Into the Forest discussion

A place to discuss the book with spoilers

I liked this book a lot up until the last 50 pages or so when he gets into that rant about atheists and agnostics...

His point is perfectly clear without that long extended rant so why on earth did he feel the need to go on and on and on about it?

I always dislike when allegorical authors feel the need to explain their allegory at length. Don't they trust themselves and their readers to understand it isn't necessary? I guess that goes doubly when it's an allegory of something I don't agree with.

I think, with Lewis, it always has to do with the "I found religion so you must" view.

I was expecting something overtly religious. I don't think Lewis ever wrote anything that wasn't at least heavily allegorical. But those last couple of chapters crossed the line from a allegory into a religious treatise. The allegory portion didn't bother me but the treatise did.

I guess my point is that I'd rather be gently persuaded into agreeing with (or at least understanding) something rather than be beaten over the head with it.

Which is probably why I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe dozens of times but only read The Last Battle once.

Ugh - Last Battle don't even get me started. I have one of those book sets of Narina. Several of them, you can tell they have been read and read and read. Last Battle looks new.

I agree about The Last Battle. I remember words such as "Whoa" and "What?" Going through my head.

I loved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , but feel the series went downhill afterwards. I never made it to the Last Battle.

I recently re-read Till We Have Faces, and had the same problem with it, even while mostly admiring it. From my review:

What makes me a bit uncomfortable is that clearly Lewis intended this novel to mean something deeper than its surface story. And he was a theologian and a devout Christian, and I'm neither really, so I'm not sure I totally understand what he wanted to say, or that I would completely agree if I did understand....

What is he saying about the gods? They're cruel? They're not cruel? They're trying to trick us? They're not? They're indifferent to us, but would appreciate us not being idiots about stuff? I don't know. That part is frustrating. ... Nonetheless, if I'm allowed to read it mainly as its surface story of a princess being left for a Shadowbrute on the holy mountain, only to have it turn out she becomes married to a god, then yes, I love this book. That's my kind of thing.

Molly wrote: "I recently re-read Till We Have Faces, and had the same problem with it, even while mostly admiring it. From my review:

What makes me a bit uncomfortable is that clearly Lewis intended this novel..."

I hope my copy arrives soon so I will be able to join in in this discussion!

Now I am at the second part and enjoying it a lot less. I feel a bit dense asking this, but I'm lost now! I don't get the part about Orual becoming Ungit.
Can someone please explain?

Ungit is a devouring mother.

Orual realizes that she is a devouring mother and the reason she coerced Psyche into spying on Cupid is that she was jealous of Cupid; she would make Psyche happy if she could, but otherwise Psyche must be miserable rather than made happy by another.

Melanti wrote: "I liked this book a lot up until the last 50 pages or so when he gets into that rant about atheists and agnostics...
His point is perfectly clear without that long extended rant so why on earth di..."

I did not so much perceive it as a rant as I was just totally confused! In the end I did not find much actual Greek-Myth as a story about Faith but what exactly is he trying to say? That people should believe I assume, but I don't see how it relates to this story.

Molly wrote: "What is he saying about the gods? They're cruel? They're not cruel? They're trying to trick us? They're not? They're indifferent to us, but would appreciate us not being idiots about stuff? I don't know. That part is frustrating. ... ,

Exactly! That is how I felt! In particular I did not understand the role of Cupid. Is the Cupid in this book anything like the Greek Roman God?

Mary wrote: "Ungit is a devouring mother.
Orual realizes that she is a devouring mother and the reason she coerced Psyche into spying on Cupid is that she was jealous of Cupid; she would make Psyche happy if s..."

Thanks Mary! I would not seen that. That Orual realized her intentions were not really as well meant yes, but not that she is a devouring mother.

So, as a caveat, I read it last year and disliked it enough that I've remembered most what I disliked about it and remember less of the fine details.

Exactly! That is how I felt! In particular I did not understand the role of Cupid. Is the Cupid in this book anything like the Greek Roman God?

