Spoiler Shelf: The Letter That Started It All

The following is the word-for-word* transcription of the letter I started, but never finished, which first prompted me to consider starting a blog.  In writing it, I discovered the extent of my desire for dictating my impressions of the stories I read, when I found myself 6 pages in and only half done.  I did not wish to send my friend a 12+ page letter, so the letter remains unfinished, though in my possession.  I had intended to edit down the content, but time passed, and I began this blog, where the edited material shall be instead (hence the similarity/quotations of some points in my posts).  Now, two points: first, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS both for the stories mentioned and for my next two blog posts, and second, my thoughts today are not quite so emotionally charged as they were upon first writing the letter.  I have since been able to take a more distanced approach of one story, especially upon rereading it in order to have a more balanced view.  So, without further ado, let us dive into the letter that started it all:

*A few names have been removed for privacy reasons and spelling errors have been corrected, but besides that, word-for-word

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

May 10, 2014

Dear X,

I have been meaning to write to you recently but had been undecided as to the content until I finished a certain, well-known classic book.  If, from that statement, you reasoned I'll make that book the topic of this letter, you are half correct.  I do wish to discuss the book, but primarily in comparison with another book, one I recently finished rereading, that addresses the same topic as the prior-mentioned classic: twisted love.  Both stories you know, or have at least heard of, but while their subject matter is related, their approaches to the subject of twisted love is very different, as are the skills of the authors behind the stories.  I suppose that's enough of an introduction, so let's move on to the comparison between C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces and Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

I believe in my last letter I mentioned I was rereading Lewis's Till We Have Faces, but in case I forgot to mention it, I will say that a few weeks ago I finished my third read through of the story; my first time being in literature class last year at R.  As you might be able to tell, and perhaps already know, I love that book!  I wrote to you about the impact the story had on me in realizing how I, like Orual, had become obsessed with my close relationships, such as my friendship with you, and how I was hurting myself and my impression of you.  Even now, a year later, I see myself, or at least my past self, in Orual.  As I read through, I found myself meditating on that time, feeling so thankful for the book, and really thinking about real love and what love means.  In other words, it's a story I can connect with, immerse myself in, and makes me think about myself and reality.  It's a powerful story to me.  However, Lewis did not just write a story; in my eyes and mind, he practically wrote a person.  That statement probably sounds silly, but I really think it's true.  Each time I read Till We Have Faces, Orual seems to become more and more real.  When I read the story, it doesn't feel to me like I'm reading a fictional narrative but the real account of an actual person's life.  I feel like I'm reading about a smart, rational, but sensitive person, driven to cling to any love or acceptance due to rejection from everyone around her and a sense of inferiority and worthlessness.  She wants a place because she has always felt pushed aside for her younger sister.  She is hurt and craves love, and when she receives some, she clings onto it, onto those pieces of joy and acceptance.  However, because she is afraid and insecure, she hangs on too tight, becoming jealous and obsessive, which eventually strangles any pure love she held towards others and twists it.  It's a tragic story of a real person with real emotional and mental pain that led to poor decisions and deception that had real, horrible consequences.  Perhaps I am reading things into the narrative, but as I contemplate Orual, those are my impressions.  The feeling of reality is boosted by Lewis's personal, natural-sounding writing style and the insertions of little cultural bits sprinkled throughout the story, as if Glome had been a real place.  What's more, Lewis wrote Orual's thoughts, how she came to those thoughts and her influences, in a matter that really seems/is logical.  We completely understand Orual's thought process and sympathize, even agree, with her.  Orual feels real, more so than any other fictional character I think I've ever encountered.

Finally, I wish to touch on the consequences of Orual's thoughts and actions as well as the story's ending.  I don't know if you've read the book, so I'll try not to say too much, starting with the consequences in the story.  I should probably mention that in discussing Orual's consequences, I will touch on the impact of other characters' thoughts and actions as well, as they influenced Orual's thoughts and actions in turn.

To summarize the ingredient of "consequences" in Faces, as far as I remember, pretty much every conversation or action has consequences.  Even things that, when read the first time, see to just be on the side are brought back up and have direct influence on the story, whether with plot or Orual's character.  The interactions between Orual and the three men closest to her, her father, the Fox, and Bardia, provide the best examples.  Their words shape Orual's view of the world, one which I think reflects lewis's own pre-Christian confusion of "reason vs. myth/super-naturalality", her view of her self, and impact her actions.  Each of these secondary characters, with their distinct attributes and human interactions, are irreplaceable in the narrative for their influence on Orual.  Other characters of more distant relation (in terms of human relation, not bloodlines) and less frequent appearance, like Orual's sister Redival and the girl's old gossip caretaker, are essential and distinct in their influence, their words and actions directing the flow of the narrative river.  However, (of course) it is Orual's actions, thoughts, and the application of those in relation to Psyche that are the most distinct in terms of consequences.  How Orual interacts with Psyche ends up destroying the relationship they had, and Orual's thoughts following impacts not only her own character but also the entire country of Glome.  Her thoughts and actions changer her country!  Rather interesting it is, though, that Lewis pretty much glosses over these changes to to nation, focusing on the destruction that Orual brings to her personal relationships.  Every single relationship of any significance mentioned in the story is ruined and twisted by Orual, the consequences of her thoughts and actions.  For most of the book, twisted love has triumphed, and we sympathize, pity, and reprimand Orual, for she sowed the seeds of destruction and reaped it.  In other words, Till We Have Faces is a record of twisted love and "real" (feels real) characters whose thoughts and actions have real, even far-reaching, consequences leading to a fitting climax and conclusion that I won't discuss here in case you haven't read the story.

