Till We Have Faces

 

"Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back," (87).

Some of my earliest memories have no images, only sound and feeling. Lying on the floor with my eyes close, listening to the sound of my father's voice, I would be lost in the world of Narnia--the swirling sand of Calormen beneath my feet and Cair Paravel rising in the distance. Before I could read much more than a picture book on my own, I found myself well-acquainted with the mystical creatures of C.S. Lewis' imagination. This specific memory contains remnants of The Horse and His Boy, as Shasta and Bree climbed endless dunes under a burning sun to reach freedom. Before I had re-read the books for myself as an older adolescent, I could recall those written descriptions in the voice of my father.

I also grew up on the 1988 BBC version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It was in 2 parts, and I can see explicitly the scene in the woods, Lucy gaping at the snow melting from budding branches. And then the tape ends. And we had to re-wind before pulling that one out of the VHS player and popping in Part 2. We were front and center in the theater when the new version was released in 2005, and there was no more re-winding necessary, thankfully.

As a teenager, I made a list of every piece of C.S. Lewis writing that I could find. I decided that I would work my way through, book by book, until I had collected them all. I've lost count at this point, but I believe I am somewhere near the 25 mark, with several more still to go. C.S. Lewis' writing has shaped who I am, from childhood until now. This claim is one that can probably be made by many a reader. He wrote the sort of books he would have wanted to read, and it turns out that what is good reading material doesn't alter all that much, even as the outside trappings of our societies change beyond recognition. I'm guessing he understood that fact better than most.

My most recent addition to my Lewis library I is Till We Have Faces. It is the last book that he wrote and published before his death; he is quoted as saying that it his best. This review is difficult for me to write, not because I don't have thoughts, but because the thoughts are too broad. I think too much, too many things, concerning this book, and I fear that a few bullet points cannot do it justice. But that is the task that I have set before myself, and so I will attempt to craft a description that will do some small semblance of justice to the text. If nothing else, perhaps it will encourage you to pick it up and read for yourself:

1. "There stood the palace, grey--as all things were grey in that hour and place--but solid and motionless, wall within wall, pillar and arch and architrave, acres of it, a labyrinthine beauty" (149).

The fantasy. I loved the fantasy genre when I was a kid, and now that I've stepped back into that realm, I am recalling what originally drew me to it. C.S. Lewis does the fantastical and magical better than almost anyone, and I believe part of his longevity as a beloved author is his willingness to present the subtle humanity of imagination through the eyes of children. What if the trees could hear and remain loyal to the rightful heirs of the throne? What if a goat was also half-human and drank tea in his cave-like home? And what if a young, arrogant boy could fall prey to an evil witch, but his very own siblings took up the mantle and fought for the freedom of an entire country? And...what if Father Christmas was there? These are the types of dreams that we all have, but often only children are brave enough to speak them. The fairytales are only one step away from our world, with battles and simple kindnesses and the same human tendencies we see every day. However, they are also full of all the wonder that can be infused with the question, what if?

C.S. Lewis got this aspect of fantasy right, and he does it yet again in Till We Have Faces. A medievalist will always do castles and monsters right, and a Greek mythologist knows his gods and allegories like no one else. Lewis brings all of these influences into his work. As I was reading, I couldn't help but think that this work is the precursor to every modern fantasy book that I have enjoyed. There are the very real, physical dangers of wars and plagues, but the spiritual and metaphysical terrors are also ever-present. Of course, the greatest monster is always the unseen. The soaring beauty and the tragic ugliness of such a world, where all is possible and dreams or nightmares both lurk at the door, is what fantasy readers seek.

2. "What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant" (287).

The voice. The novel is written as a journaling task by our main character, Orual. She has set out to tell her tale, to revisit the events that led her to the great plight in which she now finds herself. We grow with Orual, learning to see the world through her eyes and finding the errors in her thinking. She cannot identify them herself, at least in the beginning. Letting a first-person narrator express her own flaws without realization, essentially incriminating herself without knowing it, is incredibly subversive. We, as the readers, are one with her: we are inside Orual's mind and can only see the world through her eyes. Somehow, we are led to both empathize with her desperation and simultaneously condemn her for pride and self-imposed blindness. There is a many a book wherein the author crafts a protagonist that is lacking, who is unlikable or annoying or selfish, to the point where the book is ruined. Not so with Orual. She is, for lack of a better description, human. Her entire journey to a discovery of the truth mirrors the reader's own. If she misses the mark so clearly, then what am I missing within the annals of my own mind? Have I looked in the mirror too long and forgotten what is there? Lewis thus points us inward through the coaxing thoughts of another.

3. "That ruinous face was mine. I was that...swollen spider, squat at its centre, gorged with men's stolen lives...ceasing to be...was now too hard for me" (315).

The allegory. Lewis' scholarly focus was on the allegorical work of the Middle Ages, so of course he is a master in the form. He weaves the idea of a pagan pantheon together with clearly Christian themes. How does he manage such a feat? And is it one worth doing? In his view, all of the ancient myths and stories had their roots in the one great story of humanity: God, sending His Son to die on our behalf and drawing us back into community with Himself after our violent rejection of Him. Every mythology and religion carry the same spiritual elements, just packaged slightly differently to fit the culture. The humans in Till We Have Faces shape gods who are convenient to them. The cruel and brutal Ungit resides in a dark house in the form of a misshapen stone, requiring bloody sacrifice and withholding mercy from the people. The god on the mountain, unseen and mysterious, is imagined by some as a brute and by others as majestic and beautiful.

At one point in the novel, the priest of Ungit describes the gods as being the source and the result of one another. "[S]he signifies the earth, which is the womb and mother of all living things" and the god on the mountain is "the sky by its showers [making] the earth fruitful" (308). The people are very vague and contradictory in their theology, proving that none of them really see the truth in full, only in part. They have created gods who will suit them and explain the inexplicable, and the gods have produced in them a certain way of living that promotes unity, survival, and moral character. The actuality of their deity has very little importance, in the way that the Israelite's golden calf was not really meant to replace the omnipotent God meeting with Moses on the mountain. Down below, where nothing can be seen except the whispers of sovereign design, the human mind is apt to define everything satisfyingly within the confines of human understanding--even that which cannot be grasped.

The complexity of the allegory is hard to overstate. C.S. Lewis is, on the one hand, commenting on the reality of human nature. He is also showing the true homeliness of our "faces" when compared with the untamed holiness of the true God. We are dust...such small and inconsequential beasts in the face of the One Moses could only see from behind. The wonder is in the fact that we, merely human, will one day see Him face to face as we stand upon the merciful blood of His Son, to be reunited with Him whose image we bear imprinted on our eternal souls. And that, in C.S. Lewis' allegory, is what it means to have a face.

There is no doubt in my mind that you should read Till We Have Faces. If not, I will read it again for both of us. And that is not a threat, but a promise!