My impression (keep in mind this is a year later!) is yes and no... There's nothing (that I can recall) that directly contradicts the Cupid figure, but IMO, the Greek gods as a whole were mere stand-ins for the Christian God. Far more important than the Psyche/Cupid story is is testing Psyche's blind obedience to and faith in the Christian God.

Orual realizes that she is a devouring mother and the reason she coerced Psyche into spying on Cupid is that she was jealous of Cupid; she would make Psyche happy if she could, but otherwise Psyche must be miserable rather than made happy by another.

See, this part of Lewis's argument I strongly disagree with. In part because I know that this IS an allegory and that by extension, Lewis's arguments are meant to apply as equally well to relations between atheists/agnostics and Christians as they do to the relationship between Oural and Psyche.

Now, granted, since Psyche seemed to be happy and in good health, Oural should have left well-enough alone. But if YOUR beloved sister seemed to you to be living on a remote mountain top, talking about palaces that you couldn't see, feasts you couldn't see, said she was wearing beautiful clothing when your eyes said differently... Would it be entirely jealousy in your eyes to do your best to convince her she was wrong?

So let's flip it around and look at the allegorical side of things. Oural is a stand-in for the atheist/agnostic. Psyche is a stand-in for the good Christian. So... Let's take the Noah story with Noah as the good Christian and his doubtful neighbors as the athiests/agnostics. Let's say Noah had a good friend that wasn't part of the family. And that neighbor one day saw Noah suddenly become obsessed with building, in his eyes, a pointless and unusable boat - neglecting all his normal tasks and duties to do so - on the premise that he'd had a prophetic dream. Truly, would Noah's neighbor be amiss in thinking Noah was crazy? And what if he tried to convince Noah that this monumental undertaking was needless, that he'd be better off farming instead?

Sure, some of his effort might have been a little selfishness... Maybe he didn't want to support Noah's family when/if their food ran out. Maybe it's that he missed seeing Noah around at the daily tasks or missed his company around a fire at night or something. But it isn't all selfishness -- building a huge boat on the say-so of a weird dream IS rather ludicrous to any outsider.

It's the same sort of demand for blind faith, IMO.

I guess this is more nit-picking about what I perceived Lewis meant rather than what he actually wrote, but it's so allegory-heavy I can't separate them in my mind.

Jalilah wrote: "Exactly! That is how I felt! In particular I did not understand the role of Cupid. Is the Cupid in this book anything like the Greek Roman God? "

No, he's God.

The role of Cupid is that he, and he alone, can make Psyche happy. Orual has to cope with that.

Melanti wrote: "In part because I know that this IS an allegory and that by extension, Lewis's arguments are meant to apply as equally well to relations between atheists/agnostics and Christians as they do to the relationship between Oural and Psyche."

Actually, no, it's not an allegory, you are reading your own views into it. The reader can allegorize it, to be sure, like any other story, but there are a lot of possibilities in what you can allegorize any story into, because it's not inherent to the story.

Mary wrote: "Actually, no, it's not an allegory, you are reading your own views into it. The reader can allegorize it, to be sure, like any other story, but there are a lot of possibilities in what you can allegorize any story into, because it's not inherent to the story. ..."

We'll have to agree to disagree then.

Mary wrote: "
No, he's God.The role of Cupid i..."
That's what I was not sure about Mary. So in CS Lewis''s version Cupid represents God. So how does this tie in with the beast of the mountain?
I know Psyche=Soul and Eros=Love. I had assumed this is closer to the original Greek-Roman myth. That the two go together.
Another thing that was not clear to me was what happened to Psyche in this (CS Lewis) version. In the original myth she has many tasks. In Til a They Have Faces she just kind of disappears and the next thing we hear she's become a Goddess.

Melanti, In the Shadow of the Ark by Anne Provoost does a great job of exploring your question about Noah -- how "crazy" it would appear to an outsider. It's a lot less didactic (well, the author comes from a different PoV) than C.S. Lewis as well.

I'll keep that in mind, Lacey. I don't read a ton of religious themed books though, and I have my eye on a non-fiction book about the history of Islam at the moment.

Jalilah wrote: "In the original myth she has many tasks."

