A Response to C.S. Lewis' Till we Have Faces
Only now[1], only now that I am old and no longer care about beauty and no longer fear my own ugliness, only now that I have accepted my fate as the seer and her vision, the lover and her beloved, the heartbroken girl and her ugly despairing reflection in the mirror, only know do I perceive the truth and distortion of that cunning glass in the Pillar Room. I Orual - the wise Queen of Glome, the veiled woman warrior who struck terror in the hearts of those who loved and obeyed but never saw me, now know that I took as perfect and true, one glance into that curved glass. I saw there the magnified reflection of a swollen and bruised tear-streaked face with an eye shut tight by brutality and neglect and assumed the ugliness of the image as my own. That moment when I first gazed at my reflection in the cunning mirror in the Pillar Room, my face distorted and swollen from my father’s beating, that was the moment which determined my fate. I mistook the copy for the original. The ugliness of that reflection, enhanced by the ugliness of my own desperation and despair was my sentence in life. I know now that what I saw in that mirror all those years ago was not the perfect image of my own true physical ugliness. For how can there be in this world, a perfect image of anything? No, the mirror image was the trickery of the gods.
And yet, I am still unsure. Was there something in that reflection more true than I realized? There was something in that image that was itself alive and driven? Did that Orual, ugly and swollen, wild-eyed and beast-like, exist? And, was that Orual separate from this flesh and blood Queen? You Greeks might say that that glance into the mirror was mere appearance, tha...
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...he true ugliness of being caught in that moment’s reflection. So, I betrayed Istra and her god and found in that betrayal echoed all the betrayals of myself, endlessly reflecting in a veiled face that was no face. My ugliness was everywhere and nowhere. In every glance, every shimmer, every movement, I was revealed as no thing.
1 I Arnom, priest of Aphrodite who is still sometimes called Ungit in this country, have recovered yet one more roll from our great Queen Orual of Glome’s final writing. I include these writings in with the previous book, assuming they are one piece of discourse. This scroll must be clearer to the Greeks than to those of us in Glome, for what our Queen saw reflected for so many years, was never our deep love and abiding loyalty to her.
Works Cited:
Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces. San Diego: Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956.
The first person narrative in the ancient kingdom of Glome, a land ruled by a tyrannical king and religious goddess Ungit. Narrated by Princess (later Queen) Orual. The first section of this novel presents itself as an open complaint against the gods, particularly the god of the Grey Mountain, who brought Orual such pain and distress over the years, yet offer no answers or explanations to justify the suffering.
This paper will discuss the well published work of, Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New York: Schocken, 1975. Print. Sarah B. Pomerory uses this book to educate others about the role women have played throughout ancient history. Pomerory uses a timeline to go through each role, starting with mythological women, who were called Goddesses. She then talks about some common roles, the whores, wives, and slaves during this time. Pomerory enlightens the audience on the topic of women, who were seen as nothing at the time. Men were seen as the only crucial part in history; however, Pomerory’s focus on women portrays the era in a new light.
By gaining knowledge about themselves, the Vietnam War, and the world around them, O?Brien and Fossie become completely different soldiers. Though these two soldiers see and experience things that they could never imagine, Tim O?Brien and Mark Fossie manage to recognize themselves, the war, and the world for what is really is and undergo an amazing amount of personal maturation.
In chapter eight, the author provides a brief overview of the Hellenistic period. Though important, it feels out of place and lacking.
Oliver Stone created a legendary portrayal of the Vietnam War. One can understand the controversy that followed the production of the film given its legitimacy and accuracy. Before Platoon was realized, Americans viewed Vietnam as the war America lost but neglected to understand the soldiers that fought in the war. As a result, a generation of drug abusers, mental patients, and criminals were born out of the post-Vietnam climate. However, Platoon introduced Americans to the horrors and effects that a war like the Vietnam War could have on a soldier.
