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The Manifestation of Pride in The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis suggests that choices made on earth have a consequential effect towards our acceptance into heaven or our plummet into hell. In this book pride manifests itself in a hundred subtle ways as souls whine about perceived injustices or irrational motives. Thankfully, a few tourists do humble themselves, become transformed into marvelously real beings, and remain in heaven. But most don't, about which the great Scottish author George MacDonald, Lewis' heavenly guide, says, “They may not be rejecting the truth of heaven now. They may be reenacting the rejection they made while on earth”. George MacDonald the narrator/teacher, from whom Lewis found inspiration for his book, is the guide in the journey through the gates of heaven. This provides great wisdom throughout the book which is not understood without reflection. MacDonald in essence presents Lewis with a choice while journeying in the gates of heaven. The stories of lost ghosts in the heavenly gates only provide reflection for Lewis’ own choice. This choice is not revealed by Lewis, rather it is up to the reader to make his/her own choice. MacDonald gives guidance towards our choice, “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ There is always something they prefer to joy....” (71). At one point in the book McDonald observes a ghost with Lewis and suggests that truth is a lifelong process, our life longs for this truth. Although we may not all realize truth because of lack of time, Lewis suggests it’s just a matter of obtaining the truth through good use of time. “Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it” (Preface: VIII). Time is in essence, if perhaps used in the way of authentic leisure, a God given tool for overcoming evil and obtaining the truth of heaven. The women in chapter eleven loves her son so much that she has no love left to give and no room for love to be received. The spirit offers to open love to her, when she replies by requesting to see her son. This love has perhaps prevented her from receiving intellectus (receptivity of knowledge), and in my mother’s case, even the ratio (reasoning) is affected. The saying “love conquers all things” is true, even if it is not also conquering for the goo... ... middle of paper ... ...tellectus. However, while painting in the ratio he noticed some things were more beautiful to paint than others. Ratio is what caused him to not enter through the gates of heaven. He had not preserved his intellectus or true beauty of things. He had lost intellectus through realization of time, of time slowing. So, instead of letting time go he grabbed it which brought him to reason his paintings through the mind rather than the spirit. “Reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable ‘either-or’; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found” (Preface:VII). Lewis suggests here that time if spent right can bring us to self-realization of our journey, and in effect influence our choices. These choices are dependent on time. As wrong choices are made only in time, no truly rational choices can be made will out of the realm of time. Time is the evil that surrounds us. It is the letting go of this time when we truly feel void of problems. Only by letting go of our problems we will be able to communicate with God, while in the essence of being one with ourselves and finding our true inner self.
In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, both pride and excessive pride influence the characters throughout the play. Pride is a sense of one's dignity and worth. Excessive pride is being overly confident of one's own self worth. Throughout, pride influences the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in such ways to establish the outcome of the story. Three characters are impelled by their pride. Hale, who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft; Elizabeth Proctor, whose pride makes forgiving her husband difficult; Proctor, whose excessive pride causes him to overlook reality and the truth.
As famous author, C.S. Lewis once said in his novel Mere Christianity, “every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before.” Humans always have a decision that has to be made, regardless how minor or severe the situation. In C.S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce, the characters become ghosts traveling through heaven and hell and are faced with the decision on where they will spend eternity. When readers go through Lewis’s novel, some might ask the question, why do the ghosts refuse to stay in heaven and choose to go to hell? When analyzing the novel on the surface, this question can ponder a reader with confusion. But the way to answer this
...repentant people are those who have sinned and suffered the most—murders, thieves, prostitutes, etc. In the novel, there is even a solid person— a murder in his earthly life—attempting to escort one of the ghosts. But the ghosts, as mentioned, make pitiful excuses because they've never had the feeling of complete brokenness and have never felt the need to completely surrender to Him. Therefore, I feel that Lewis is making a call to those who have had some semblance of faith their entire lives; he calls them to have the same passion for Christ that the more weathered sinners have when they first meet Him. In the same way that we wouldn't complain about our food options when we realize there are those who can't afford food, Lewis shows us that we shouldn't complain when following Him as there are those who had to go through hell on earth to fully appreciate His grace.