She has the same number of tasks here. Orual helps her with them. All those nights as the ants sorting the seeds. . . .

And then she has to go down to the Underworld to return with the beauty of the Queen of the Underworld. That's the culminating task in the myth.

Just finished this tonight.

I agree with some of you about the ending. I felt the ending to be alienating. I enjoyed the novel when the struggle with faith was embedded in the mundane, everyday aspects of life, but I thought by making Orual hallucinate/dream of the gods and their judgement over her and Psyche, and her judgement of them, that that took away from the power of the story. It felt too forced; too intentional. I enjoyed the myth retelling when the actions of the gods were unseen, and thus could be interpreted either way. I could be either Orual or Psyche, but at the end I was neither.

And I did think this was an allegory, though more along the lines of faith and lack of faith. Or, obsession with the mundane versus submitting to the sublime. Though Orual's obsession with beauty I found annoying. Yes, I know, you're ugly, but you're also really powerful! Who cares how you look!

I thought the retelling itself, what he did with the actual myth, was well done. It's only when Lewis became too obsessive, or overt, with the themes that I felt distanced from the novel.

I actually do enjoy many religious themed novels: like Siddhartha, Barrabas, and The Brothers Karamazov. But the protagonists' struggles with faith in these books seemed more realistic to me than in Till We Have Faces. I'm not sure why.

Margaret wrote: "Just finished this tonight.

I agree with some of you about the ending. I felt the ending to be alienating. I enjoyed the novel when the struggle with faith was embedded in the mundane, everyday as..."

Do you know what? It's been a few weeks now since I read it and looking back, except for the last section, my overall impression is favourable. There are many spiritual books I like, for example the works of Paulo Coelho. The The Alchemist is one of my favourite all time books, but in this case I agree with you Margaret about the ending of Till we Have Faces being too forced and intentional.

There've been spiritual type books I've loved, but oddly enough, I didn't like either Siddhartha or Paulo Coelho in general. I admit I haven't read The Alchemist, but I've read 2 1/4 others by him and haven't liked any of them.

I tend to like the quieter books where the authors still have a point and give you something to think about but aren't as pushy about it. I read Graham Greene's The End of the Affair just a couple of weeks after reading Till We Have Faces and loved it. It deals with many of the same issues - faith, atheism, etc - but he didn't come off as nearly as antagonistic as CS Lewis, so I'm a lot more willing to listen to what he has to say.

Yes, I think if Till We Have Faces had a more subtle ending, it would have been more powerful. I enjoyed the rest of the novel, overall.

I quite enjoyed The End of the Affair as well. It's very quiet and tormented, and I tend to like the quietly tormented religious-themed novels best:)

And you're right, Melanti, I don't think Greene set out with a religious agenda. He was writing true to the character, letting the character speak; or at least, I think he was. But Lewis seems to write with an agenda.

I haven't had a chance to read any Coelho yet, though he's been on my list for a while.

I completely forgot about this thread! I taught Till We Have Faces this past year, and someone recommended to me a really helpful book called Bareface: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's Last Novel, which is a sort of guided reading through the book. I hated Till We Have Faces the first time I read it as a teen, because I sympathized entirely with Orual (hey, I was an oldest child with more than a little pseudo-parental feelings and responsibilities for my siblings), but I ended up being impressed with it the second time (though still somewhat confused). After reading that explanatory book and discussing it in class for a month, I now feel I have at least a beginner's handle on what Lewis was (presumably) trying to do. I'll try to come back and post more later, but I think you are all probably understanding it and just disagreeing with it (which is perfectly valid).

A few quick notes: First, Lewis' own opinion of the book (qtd in Bareface): “Far and away the best I have written. . . .That book. . .has been my one big failure both with the critics and with the public.”

I find it interesting that Lewis' least popular work was his favorite, but that's maybe not surprising when you think of TWHF as his spiritual autobiography, which in many ways it was. Lewis' feelings and conversion in many ways resemble Orual's, and his personal life has some similarities as well.