These points in Faces pretty much describe everything lacking in Phatom.  My favorite summary of Phantom's issues in to say that it suffers from the same problems I hear most often when describing the Twilight series: two guys in an unexplainable love with a blank-slate female in a story where a side character is more interesting and the conclusion falls flat for lack of consequences.  Unlike with Faces, I will not spend much time on each point, as there isn't much to talk about, and I have no hard feelings about "spoiling" the story, not that there's much to spoil.  Actually, saying that there's not much to talk about is a bit too harsh, but I stand on my point about spoiling.  Most people know at least the general idea behind the plot, the solution to the mystery of the phantom, if you will.  Any other potential moment of tension or mystery, or rather most other, is ruined by the author himself.

I suppose this point, this destruction of tension, would be a good start for discussion.  I know it's not from the list of Twilight problems I mentioned, and not having read Twilight or watched the movies, I cannot say if this point applies.  However, this is not an academic paper and I do not want to skip this important point nor have to rewrite these late two pages for the sake of structure.  I ask you, as my reader, to forgive this selfish decision.  Now then, onward!

To understand better my problem with the lack of tension in this story, we must address the genre of the book.   The Phantom of the Opera is primarily a romance.  However, this is a point I wish to discuss later as this topic of tension relates more to the story's secondary genre: mystery.  Within the mystery genre, what makes a good mystery?  In my opinion, it is not the idea of the audience getting to try and solve the case before the detective (which would exclude most, if not all, of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries) but rather the author's ability to keep the reader in suspense.  We want to know who did it, how and why.  We want to know if there will be more thefts or murders or whatever.  We want to know if justice will prevail and the criminal stopped, but we won't know unless we read.  Solving mysteries along the way beside the detective is what makes us read all the in between stuff and is a large appeal of many mystery masters like Agatha Christie, but it's the answers to the questions who, how, why, and what happens next that the reader is searching for.  The tension of not knowing the answers and always feeling like a piece is missing or just out of reach is the great fun of a good mystery.  Now then, if the questions and tension of finding answers is what makes a good mystery, what makes a great mystery?  The answer is the same for every great book: even when you know the answers, even when you know what will happen, the story still takes you in.  I know many people do end up getting sucked time and time again into even bad, poorly written stories, otherwise Phantom and Twilight wouldn't still be around, but please hear me out.  The point I am making is that a truly great mystery can pull you into the mystery even when the tension is, supposedly, gone.  My example is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Lewis Stevenson.  Although I knew the story, although I had seen more than on adaptation of the story, although I knew the answers to just about every questions a mystery addresses, I was still sucked in.  I knew the answers, but I was still caught up in the mystery: finding clues, seeing foreshadowing, accompanying the "detective" as he tried to find the answer.  The tension that should have been gone grabbed me and kept me hooked.  For that reason alone (and there are others) I think Jekyll and Hyde can be considered a great mystery.

So after all that discussion about mystery stories, what about Phantom?  How does it measure up?  Well, right from the start it faces the same problem Jekyll and Hyde does: pretty much everyone knows the solution.   Everyone knows the identity of the Phantom, or at least has a general idea.  With this, the tension is already weakened.  However, even if this were not the case, Phantom would not be a good mystery, let alone a great one because Leroux did not know how to write tension... pretty much at all.  To illustrate, I wish to address a non-mystery scene.  The illustration involves two of the three main characters, the protagonist, Raoul, and the object of the story's love triangle, Christine.  In this scene, Raoul, wishing after much effort to finally separate Christine from the Phantom, confronts her on the identity of this supposed specter.  Christine complies, describing the first encounter she had and everything between then and now.  She confessed and re-confesses that she loves Raoul but says she cannot be with him for fear of the Phantom.  Raoul responds by declaring they should run away together, escape the Phantom, and be free together.  Christine, who has been nervous all day and constantly checking Raoul's words and actions in case the Phantom might overhear them (in fact she brings Raoul to the roof of the opera house so they can converse in secret), agrees to run away with Raoul after a performance the following night she promised the Phantom she would do, if I remember correctly.  Okay, so, looking at this scene, it had potential for great tension, wondering if they might succeed or perhaps be stopped as they try to run or even before they get a chance and however many other possibilities might be there.  Where did the tension break?  Right.  From.  The.  Beginning.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And there you have it.  As I said, the letter remained unfinished, and while I might have writing something following this last paragrapm (it's been nearly a year, so I don't know), I cannot find it.  I hope the overly-long paragraphs were not too out-putting, and I pray you had a wonderful Christmas and do have a Happy New Year, 2015! :)

Sincerely,
V. A. Boston

Personal Musings: Show vs. Tell

 “‘Are the young women to be veiled or unveiled?’