In the effort to purge their surroundings, they ended up killing their loved ones. This extreme effort to secure perfection and rid themselves of sin left no room for earthliness, for human error and weakness. They would both rather lead lives of complete perfection than lives where amounts of imperfection are tolerable. The younger man sees the sin in the eye of the older man and exudes a severe reaction of enraged sinfulness, where he himself takes on his own gruesome mortal sin and his own extreme imperfection in the act of murder. Similarly, Aylmer sees the sin in the birthmark of Georgiana and reacts with repulsed sinfulness, where he himself also takes on his own horrible mortal sin and his own severe imperfection in the act of murder. In the attempts of both men to purge themselves of sin, they invite even greater sin into their
to the audience it may seem that Oedipus has at last discovered who he truly is, but Sophocles doesn’t believe that he has had a true revelation and continues on
...illing to go so far as to use the word empire. I’m not suggesting that the “imperial” actions by the US are any less sinister than the policies of the British and should be just ignored because the word empire doesn’t apply. But in my opinion, the word empire and all it connotes is just not an apt word to describe the United States.
“You made him O Aruru now create his equal; let it be as like him as his own reflection, his second self, stormy heart of stormy heart.”
“…looking now at the evil and aging face on the canvas, and now at the fair young face that laughed back at him from the polished glass. The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul.” (Pg. 93)
The Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion and society were similar, but their government system was different. The religions in Egypt and Mesopotamia were similar because both were polytheistic, had beliefs of an afterlife, as well as priests who were part of the upper levels of the social hierarchy. Social similarities between Egypt and Mesopotamia included: rigid social structure, dependence on slavery, and authoritative religious structure. However, the system of government was different because Egyptian society was governed by a theocratic monarchy, while Mesopotamia was ruled by a traditional monarchy.
Gender and queerness are currently hot-button topics in the West, especially now that many have begun to work towards deconstructing the preconceived notions we have about gender and presentation. In Ancient Greek myths and theatre, the general attitude towards what we’ll hereinafter refer to as queerness, since no such categories had yet been invented in Ancient Greece, was complicated; Plato himself went back and forth on his opinion on the matter. He first argued that “same-sex lovers were far more blessed than ordinary mortals” but in his final work, The Laws, asserts that homosexual relationships are “utterly unholy, odious-to-the-gods and ugliest of ugly things” (Guardian). In a patriarchal society where strapping young men traipsed about, exercising in next to nothing, these conflicting attitudes are unsurprising to a modern critic. It’s also worth noting that, while there are some mentions of women loving women in Ancient Greece, the prevailing version of what we call queer was between men, due to the Greeks’ phallocentric view of sex.
The Mesopotamian people were “polytheistic yet they were henotheistic also.” They had a structural hierarchy of deities, with certain gods being superior to others. The early Mesopotamian gods just like the ancient Greek gods, “bore many similarities to humans and were anthropomorphic.” Not only did they look like humans, they also often acted like humans. They would eat, sleep, and even consume alcohol which actually led to them feeling the effects of being drunk. Another thing that both religions have in common is the fact that most of the gods and goddesses of the Mesopotamian religion were related to each other. It was a sort of “family” of deities. Their gods were labeled much in the same manner as the Greek gods. They had the 4 creator gods: god of the sky, who was also the God of Gods and ruler of their heaven, then the god of storms, the god of the earth, and the god of ...
Grant, Michael. From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World. New York: Micheal Grant Publications Ltd, 1982.
Japan is a large island off to the east of China it is a great country that has a rich culture. The Japanese religion is based off of two main beliefs, the belief in Shinto and Buddhism many Japanese people believe consider themselves both. The Japanese people were known to be around as early as 4,500 B.C. They have constructed their government style to a constitutional monarchy where they do in fact have an emperor, but he has limited power within the country. The main power of the country is held by the Prime Minister of Japan. Japan is made up of many islands that extend along the Pacific coast of Asia. The land area is made up of a lot of forest and mountainous area that cannot be used for agricultural, industrial or residential use. Japan also has one of the largest and growing economies in the world. They are growing every day and it is all because the people of Japan work very hard in order for their economy to flourish as it has.