In addition, he puts a lot of his theological knowledge as well as current (at the time) psychological research into the novel, so it's influenced by sources as varied as Freud and Rudolf Otto.

Melanti wrote: "he didn't come off as nearly as antagonistic as CS Lewis, so I'm a lot more willing to listen to what he has to say. "

Interesting. Where or when do you see Lewis as being pushy? I agree that it's definitely written with a particular point in mind, but that point is nowhere near crystal clear theologically.

I think it's pushy in the sense that both Orual and Lewis felt the relentless pursuit of the gods/God, and realized first to their terror and despair, and later to their eventual peace, that life cannot be shaped in the absence of the holy. But Lewis' portrayal of lots of the characters is sympathetic, even though there is quite a range of belief expressed. He doesn't consider them all equally justified in their beliefs, but it's hard to tell in the book who is "right."

Melanti wrote: "Now, granted, since Psyche seemed to be happy and in good health, Oural should have left well-enough alone. But if YOUR beloved sister seemed to you to be living on a remote mountain top, talking about palaces that you couldn't see, feasts you couldn't see, said she was wearing beautiful clothing when your eyes said differently... Would it be entirely jealousy in your eyes to do your best to convince her she was wrong? "

The first tangle to unravel the seemingly random messiness of the second half of the book is to realize that Orual's objections to Psyche's choice to stay in the valley make perfect sense. . .*if* she's being truthful about them.

Orual herself realizes at the trial that she's been an unreliable narrator of events. When you re-read or look at the first half again closely, there are a lot of signs that Orual does believe that Psyche's husband is the god of the mountain. Orual suggests all these rational reasons for her interference to Psyche and to the Fox, but she leaves out quite a bit in both places, shaping the information to lead them both to false conclusions.

Orual herself realizes later that the gods did give signs of their presence that she refused to accept. (Why she refuses to accept them requires us to look at how people approach the holy in the book, and what Lewis is trying to say about it.) But all her complaints that sound so valid to us are really just one of many masks--or veils--over Orual's true feelings and motivations.

As I mentioned earlier, I read this long enough ago so that I remember my general impressions but not any of the details so I won't be able to argue my point of view at all.

I do remember that as I read the last 1/3-1/4 of the book, I didn't buy into a word Lewis said. All those supposed signs from god, etc, I didn't believe a single one of them. I believed the first 2/3 of the story and not the ending.

Granted, jealousy on Orual's part is entirely plausible but to dismiss all of the other valid reasons she had to be dubious and say it was only or mostly jealousy? I just can't agree with that.

It's certainly possible that there were hints earlier that I didn't see/dismissed, especially since Lewis doesn't usually do "subtle" very well and I wouldn't have been keeping an eye out for signs of an unreliable narrator. But with as much as I disliked the ending, I'm certainly not going to reread to look for them!

And as well, I did interpret that trial as an extension of all the other allegories in the book and believe Lewis meant them to apply to the average atheist or agnostic as well as Orual. And that just reinforced my "this is total B.S." point of view.

Perhaps I'm just the worst possible audience for this book.

You're totally right not to get into a nitty-gritty argument when you read the book a while ago, and I don't know that I would pick up a book I disliked just to argue about it some more. :)

It's definitely somewhat allegorical, and if you disagree with his basic premise, naturally you'll dislike it. I think it does apply to the "average atheist or agnostic," but I guess where I disagree with you is what Lewis' intentions are.

I think my defense would be that there are no "average" atheists, and Lewis is not writing from a holier-than-thou mountain, but very specifically from his own atheist/agnostic-turned-Christian perspective. I don't take it so much as him going "ha! that will convince them!" as him putting in writing what he's realized through his own painful struggles in life.

This is certainly a book that rubs a lot of people--even Christians--the wrong way. You're not in the minority at all if you dislike it. :)

I agree with you, Lee Anne, that there's not a cut and dry interpretation, and I'm glad for some of your background. I knew Lewis had converted from Atheism, but didn't realize he considered this a spiritual autobiography in some ways. And I can see that in some of the conversations Orual has with herself, and with Fox.