Lewis is one of the most complex characters in Dickey's novel. It is difficult to tell exactly what his motives are or why he feels such a need to be a survivalist. Because of the way that Lewis talks his friends into participating in his adventures he could potentially end up in Bolgia 9 of Circle 8 in Hell. This is the place where sowers of discord are kept. The families of his friends and even his friends themselves are drug into his plans because he is so convincing that they need to canoe down the river. Even when his friends protest, he strongly rebuts. "'Listen,' Lewis said, knocking on the air with his foreknuckle, `you'll be in more danger on the four-lane going home tonight than you'd ever be on the river. Somebody might jump the divider. Who knows?'" (Dickey 7) Because he talks his friends into joining him on this adventure with such fervor, he is therefore a sower of discord in their lives. These sinners are wounded and mutilated in a variety of ways, but there is one that most closely resembles Lewis' ability to persuade his friends. "Then he grasped on...
Both Lewis and Freud agreed that the question of god’s existence and our response must be asked. Though each man had drastically different worldviews and answers, they each sought to learn and understand the other’s worldview. Nicholi points out that Lewis may have had an advantage in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview due to the fact that until the age of 30, he claimed to be “even more certain of his atheism than was Freud” (2002, Pg. 81). In his adult life, Freud had no dramatic change of worldview from believer to unbeliever like Lewis had. This fact may give Lewis a slight upper hand in the understanding of the unbeliever’s worldview; however, Freud was still one of the greatest minds of his times and his work proves a strong (though negative) understanding of the believer’s worldview.
Throughout the hundreds of years, individuals have pondered the impact of heavenly or insidious force, environment, hereditary qualities, even excitement, as deciding how free any individual is in settling on good decisions. Fate, a result of the past, is often described as the advancement of occasions out of man 's control, dictated by an extraordinary force. In any case that someone may utilize their freewill can reflect upon their outcomes, decided upon a supreme force, whether they are positive or negative. In the novels “A Lesson Before Dying,” Ernest Gaines and “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck, the authors explore the trials and tribulations of self influenced fate controlled by an higher force.
Lewis presents this in the symbolism behind Orual and her veil. Society today needs to stop covering ourselves from God and start accepting him. In Orual’s relationship with the gods, God Himself is the answer to all of life’s questions. Both of these themes weave together into the perfect redemption and forgiveness story. Just as Orual rejected the gods and donned the veil, so has humanity when it comes to the Creator of the Universe. God tries furiously to enter our hearts, but instead we always push him away. He could give up and move on, but his love is abounding and fantastic. He always seeks us out even when we do not want him. We conceal our hearts with a veil when we deny Him, and expect a direct answer when we need Him. Lewis’ main theme throughout the whole book rests on this principle; Just as Orual was redeemed by the gods after revealing herself, so humanity can be through the removal of the veil over our hearts the acceptance of God. Through this idea, Lewis wrote Till We Have Faces so that the reader could discover this theme and be empowered to seek God frivolously, and eventually receive a true face from Christ
In the Pride Lands lived two brothers. Taka and Mufasa grew up together, learning what it would take to become king someday. As brothers, they knew that only one of them could take over for their father someday. From the start, Taka knew he could never compare to his older brother—Mufasa. Why, no one even bothered to talk to Taka very often. They all laughed at his name, stuck up their noses and did not ever look him in the eye. What parents name their child “trash”? In the language that the lions spoke, Taka was not regarded as a future king. His destiny was predetermined by his parents at birth. They already had their first-born son who they knew would take over someday, so any other male lions did not mean as much to the family as the mighty
Everyone is judged. It does not matter who they are or what they do with their lives, somebody somewhere makes an assumption about them based on appearances. Peter, the main focus of Mark Doty’s poem “Tiara”, was a cross-dresser. Being outside of the “social norm” made Peter an easy target for bullying and judgment. He was not normal in the slightest, but no one really is. Yet, society expects people to conform to this idea of what people really should be. No one honestly fits that mold, especially not Peter. People could never get over the fact that he was different. He was constantly ridiculed and made fun of. His only escape from all that was death, as sad as that is. His life had to end just so he could be happy. Death brings a place of acceptance, something Peter has never experienced before. The speaker, a spectator at Peter’s funeral, hears snide comments still being thrown toward the deceased. People were saying that Peter deserved to die and that he was asking for it. The voice of the paper then points out that an afterlife of acceptance is better than a life of being an outsider. The theme of “Tiara” by Mark Doty is death is an escape from the judgment of people on Earth.