     ‘Need you ask?’ said the King with one of his great laughs, jerking his thumb in my direction.  ‘Do you think I want my queen frightened out of her senses?  Veils of course.  And good think veils too.’  One of the other girls tittered, and I think that was the first time I clearly understood that I am ugly.

     This made me more afraid of the Stepmother than ever.”¹

Wait… wait a moment!  Is… is this… no… is this… telling!?!  I see some nice, strong verbs like “jerking” and “tittering,” but what about that ending?  Where is the showing of “ugly” and “afraid?”  And, a few paragraphs later, the same thing happens again!  So writes the author, “I know now that the face I saw was beautiful, but I did not think of that then.  All I saw was that she was frightened, more frightened than I-- indeed terrified.”¹  What is meant by such a vague word as “beautiful” or “terrified”?  These are telling words!  Who is this?  Who is this author who dared to tell instead of show?  Who dared to use such mental words as “frightened” rather than describe what “frightened” looks like?  Who would do such an elementary mistake as telling instead of showing?  Who… what?  C. S. Lewis?  What?  No.  There must be some mistake.  In what book would Lewis, the C. S. Lewis, have possibly done something so… Till We Have Faces?  You mean C. S. Lewis’s final piece of fiction?  The work he thought his best novel?  My favorite novel?  That Till We Have Faces?

Yes.  That Till We Have Faces.

To any of you who have taken a course or read a book on creative writing, how often have you come across the phrase “show don’t tell?”  I cannot describe how frustrated I am with this myth of writing.  Yes, I call it a myth, for, like a myth, it contains some truth, but can, and seems often does, lead into false beliefs.  Many times have I encountered on blogs, in classrooms, and in books on writing the mantra of “show don’t tell” as if it were one of the foundations of literature.  In all truth, the foundations of story are character, plot, and words, not images.  

Within that last category of words, we have abstract words, words that exist only in the mind such as beautiful, happy, scared, ugly, etc., and we have concrete words or phrases, ones we can perceive through out senses like golden hair, dimpled cheeks, tear-stained face, and warty nose.  To give another example, authors give concreteness, through story, to abstract concepts and world views: God’s forgiveness in the parable of the prodigal son, the dangers of greed in The Hobbit,² and the destructive nature of twisted love in Till We Have Faces, to name a few.  The difference in literature from most other creative mediums is that it uses words to do so.  Mediums like paintings, graphic novels, movies, and video games all use pictures to tell their stories and messages.  They are the epitome of “show, don’t tell” because they are visual mediums.  Literature uses words.  And what do these words do then?  They tell a story.  Literature records words, a medium of communication that requires someone to hear you, which makes novels, short stories, etc., in reality, an auditory medium.  We don’t watch a book.  We listen to or read (mentally listen to) them.  You could watch a movie that’s just a bunch of images, but a book isn’t considered literature if you just list a bunch of really detailed descriptions.  To repeat the mantra“Show, don’t tell” is to say, often unintentionally, something like “make your book a movie.”

Now, before someone drops accusations of the fallacy of equivocation on me, let me say that the type of telling I’m described above is not exactly what is meant in the saying “show, don’t tell.”  My point in the previous paragraph is simply to say that, much as music’s power comes from the arrangement of notes and movie’s power often stems from its arrangement of visuals, the power of novels originates more from the usage of words than on detailed images.  Do I mean by this that we don’t need detailed images in stories?  By no means!  I would never think Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene better without such gruesome and terrifying a description of the dragon.  What I mean is to say that the most powerful image imaginable (pun intended) cannot carry a book as can the most simplistic of “telling” sentences.

So what is meant by “show, don’t tell”?  I hardly need answer that question.  “Show, don’t tell” means don’t “tell” your audience something when you can “show” it, such as replacing descriptions like “she was frightened ” with sentences like  “she trembled, clutching the smooth cloth of her wedding dress till it wrinkled”.  (Ironically, this second example, that of showing, requires less imagination on part of the audience as the author does all the imaging for them.)  Now, I do not intend to say teachers and writers who promote “showing” are entirely wrong.  Most writing does benefit from detailed descriptions and stronger, more exact word choice, as I mentioned above by referencing The Faerie Queene.  Even Snow White is described as having skin white as snow, hair black as ebony, and lips red as blood rather than just as “beautiful.”  However, I know from experience of two issues with the mantra “show, don’t tell.”  Firstly, new authors, and sometimes even experienced ones, most often end up describing too much all over the place.  When students are told not to use such words as “delicious” or “happy,” works tend to get bogged down in over-description.  Secondly, authors, under the spell of “show, don’t tell,” end up showing all the wrong things.