I think the ending lost me with the trial, and the appearance of the gods. Who wouldn't believe if Gods were appearing to you and speaking to you?

I'm going to write my own ending, haha. Here it is: Orual gazed out into the mist that shrouded the river, thinking only briefly about Psyche and what might have been before letting her memory rest, letting her jealousy rest. She reached up with one aged hand and caught and pulled at her veil until it came away, her face bare to the wind as it took the veil from her hand and made it disappear into the mist. She could just make out, if she looked very carefully, the edges of what might be a palace. And it was both beautiful and ugly.

So what questions does everyone have about the trial? I will try to type up a general answer (interpretation), but it would help if I have specific questions to go on.

I finally finished my review of this book (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I was less uncomfortable with the spiritual allegory than with what I felt it was saying about tying physical beauty to purity, and physical ugliness to selfishness and delusion.

Lee Anne wrote: "So what questions does everyone have about the trial? I will try to type up a general answer (interpretation), but it would help if I have specific questions to go on."

Thanks for the offer Lee Anne. Unfortunately I had a library copy so I can't remember everything. However yes, I was surprised by the trial in the end. I was not sure if Orual was dreaming or not, but when she encountered her former tutor I assumed she must have died. I took it she had some kind of afterlife, but obviously not with the Gods.Is this correct? Also, like Lacey said in her review, I also found it very strange that Lewis to used Cupid to represent the monotheistic God.

She died at the very end of the book, while writing. That is why the last section is printed in italics, showing a different hand writing.

I thought the trial sequences were visions.

Oh, yes, they were visions or something of that ilk. Certainly she was translated into a state where she saw more than ordinary things.

They were visions, but also true, if that makes sense. Part of Lewis' point was that not everything about the gods can be experienced rationally. (Orual: “As for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream.” p.277) To make the supernatural be confined to our very limited understanding of how the world works is to miss the whole point. But it definitely seems to take place in an afterlife, for only the dead and the judge are there. (Interestingly Bardia is absent from the scene, which leads to a lot of speculation about why.)

In terms of the trial, remember that this is not her on trial (though it feels like it), it is her accusation of the gods that is being tried. In making it, she ends up accusing herself, recognizing her broken love for all the selfishness and evil it contained. That is why she realizes that she is Ungit, the devouring selfish spider-figure. What she accuses the gods of being she is herself,

“Do you think we mortals will find you gods easier to bear if you’re beautiful? I tell you that if that’s true we’ll find you a thousand times worse. For then (I know what beauty does) you’ll lure and entice. You’ll leave us nothing; nothing that’s worth our keeping or your taking. Those we love best - whoever’s most worth loving - those are the very ones you’ll pick out. Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse and worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on his mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can’t follow. It would be far better for us if you were foul and ravening. We’d rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We’d rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal.” (290-291)

This touches on the beauty vs. ugliness quandary too. Orual perceives herself as ugly, and thus she becomes one of the ones who perpetuates the beauty vs. ugliness separation. But if you think about the book, far more characters love her than dislike her. Her father is abusive (and probably Batta too), but the Fox gives up his life in service to her for love of her, Psyche adores her, Bardia toils for her unceasingly, and the people love her because she is a fantastic queen. All of them value her for who she is, not what she looks like, but she is so intent on possessing them all entirely that she destroys her own love for them.

This trial takes place in the absence of the gods, but after it the Fox leads her to the temple, to the scenes of how she has, mystically but truly, been helping Psyche with her tasks (that’s a whole other spiritual tangle I don’t want to get into right now). Then she does meet the gods, and a glorified Psyche, who gives her the casket of beauty, so that Orual becomes a goddess too. This fulfils the god of the mountain’s words “You also shall be Psyche.” Orual interprets that as her sharing Psyche’s punishment and exile (which is true) but not that she will ultimately be cherished and adored like Psyche (which is also true). Ultimately her cry that the gods take only the best and most beautiful is false; that is how humans operate (think of Orual’s adoration of Psyche but rejection of the less-perfect Redival).

