About this title: A reinterpretation of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Psyche's great beauty incurs the wrath of Venus, who sends Cupid to punish her, but Cupid falls in love with Psyche. In this version, the main character is Psyche's ugly, jealous sister, in whose words the story is told.
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Company
Date Published: 1980-07-09
ISBN-13:9780156904360ISBN:0156904365
Description: Good. Paperback! Clean unmarked pages, some normal wear, no remainder marks, tight binding, sealed in plastic, exact artwork as listed, expertly packed, fast shipping. read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"C.S. Lewis' retelling of the myth of Psyche and Cupid is one of the more challenging pieces of literature which I have read lately. Because the narrator is Orual, the sister of Psyche traditionally depicted as the "ugly, jealous" sibling who deliberately separated Psyche from her unseen husband, we see the whole story through the emotions and rationalizations of a flawed individual. Only towards the end of the book (and Orual's life) do we get a clearer understanding of how events really unfolded. Orual goes through her life trying to achieve clarity, to understand why she was so ill-used by the gods. She may have been as ugly as the stories said, but she also loved her sister dearly, and her bitterness over her sister's fate and, even more, her own status as inciter of that fate, becomes her defining characteristic. I actually went back and re-read the second section of the book to better understand the conclusion Orual comes to at last; this is not a cut and dry, neat resolution. The psychological issues at hand are too complex for a pat ending, anyway. This book deals intensely with the way that love can fill one with life as well as suffocate and devour. Or is the latter form even love at all? I highly recommend "Till We Have Faces;" it is so refreshing and exciting to be forced to think deeply about a story, and Lewis is a master at it."
"Some have focused on the meaning of selfless love contained in the book, and I think, missed the central theme, which is about understanding God in the midst of the apparently random tragedies of life. Lewis gives the same answer that the book of Job gives... the question is not, "Why doesn't God answer my complaint?", but "If God spoke in answer to my complaint, how could I ever hope to understand?" For Oruel, as for Job, the presence and person of God were more than sufficient answer to the question.
"How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"
It also speaks of how we justify ourselves and lie to ourselves about our own selfish motives. Oruel wasn't able to hear the answer of the gods until she was able to see herself and her sinfulness clearly. Not exactly a message most modern audiences want to hear, but then again, she didn't want to hear it either until she came to the end of herself."
"There are few modern novels that have made me look at the face in the mirror as deeply as has Lewis's Till We Have Faces. As Orual tells her story the book plumbs the uttermost depths of her character and motivation, revealing that she herself is responsible for much of her own hurt. The story's remarkable final chapters bring her an unexpected and spiritually transforming redemption.
A number of times, when I myself have felt bitterness and hurt, I've found that reading or even recalling this story have helped me confront myself, be healed, and move on.
Rather than the overtly or symbolically Christian worlds in which Lewis set much of his other fiction, Orual's story takes place midst a landscape from which Christ is apparently absent, somewhere a little outside the border of the pre-Christian classical Mediterranean civilization.
Those who might stumble over the explicit Christian themes present in Lewis's other work may find this easier going. Nevertheless, at its roots this is a deeply Christian work. In subtlety of theme and darkness of tone this is the most un-Lewis like of his novels, yet underlying it is the most Lewis-like current of redemptive truth."
"A common theme of C. S. Lewis's thoughts on Christianity is that people are evil by conscious choice and yet are often ignorant of their own evil. Hence his discounting of the doctrine of TOTAL depravity: it's a question of choice and not, completely, one of inexorable pre-determination. This theme is especially prevalent in his non-expository writing, that is, his fiction and "allegorical" works. (Lewis had a very precise definition of "allegory," and he claimed that only one of his works, "Pilgrim's Regress," was truly allegorical.)
This novel, a retelling of the myth of Psyche and Cupid, as an example of Lewis's use of this theme at his most effective. In the myth, Psyche, an almost ethereally beautiful child, is born the youngest of a family that already has two daughters. The goddess Venus, jealous of Psyche's beauty, demands the town sacrifice her. Cupid, sent to kill Psyche, falls in love with her instead. Yet her sisters, also jealous of Psyche's beauty, contrive to sabotage her relationship with cupid, sending Psyche on a series of perilous tasks before reconciling with Venus.
Lewis tells the story from the point of view of Psyche's sisters. She is jealous and envious of Psyche's beauty but doesn't realize her own jealousy."
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