For, in reality, sometimes telling is more powerful than showing.  What do I mean?  Let’s return to Till We Have Faces.

First off, I wish to quickly illustrate one power of using telling instead of showing through the example of using “frightened” and “terrified” instead of showing them.  During this section of the story, Orual, our first person narrator, was a little girl, and her young mind’s first reaction was to compare her own fear to this other girl’s, which is a very human thought process.  How often do you, when first meeting someone, begin reading them to discern the person's emotional state?  And what if it was someone you feared but, to your surprise, appeared to be afraid as well?  And then, when recounting memories from childhood, do you often give exact details from those readings you did as a young child in that surprising first meeting where you saw mutual emotion from someone you feared?  By using telling sentences like “she was frightened-- indeed terrified,” it’s more natural, adding to the believability of the story.

The other example I wish to use is when Orual calls herself “ugly.”  Though I have read the story three times so far, I cannot recall one detail of Orual’s appearance besides her brown hair and that she is “ugly,” both of which are mentioned in the first chapter.  After that, the only physical descriptions we really get of her are about her clothes, and the only “showing” we see is how no one is romantically attracted to her so long as her face is visible.  Why would Lewis do this?  Why would something so essential to the story as Orual’s appearance be so neglected?  You would think that something like this, the source of the rejection by people around her and of her low self-esteem, would be dwelt upon more, wouldn’t you?  But it’s precisely the lack of “showing” that makes the statement and its effect so powerful.  Is Orual actually physically ugly?  Or is she perhaps just less feminine?  By only telling us she is ugly, Lewis forbids our knowing and therefore our objections.  We cannot say anything to counter the claim because we have nothing to counter.  We can only accept what Orual has accepted already: her physical ugliness.  Furthermore, by giving less detail about Orual’s physical ugliness, Lewis draws attention the ugliness of her heart.  Orual knows she is physically ugly, but she does not understand how ugly and twisted her heart becomes, too.  Meanwhile, the reader sees Orual’s ugly heart without seeing the face Orual dwells upon.  Finally, and this is perhaps my favorite idea, I find it fascinating how, right from the start of the story, Orual has no face.  Till We Have Faces was not the original title of the story, but it is a main theme, the idea of approaching God face-to-face rather than hiding behind a veil.  Halfway through the story, Orual begins wearing a veil, but to the reader, her face has been veiled from the beginning.  Perhaps it was not Lewis’s intention to make it so, but even if it were not, I think it is a powerful image brought about by the lack of imaging (lack of “showing”) employed by Lewis.

Till We Have Faces is full of examples like these two just mentioned, instances of “telling” rather than “showing” that add power to the story rather than detract.  You see, when it comes to showing and telling, it is up to the author to decide which to use based upon which is more effective.  For instance, consider two descriptions of a man walking through a desolate place.  If I wanted to write a “show” description, I might do something like: 

“As he walked, the toe of his boot suddenly caught an unseen stone, and he crashed to the ground.  With a groan he stood and stepped forth again.  The rocks, however, threatened with every step to trip him or twist his ankle.  More than once a stone slipped out from under him, and he tumbled down onto rough and jagged rock.  Before long, hasty bandages wrapped around his knees and hands where rock has pierce or gashed, but still he continued.  Presently, he came to a wall of rock, thrice the size of his height, and his heart sank.  With shaking fingers, he gripped the wall and began to climb; however, his hand soon slipped, and he fell to the hard earth.  Blinking back tears, he clenched his teeth to stop the sobs forming in his throat."  

By contrast, a “telling” description might be, “And on he walked, and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. And as he walked, his baggages became more a burden, and his heart more a baggage.”

Each of these examples provides a different effect.  For the first, we are “in the moment” with the character, experiencing the difficulties of this land.  We witness his pain and struggle, and that influences the tone.  The second example, on the other hand, feels much more desolate.  We are distant, and our only experience with the character is the length and weight of time and distance.  As we read the repeated words, we can feel some of the burden, though we are not “shown” anything specific.  The emphasis in the second example is the drawn out nature of the tiring journey.  We see no moments in time, only that it goes “on and on and on.”  Either one of these descriptions can be powerful.  It all depends upon the context (of both the scene and the story itself) and what the author wishes to convey.

And so, I implore you, stop this false dichotomy.  Don’t use a pithy saying like “show, don’t tell” when it’s so misleading.  If, after saying such a phrase, you must unpack it and describe exceptions or proper use because it’s so easily misunderstood, then it has failed as a truism.  Rather, carefully consider which is more impactful for each instance because really, it is not a matter of show or tell, but instead of show and tell.  For is that not what written stories do?  Come, let me show you truth by telling a story. 