There was a man by the name of Thomas of Elderfield who had a life full of ups and downs, but who never lost his faith in Christianity. He came from a poor family and worked his way up the social ladder to a successful business man. This climb up the social ladder was beneficial to him, but soon led to trouble as he attracted a suitor. After several years of infidelity with the suitor, Thomas’s conscious got to him and he discontinued seeing the married woman. His faith in God kept him from returning to her despite her repeated attempts at pulling him into sin. Thomas could not live with the weight of the sin on his shoulders so he went to a priest to confess what was causing him anguish and repent for his sins. “Eventually God's grace intervened and remorse stung him; so he presented himself to a priest and took his healthy advice to do proper penance for his offence,” (Malmesbury, par. 2). The woman remarried a man named George years after her first husband had passed away. In time George found out about his new wife’s previous infidelity...
1. Explain what Lewis means by the “Law of Nature” or the “Law of Human Nature.”
For the ancient Greek doctor and philosopher, Eryximachus, Love’s potential for health and destruction were rooted in its divine origins. Good love “stems from the Muse Celestia” and “Common Love,” from “Polymnia” (Symposium 22). He saw these two loves as at the center of human/divine communication: “all the ways in which gods and men communicate with one another—are solely concerned with the perpetuation or the cure of love” (Symposium 23). Love provided the link, then, between the mortal and immortal beings. It was a common project that both humans and gods could work on. Eryximachus further articulated, “It is (Love) who makes it possible for us to interact on good terms with one another and with our divine masters” (Symposium 23-4). It is the element of life that transcends the human realm, giving the people a taste of the divine in their own lives.
The short stories “Souls Belated” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” have in common ‘Marriage’ as main theme. However, the marriage is treated quite differently in both short stories. In "Souls Belated", Lydia chooses to take control of her destiny, to deviate from conventions and to choose what is good for her. She is the strongest character of the couple. Whereas, in "The Yellow Wallpaper", the name of the main character who is also the narrator of the story is not known. She is identified as being John’s wife. This woman, contrary to Lydia in "Souls Belated" is completely locked up in her marriage. This essay will first describe and compare the characters of Lydia and John's wife in the context of marriage, and then it will look at how marriage is described, treated and experienced by couples in these two short stories.
Thinking is work. . . . Sloppy and inconclusive thinking becomes a habit. The more one does it the more one is unfitted to think a problem through to a proper conclusion” (After I Was Sixty, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975, p. 106 Thinking Straight). We are what we eat, likewise, decisions are formed from the substance of our thoughts. There is an irrefutable need to be diligent and self-disciplined as we think and learn; “feasting, seeking, searching, studying, giving heed, becoming are all verbs suggesting much more than casual acquaintance with what we study. Rather, these verbs suggest that learning is hard work” (Learning Our Theology). As a generation of young minds, let us not be fooled that “easy” will reap the results that we are looking for and aid us in an ever-changing world filled with endless obstacles. The progress we make will be matched by our efforts, the harder we work the greater the results. If we want to learn how to think straight, we need to be active in both thought and deed. It is imperative that we pursue knowledge that will feed us the vital nutrients needed to grow and rid our minds of junk
Many of the books written by C.S. Lewis, a novelist and strong believer in christianity, deal with religious matters including man’s fall from grace and redemption. In his three book series, The Space Trilogy, Lewis lets readers see not only what mankind has become since our fall from grace, but also might have happened had Adam and Eve not fallen to the temptation of the Devil, and how he believes we can be redeemed. In this trilogy, C.S. Lewis uses the characters the Old One and Maleldil the Son as the non terrestrial versions of God and Jesus. Throughout these stories the author displays multiple characters experiencing sudden changes or following guidance from greater powers such as Maleldil. It is through these characters that C.S. Lewis explains how he believes you should live life. C.S. Lewis argues that you should recognize God’s will in your life and choose to obey His guidance.