church.
...trates the life of Helen who according to the authors, describes the vicissitudes of a woman whose beauty sparked the Trojan War, or the exploits of a hero. Eleanor Antin shows both sides of the ambiguous character of Helen, revealing the complexity of a figure who, after three thousand years of fame, remains curiously silent, despite being the most beautiful and disastrous objectification of anxiety and male desire.
The novel, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other (2011) written by Sherry Turkle, presents many controversial views, and demonstrating numerous examples of how technology is replacing complex pieces and relationships in our life. The book is slightly divided into two parts with the first focused on social robots and their relationships with people. The second half is much different, focusing on the online world and it’s presence in society. Overall, Turkle makes many personally agreeable and disagreeable points in the book that bring it together as a whole.
In his book “Between the World and Me”, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores what it means to be a black body living in the white world of the United States. Fashioned as a letter to his son, the book recounts Coates’ own experiences as a black man as well as his observations of the present and past treatment of the black body in the United States. Weaving together history, present, and personal, Coates ruminates about how to live in a black body in the United States. It is the wisdom that Coates finds within his own quest of self-discovery that Coates imparts to his son.
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 ...
Many of the stories that have been told for centuries, or have recently been created, incorporate the story of a young innocent character who embarks on a journey and becomes a hero, known as The Hero’s Journey; a series of steps that all heroes follow. This journey not only shows the main character becoming a hero but also shows the hero move along a path similar to that of adolescence, the path between childhood and maturity. The Hero’s Journey was created by a man by the name of Joseph Campbell. He wrote a book called The Hero with One Thousand Faces, a novel containing a variety of stories that follow the steps of the Hero’s Journey. One famous creation that follows The Hero’s Journey is the science fiction film trilogy: Star Wars, created by George Lucas. Lucas depicts the struggles that take place along the path of adolescence through the story of a protagonist Luke Skywalker, who strives to become a Jedi Knight to show that Campbell’s Hero’s Journey reflects the struggles that youth go through whether they are depicted in a story or not.
Shakespeare uses a variety of characters in his famous play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who effectively demonstrate family loyalty, one of the values relevant to our society. The play focuses on the thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions of this young prince, Hamlet, seeking revenge for his father’s death. When Hamlet decides to act on the information the angered ghos...
John Green’s wonderful yet tragic best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars tells a heart-wrenching story of two teenage cancer patients who fall in love. Augustus Waters and Hazel Lancaster live in the ordinary city of Indianapolis, where they both attend a support group for cancer patients. Falling in love at first sight, the two are inseparable until Augustus’s cancer comes out of remission, turning Hazel’s world upside. This is one of the best young-adult fiction novels of the year because it keeps readers on the edge of their seat, uses themes to teach real life lessons, and uses a realistic point of view instead of the cliché happy ending of most books.