The book does seem to equate beauty with goodness, but as you look closer it becomes a lot more complicated than that easy assertion. (In class I had everyone draw a chart with one axis being goodness and one being beauty and figure out where everyone falls—there was much disagreement.) And, ultimately, we all long to be beautiful. Lewis would say that that desire is an innate part of our nature, which is longing for the restoration of the world. In Christianity, it is our bodies and not just our souls that are redeemed and remade.

Whew! Okay, that’s a start. I need to explain the whole idea of the numinous too, but I’ll wait and see if anyone still cares to read that much. ;)

That's fascinating, Lee Anne! Thanks! You're making me rethink the ending. Though I had made the connections between her own selfish love and her accusation to the gods of being what she is herself, I hadn't quite thought it out to such an extent; or, seeing you lay out the themes so concisely helps me 'sift' through the theological implications of the ending.

Psyche's tasks confused me the most in the ending, and how Orual helped her through them. I wished he had spent a little more time depicting the tasks and how they took place. Psyche's final task reminded me of Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and it also seemed to parallel earlier in the novel when Psyche goes out among the sick and lays hands on them. She has to deny that impulse, and also deny her own ability to heal, her own divinity in a way. And in denying it, she becomes divine, becomes a goddess. Am I reading this how you read it? For Orual to become divine, she must recognize herself (her face) as being similar to the gods, yet for Psyche to become divine, she must deny the worship that she has been accustomed to. She must supplicate herself.

It is interesting that Fox is there at the end, but not Bardia, especially considering Bardia was the most devout person in the novel. Fox did not believe, and Orual's father seemed to care/worship only himself. Maybe it's for those very reasons that they are present, because their beliefs are most similar to Orual's, and therefore their allegiance to the gods would have more impact for Orual. They guided Orual much more than Bardia, who seemed more of a companion than an authoritative figure for her. Or, maybe Bardia wasn't there because he was in a heavenly place, whereas Fox and the King placed a higher value on the mundane and therefore their souls exist in a limbo-type state, or in the realm where doubters are answered. It's been a long time since I read Dante's Inferno, so I'm probably pretty wide off the mark here.

I mentioned earlier that Lewis was not concerned with rationality as much as with the “real,” a category in which he would include the mystical. Anyway, to start untangling more of this it helps to know Randolf Otto's conception of the numinous. Essentially,

“Otto was one of the most influential thinkers about religion in the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for his analysis of the experience that, in his view, underlies all religion. He calls this experience "numinous," and says it has three components. These are often designated with a Latin phrase: mysterium tremendum et fascinans. As mysterium, the numinous is "wholly other"-- entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. It evokes a reaction of silence. But the numinous is also a mysterium tremendum. It provokes terror because it presents itself as overwhelming power. Finally, the numinous presents itself as fascinans, as merciful and gracious.” http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln101/Otto.htm
(See also here)

If you start thinking through these categories, you’ll see them come up over and over again, but especially in the standoff between the Old Priest and the Fox. But what’s even more interesting is that what Lewis seems to have done in TWHF is split up these three parts of one’s reaction to the divine among the different characters. Orual sees the gods as mysterium tremendum. She recognizes that they exist and are wholly other, which is why she hates them. She believes they have power; when the Fox calls Psyche “prettier than Aphrodite,” Orual responds with fear, and despite his protest that the gods are the “lies of poets” and that (paraphrase) “the divine nature does not envy,” Orual responds with the thought “But whatever he said, I knew it is not good to talk that way about Ungit” (24). Orual’s question of “why must holy places be dark places?” goes back to this idea of the Other, which is experienced not through rational enlightenment (light=lightbulb=thinking) but through darkness (dark=inexplicable, felt rather than seen.).

Psyche, in contrast, seems to feel only the fascinans part of the gods. She has always been drawn to the god of the mountain, writing him love songs and dreaming of a day when she would be swept off by him.

Together, Orual and Psyche create a complete picture of the response to the divine; I think that there are some interpretations that make them essentially two parts of one person’s journey (Orual is body/mind while Psyche is soul). That would explain why their tasks are different, too.

This is fun to talk about. Thanks for reading through all this!