53 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. LewisA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“[T]here is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain won’t answer me.”
This quote expresses Orual’s motivation for writing; she asks her reader to fill the role of judge so that she might have an answer, so that she might be vindicated.
“I had a fear of the Priest that was quite different from my fear of my father. I think that what frightened me (in those early days) was the holiness of the smell that hung about him—it was a temple-smell of blood (mostly pigeons’ blood, but he had sacrificed men too) and burnt fat and singed hair and wine and stale incense. It is the Ungit smell.”
Orual’s description of the Priest gives us an insight into the religion of Glome. The worship of Ungit includes human sacrifice and teaches Orual to associate “holiness” and the gods with death and fear.
“She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad—she had the strangest and, I thought, unchanciest love for all manner of brutes—the toad became beautiful.”
This is Orual’s description of Psyche. Unlike their sister Redival, whose beauty is superficial, Psyche’s is spiritual as well as physical; she makes the world around her lovelier by her presence in it. Orual’s comment about Psyche’s love of beasts also suggests that Psyche sees the beauty and value of things that others dismiss, foreshadowing the conflict between the two sisters about the existence and nature of the gods.
By C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet
C. S. Lewis
Perelandra
C. S. Lewis
Prince Caspian
C. S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy
C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength
C. S. Lewis
The Abolition of Man
C. S. Lewis
The Discarded Image
C. S. Lewis
The Four Loves
C. S. Lewis
The Great Divorce
C. S. Lewis
The Horse And His Boy
C. S. Lewis
The Last Battle
C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
C. S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew
C. S. Lewis
The Pilgrim's Regress
C. S. Lewis
The Problem of Pain
C. S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis
The Silver Chair
C. S. Lewis
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
C. S. Lewis