¹Lewis, C. S.  Till We Have Faces.  New York: Houghton Harcourt Publishing Company, 1984.  
       Print.


²Ward, Michael.  "A Thief in the Night: The Christian Ethic at the Heart of The Hobbit."  CRI.  The 
     Christian Research Institute, n. d.  Web.  1 Dec. 2014.  <http://www.equip.org/articles/thief-night-
     christian-ethic-heart-hobbit/#christian-books-3>

Reviews and Recommendations: Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

This is my favorite book.  Till We Have Faces is the final fiction work of world-famous Christian thinker C. S. Lewis, my favorite novel not just of his but of all literature I have read, and yet most to whom I have mentioned the name have never heard it.  How can this be?  How can something so wonderful a story so skillfully written be so shockingly overlooked?  Truth be told, I never knew of Till We Have Faces until a few years ago, when I read it for a college literature class.  

Actually, I’m one of those people who never even knew Lewis wrote more than the Chronicles of Narnia until college, let alone read much of it!  Of his Chronicles, I remember readingThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Horse and His Boy, watching the BBC videos (on vhs) from Lion through The Silver Chair, and listening to my dad read The Magician’s Nephew.  Beyond that, I knew nothing of Lewis’s bibliography, not until college where I read first Learning in Wartime, learned of his theological works, and grew to appreciate Lewis as an author through The Problem of Pain.  I now own an anthology of Lewis’s major theological works, an anthology of the Chronicles (from which I read my missing Narnia experience, The Last Battle), an anthology containing most of Lewis’s short writings (almost 900 pages worth), the second volume of his space trilogy (my mom has the first and third), and, of course, my favorite book and Lewis’s final story, Till We Have Faces.

So, going back to Till We Have Faces, why do I love it?  I will not be covering the personal side of things in this post, as that would be a whole post unto itself, but rather some of more the technical aspects of the story that make it excellent.  But first, a plot description:

Till We Have Faces retells the tale of Psyche and Cupid, or Eros, but rather than follow Psyche, the narrator is Psyche’s ugly oldest sister, Orual.  The sisters live in the fictional, pre-Christian country of Glome, where Orual raises Psyche after the girl’s mother dies in childbirth.  Orual, rejected by nearly everyone for her ugliness, loves Psyche, and Psyche Orual.  When tragedy strikes Glome, Psyche is offered to Cupid, God of the Mountain, as a sacrifice.  In despair, Orual travels to the mountain, hoping to give Psyche a proper burial only the find her sister alive and well.  However, what should have become a joyful reunion instead begins Orual’s distortion and destruction of her most precious relationships.

In my discussion of this story, I wish to begin with characters.  To speak on every character would take too much time, so I will only focus on the main characters, Orual and Psyche.  For everyone else, I will just quickly mention that, while not detailed, each character is different and has specific influence on the plot and Orual’s character.  They are all important, and even their words and actions have consequences.  

Now, on Orual, while I do not hold that one needs amazing, realistic characters to have an amazing story (I’ll talk about that some other time), Orual really is incredible.  In writing Orual, Lewis did not write a character; he wrote a person.  Every time I reread Faces, I encounter a smart, rational, but sensitive girl, driven to cling to any love or acceptance she finds.  Due to being ugly in place where beauty and sex are the only worth of a woman, she is rejected by everyone, made to feel inferior and worthless.  Furthermore, she has always felt pushed aside by her younger, more attractive sister, Redival.  Orual is hurt and craves love, and when she finally receives some, first from her mentor and then from Psyche, she latches on, gripping to those pieces of joy and acceptance.  However, because of her fear and insecurity, she hangs on too tight, becoming jealous and obsessive.  She is a character with real emotions and pain that lead to tragic decisions with horrible consequences.  Orual’s thoughts and actions are influenced by those around her, forming conflict as she tries to understand different thoughts and struggles to think logically.  I found myself understanding Orual’s thought process and how she came to her conclusions, even when I knew her to be wrong.  Orual is real to me.

In contrast, there is Psyche.  Psyche is what most people would label a “Mary Sue.”  She is kind, beautiful, gracious, perfect really, the only type of person worthy to be the bride of a god.  Now, setting aside any arguments on if “Mary Sue” labeling is legitimate, Lewis’s decision on Psyche’s character is exactly how it should be.  Think about it.  Our narrator is Orual, someone who loves Psyche to the point of obsession.  Psyche is everything that Orual wishes she could be: beautiful, loving, and a person almost everyone adores on sight.  Of course Orual would present Psyche as perfect.  Maybe Psyche did have flaws, but we can’t know, nor does it matter.  It matters not how Psyche really is, only how Orual sees Psyche.  Allow me to refer to my own life.  I have a younger sister who is talented at art, funny, kind, patient, quietly charismatic, never gets in trouble, pretty much the perfect person… or at least, that’s how my sinful nature painted her, overlooking any flaws and only seeing her as everything I, a competitive, argumentative unfunny, uncharismatic (to name a few issues) person, lacked.  Years and many conversations later, I can now see her more objectively.  However, when you’re beaten down by rejection and your own flaws and hang around someone who is, in many ways, your opposite, objectivity jumps out the window.  Whatever Psyche’s real person, what matters is Orual’s perception of her: a goddess in both beauty and character within mortal flesh.

So we have Orual, ugly and rejected, and Psyche, perfect and embraced.  Their story, a powerful tale of twists and emotions and sorrow and love, I will not describe here.  I gave a story blurb earlier, and I do not wish to give away any more plot-wise.  Just know that Lewis proves himself an amazing storyteller.  He manages to retell the myth, even turning Orual into a sympathetic villain, without falling into many pitfalls of retelling stories from the point of view of the villain.  Often the villain becomes simply “misunderstood,” and “heroes” become the villains, as with Grendel in one film adaptation of Beowolf, Elphaba in Wicked, and Maleficent in the recent Disney retelling of Sleeping Beauty named after the “Mistress of all Evil.”  Lewis skillfully avoids this trap, making Orual “misunderstood” but still wrong, which results in the beautifully woven tragedy that is Till We Have Faces.

Aiding the storytelling and the reality of Orual as a character is Lewis’s writing style.  His style sounds natural, as though Orual were a real person writing a personal record.  What’s more, Lewis breaks the “rule” of cutting out unnecessary details by adding superfluous tidbits about Glome, as if it were a real place.  As much as this might bother the more indoctrinated modern reader/writer to the “rules of good writing,” these details actually give the story more of a realistic feeling, for, although it does not matter story-wise how far the Shennit river might be to the palace and city, it matters to Orual.  The inclusion of the geographic and cultural factoids make the story feel much more like the records of a real person than a deliberately crafted fiction.  I really cannot praise the writing style enough.  Additionally, it’s beautifully written, with masterful use of language, which alone is reason to read the novel.

Finally, I wish to say that the teachings of Till We Have Faces possess power and, in some places, beauty.  Like with the plot, I do no wish to spoil too much here  However, I will be taking two of these messages, as they are connected, and expounding upon them in a few weeks, messages that also just so happen to be connected to my personal reasons for loving this story.  So if you’re curious about some of the messages in this story, just be patient a little longer.

Till We Have Faces is my favorite book.  I also hold it to be Lewis’s most skillful pieces of fiction.  The characters are amazing, the plot interesting and emotionally impacting, the writing style engaging, and the lessons I have learned from it (and I’m sure there are at least some I still have not understood) continue to impact me and draw me back to the story.  Teach and entertain, thereby prompting rereading, and doing all with excellence, now that’s good Christian literature.

Lewis, C. S.  Till We Have Faces.  New York: Houghton Harcourt Publishing Company.  1984.  Print.

All properties mentioned in this post (c) their respective owners.

Personal Musings: On the Purpose of Literature

I have mentioned before that it is my position that literature has two main purposes: to teach and to entertain.  Furthermore, last week I concluded by saying that “quote,” which I shall show is really just an application of the two purposes.

I’m sure every one of you have heard of the idea of a story’s theme when speaking on what a story might be teaching, as it’s a word that frequents discussions of books, movies, art, and music.  Personally, I wish to avoid the term.  Yes, I have used the word in the past, even in past blog posts [link], but that does not mean I like it in general, as it is often mistaken for the story’s “meaning.”  To clarify, a “theme” is a recurring or prevalent idea while “meaning” is the message conveyed by the themes and other aspects of the story.  Everything about a story, its tone, atmosphere, plot, characters, writing style, word choice, everything can be used to teach, though what is used depends on the author.  Rather I think a more proper term would be that every story presents a worldview, or at least a piece of one.  Every story will try to teach a view or understanding of the world, most often that of the author.  Some understandings will be false, some true, but they will be there, and every tool of storytelling can contribute to the teaching.

To illustrate, I turn to Michael Ward in his book, The Narnia Code, in his chapter on C. S. Lewis’s first Narnia book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Ward describes in this chapter how Lewis intentionally used certain words and images to invoke a sense of warmth and life.¹  The red-breasted robin (always a good bird in stories, according to Peter)² and the presence of Father Christmas with his rosy cheeks, they both contrast with the harsh, cold, lifeless, joyless winter and point towards joviality and warmth returning and melting the dreadful ice that has captivated the land.  Furthermore, Ward points out how, in the most recent film adaptation, the filmmakers completely botched the winter scenes by making the winter itself much too beautiful.  Prior to Aslan’s return, everything is meant by Lewis to be harsh and hopeless, but when Aslan returns, warmth does as well.  Additionally, the story focuses on kingship, proper rulership, both in plot and symbols scattered throughout the story, and the conflict of the harsh, illegitimate ruling of the White Witch battling the true kingship of Aslan and his chosen kings and queens: Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy.¹  The worldview painted by Lewis is one where everything is cold and lifeless until the true King returns and brings life back to a barren and frozen land before establishing his rightful stewards to rule his land.  The worldview of the author, and what he wishes to  show of it, influences word choice, images, and plot.

Now then, I have just gone over how what each story is teaching about a particular worldview and how even something as fundamental as word choice can be used to that effect.  Here now I shall address perhaps the main objections to the idea of literature as teacher: stories have no meaning besides that which we give them and that there are stories without meaning that are only supposed to entertain (what could also be called the "it's only a story" arguments).

To counter both these claims, I say this: no matter whether intentional or not, every author becomes a teacher just by writing the story.  Merely in the act of writing, the author implies the story is worth communicating, and in communicating the story, the author will, whether by purpose or accident, attach meaning to the story.  Story is just one more form of communication, and communication cannot be without meaning, else communication, by definition, ceases to exist.

Consider this very basic story.  A little boy, let’s call him Billy, goes to the park, meets another boy on the swing set, Mark, and the two boys become friends.  Quite a basic tale, is it not?  How could there possibly be meaning in such a short story?  Actually, there is.  Within that story is the message, the part of a worldview, that says friends are good and desirable.  Just by having the two boys become friends, friendship is promoted.  Even in the most rudimentary story resides a fragment of a worldview.

Should we expand the story, this truth does not change, though the message presented might.  Say Billy goes to the park and becomes friends with Mark.  Then, when the two grow up, Mark starts hanging out with others and, whether in an act of betrayal or just negligence, leaves Billy behind.  If we end the story here, the view of the world presented might become “friends might seem good but will hurt you in the end.”  If we extend the story more, we can make it even more complex.  After the betrayal, let’s say Billy eventually meets others who become his friends and he returns to happiness.  Such events usually imply a happy ending, but, depending on such things as tone and word choice, it could also be a story where the implications point towards Billy finding friendship only to have history repeat itself, where those friends too leave, after which Billy will again seek out companionship only for it to ever evade his grasp, reiterating the second view of friendship stated above.  On the other hand, perhaps a third character and another friend of Billy’s, this one named Tim, rather than abandon him like Mark did, stands by Billy, comforting and helping him.  The view of friendship here is “friendship might end up hurting you, but it is still good.”  The point is, whether the story be simple or complex, it still presents a viewpoint of at least part of the world.

Now, please understand, messages can be written without the author realizing it.  In most of my stories, I have not thought about the lesson I’m teaching until after I’ve written at least some of the story.  Then, when I go back over the story, if I realize that the message projecting from the story does not match my worldview, I edit the story.  There is a limit to authorial intent.  However, the audience does not possess full power over the story’s meaning, either.  The winter pervading over Narnia does not become a wonderland just because the audience wants it to be.  Doing so sidesteps, and perhaps misses, the message towards which Lewis points.  This issue of misinterpreting comes either where the author has not been attentive enough to the material written and so inserts unintended or unclear messages, as with my own writing, or when the audience ignores the author and his work in favor of its own interpretation, as with the Walden Media movies.  We must be wary of both.

At this point, I think it necessary to move on.  I have spent so long on the proposition of literature as teacher because it has, and still is, contested.  My second position, however, bears little to no controversy:  literature as entertainment.  Every person I’ve met has thought books should be interesting.  In fact, it is because they think books boring that many people claim to dislike reading.  A good book must be an interesting one.  Now, that is not to say that all interesting books are good.  Additionally, I am not disregarding taste.  I’m not a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, but I admire his mastery of writing.  I love the story told by Victor Hugo in Les Miserable, but the books is tedious and, at points, utterly boring.  Two of my favorite authors are J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, but my dad and one of my friends have no desire for fantasy.  A book need not be subjectively entertaining to be an excellent story; however, when a book does engage someone, it has at least done something right or touched upon some need of the reader, whether in writing style, beauty of the prose, the characters, the plot, etc.

When both these purposes of literature are done well, teaching and entertaining, we have before us what I think one of the most important things a book must do:  really good books prompt rereading.  A story in which one can only find entertainment, a shallow story with little substance, might bear a couple extra reads,  but its lack of sustenance will likely take its toll, especially should the reader mature, much like sugar cereal compared to quiche and omelets and sausage.  The excitement of a story can be lost, like a mystery already solved.  On the other hand, should the story be smothered in its teaching, it quickly becomes suffocating, and many times the book may never be finished even the first time, like a pancake drowned in a bottle of syrup.  Pure popcorn books and preachy books are hardly the stuff of excellence.  That is not to say that there is some perfect balance between entertainment and teaching.  Different authors will do one better than another and must find the balance for their own stories, even between different stories.  Treasure Island by Robert Louise Stevenson is a much more entertainment-focused book, an adventure tale, while his novella Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde contains more teaching, though not nearly so much teaching as a George MacDonald book, which MacDonald presents with better skill than his plots (in my experience).  My point is to say that truly excellent stories contains both teaching and entertainment skillfully done in skillful recipes.

Notice I did not say “classic” stories  Are there stories that teach horribly among the classics?  Yes.  Are there boring books that are classics?  Yes.  Are there books both boring and with terrible teaching that are classics?  Oh, yes.  I’m not at this point discussing the legitimacy of classics or the western canon, but rather books of excellence.  But why?  Why close by talking about excellence?  Wasn’t this post about the purpose of stories?  Yes, and that is why I must end with excellence.  I am a Christian, and I am a writer.  As a Christian, I am called to do everything as unto God, and as a writer I am called to teach, whether consciously or not, and entertain my reader.  Because I am a Christian, I must fulfill both these callings, to the best of my ability, by writing with excellence, because God deserves no less, presenting true teachings with engaging writing so as to bless my readers.  If teaching and entertaining is the purpose of story, then doing so with excellence is the purpose of the Christian story.  Any book written by a Christian that fails to do this fails its purpose. 


¹Ward, Michael.  The Narnia Code: C. S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.  Oxford: 
       Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. 2005.  Print.


²Lewis, C. S.  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004. 
      Print.

Reviews & Recommendations: The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Oh where do I start?  Well, I suppose a quick paraphrase of info from The American Chesterton Society’s website might be a good place.

G. K. Chesterton was a British, Catholic writer who lived during the late 19th to early 20th century.  Though he identified as a journalist, he wrote a plethora of material from novels to plays to poetry, and more.¹

Of Chesterton’s massive library of work, the one being mentioned today is his small novel The Man Who Was Thursday.  I say “mentioned” because there… really isn’t a lot I think I can say about this story.  No.  Scratch that.  There isn’t a lot I think I should say about this story.  Thursday is the kind of story that I know I’ll have to read again.  There is no doubt in my mind that I missed so much, not because it was poorly written, but because there is so much to unpack within this short book.  After finishing Thursday, I knew I wanted to write a blog post about it, but I also feel completely inadequate to accurately and satisfactorily discuss this novel.  As such, this post shall be short and only surface-level, and you’ll just have to read the story yourself to know anything more.  Now then, onward!

The best descriptive phrase I can give to The Man Who WasThrusday is “a philosophical and theological novel with espionage overtones.”  Within the story, the main character, a poet named Gabriel Syme, becomes a secret police officer and then infiltrates an underground anarchist organization.  Within the council of his enemies, he receives the title of Thursday and soon begins his efforts to dethrone the head of the organization, the impressive and intimidating Sunday, and save his beloved England from anarchy.  I’m afraid I can say no more than that on the premise, as, due to this book’s short length, there is little to be said without spoilers.

Some positives noted upon first reading can be recorded in a few phrases, and negatives in even fewer.  First off, I would say that the tone and happenings of the novel, the twists, mystery, suspense, and the pacing of the plot, quite engaged me, as those elements should in an espionage tale.  What’s more, there are so many tightly packed, philosophical statements and quotes within the book, which I love, but not so many as I think would bog down the casual reader. Although, I could probably just take a few of them and write a whole blog post about them, and I am convinced there are numerous I overlooked, as well, prompting me to desire rereading.  Furthermore, the characters, both good and bad, are interesting, though I shall not say how.  Again, it’s difficult to step into that topic without going in too deep, especially for a surface-level review such as this.

Concerning negatives, there is only I think to mention.  While each character is distinct, there are quite a few of them for so short a book, and I found myself mixing persons up.  There was also not much time to be given in developing each person and getting to know them, adding to the prevalence of mistaking one character for the other.

There is one more element with which I took issue, one related to the plot, which I shall not discuss here, for it would contain spoilers I would not desire to impart; however, to include it with my “negatives” would not be entirely honest.  In truth and upon reflection, what I find a problem is not actually the events to which I refer, but rather my prior expectations.  Unfortunately, I think there may be some readers who, reaching that to which I refer, would throw the book away or consider it ruined, but that is, I hold, to be more related to the preconceptions and philosophies of the modern reader rather than a flaw of the book itself.

To conclude, G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, proved to me a mentally stimulating, philosophic, and theologic story with enough adventure and espionage suspense to keep, I think, even the more casual reader interested.  What’s more, the deceptively small sized book holds much material to be reconsidered and examined, which prompts me to read it again, and if a book really must do anything, I suppose it would be just that. 


¹"Discover Chesterton."  The American Chesterton Society.  American Chesterton Society, n. d.  Web.  30 Nov.  2014.

The Man Who Was Thursday (c) G. K. Chesterton