Lewis and Myth 2024

  In That Hideous Strength, the mega scientific organization N.I.C.E. closely resembles a lot of  “evil” organizations in today’s world that priorize efficiency and reason over the wellbeing of anyone else, like greedy corporations and the government. One key similarity is the use of propaganda and mob mentality to win people to their sides. For N.I.C.E., it’s obvious how they do this, from hiring Mark to write propaganda for them to literally naming themselves something they aren’t (nice). Yet, many people like Mark are entranced by it and subject themselves to the organization without much restraint because of a couple flattering words. Similarly, corporations parade around proclaiming that the wellbeing of the people is their number one priority, and yet continue to exploit their workers at any chance they get, raise their prices, and get try to shut down any backlash they receive. For a very recent example, a significant part of the public thinks that the recent assassina...

  I pride myself on being a very logical, pros and cons type of person. And while I am a crybaby, I really don’t like people who make emotional decisions – I’ll even think about what type of bread to buy for at least 2 days before actually going out and buying it to make sure its what I really want. I struggle in particular with consuming media with tons of plot holes and reading books that defy all laws of the universe. That being said, I don’t hate fun in it’s entirety. I can enjoy a weird, confusing movie or nonsense book if done well. One of my favorite books is the definition of a nonsense book, actually (Neil Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk , which is a whole trip in and of itself). The only condition it has to meet is that it seems like it’s intended to be weird – which both that book and Big Fish do well. Of course, no normal person would every believe 100% of the father’s stories in that movie, and I really enjoyed having the son’s perspective there because it made sure t...

  I am not a science fiction buff. I don’t understand science, I get irritated when I don’t understand things right off the bat, and usually tend to give up very quickly when both of these things are combined together. I talked in a previous blog post about how this happened with the guest speaker’s book and how everything was almost too new, causing me to strongly dislike it. However, Lewis manages to avoid this just like he did with Narnia when writing Out of the Silent Planet. He begins it will a very easily digestible, conventional plot about a standard kidnapping (much like how UFOs abduct cows in fields). The people behind it? Very standard villains: a mad scientist and greedy assistant. While very common, it’s still enjoyable (even my favorite movie ever relies on this last mad scientist trope). It’s very simple to get accustomed too and doesn’t throw the reading right into the middle of a new world without warning. We watch as Ransom (quite literally) moves from our ever...

  My favorite band Young the Giant has a song title “I Bite.” One of the lyrics in it is “love is unconditional under the right conditions” and I’ve always really liked listening to this song because of that lyric – I think it’s genius. Like I said with the whole gift giving and agape debate in an earlier blog post, I also find it hard to grasp agape and find unconditional love to be something pretty much impossible (that said, I’m open to objections). For storge, we see that a parent must want the child or the child must get good grades – there are countless cases where a parent’s love for their child is entirely conditional. For philia, friends can’t be selfish, but a lot of people won’t hang out with certain people because they have a reputation or image to maintain – the condition must be that they’re socially acceptable in some way. Even in eros, the condition is that they must feel romantic attraction and feel emotions, things that some people (like psychopaths) physically ca...

  In Borderlands , the mother preserved her child’s image of his father to protect him and keep him away from the harsh realities of the world. She hid that he was a violent alcoholic and throughout the movie accepted her son’s hatred to barring him from the man without complaint because she loved him just that much and wanted him to grow up happy and innocent. I believe that this is an example of storge (familial affection) as used in Lewis’ Four Loves . I remember reading Catcher in the Rye way back in high school. I really really loved the book, and if you can’t tell from my other blog posts, I’m really fascinated by storge,so I think it may be why I like Catcher in the Rye so much – it’s another perfect example of storge. Holden’s desperation to preserve the childhood innocence of his sister, Phoebe, is the main premise of the book. At the end of the book, he dreams of catching children in the rye field (childhood innocence) to stop them from falling over the cliff into the h...

  My final paper for my honors seminar was about how Americans form their moral compasses and one of the things I researched for it was called the “Social Ethic.” It describes the tendency to submit yourself, as an individual, to the whims of the group, such as religious organizations or political parties. I think that myth can be a tool of the social ethic – in this sense, reason can function as an organization or group. Reason relies on imagination (we perceive the senses through it), and while too much pure logic can be bad, so can too much imagination. For example, back when the pandemic hit there were a bunch of people who said that they were immune to covid because they didn’t have the right “waves” for it to transmit to them because their political party and the people within it told them so (a view relying almost entirely on imagination with very little science to back it up, if any at all). It was almost like mob mentality. We saw this happen in Big Fish . The son was affe...

     In Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet , when the protagonist has his revelation about the nature of Space and its true identity as the Heavens, he is realizing that the maps of the storytellers are more accurate than any map that science can produce. And if the storytellers can chart the stars better than the physicists, then perhaps the storytellers also charted the seas better than the satellites have.      Many older maps feature creatures and gods. Even when the explorers had discovered the world was a sphere and that there was not a giant cliff at the end of a flat world guarded by dragons, storytellers continued to etch their maps with "Here there be dragons." The winds remained portrayed by the four wind gods perched in the map corners, and the sketches of great serpents in the oceans were kept. The storytellers understood that it did not matter whether there were literal dragons and wyverns lurking in and above the ocean, the danger they represent...

     In Lewis' "On Juvenile Tastes" he writes about the other side of the assumption that fairy tales are meant for children, the idea that all children enjoy fairy stories as a distinct literary species. Lewis finds this idea preposterous, that there might be some universal taste shared by children. He points out that there are certainly different tastes amongst children and denies that there are any classics which might be enjoyed by all children- Lewis himself admits to having disliked The Arabian Nights  both as a child and an adult. Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories" is cited by Lewis, as it is be nearly any author who wishes to discuss the idea of a children's literature and whether one exists. In addition to denying that there is any Childish taste, in another piece ("Unreal Estates") Lewis denies that children can be in any way categorized into clear taste groups, saying "You'll find the same boy who reads [comics] also reads Shakesp...

      To become an author that can draw a reader into a realistic secondary world of their own creation is unfortunately not a skill that everyone possesses. Fortunately, there are cheaper and easier remedies for this great problem than years of writing courses that might still not work. Two very good ones are fanfiction and roleplaying.     In both fanfiction and roleplaying, you get to use a secondary world that someone else has already created. This isn't to say creativity ceases to be a necessary element, a turd in a sandcastle is still a turd. But in circumstances where the secondary world has already been created for you, the only task remaining is to transfer your audience into that pre-made world. This requires several things of course, firstly being that you must understand the rules of the secondary world. You cannot take other people into a place you do not understand yourself without providing a jarring experience, as anyone who has read poor fanfict...

     I own more than one copy each of my favorite books. I own more than one copy of a few non-favorite books as well, but that is by accident and not design. For the books of which I purposely own multiple, the additional ones usually have something special about them. I own anywhere between four and six copies of the omnibus Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at a time- my first copy in softcover, my reading copy in hardcover, a fancily bound imitation-leather copy, and at least one (often more) spare copies to give to people who are sadly lacking a copy of their own. I also possess multiple copies of complete Poe anthologies, and Bulfinch, several Alice 's and I used to have more than one complete Sherlock Holmes before I gave my extra away.      Something all of those have in common is that they all have been deemed "classic" stories, leading to many reprints and quite a few of those reprints being fancily done. I own multiple copies of a few other f...

      The Ship of Theseus is a popular thought experiment concerning identity. It asks the thinker to imagine a ship called the Ship of Theseus. Over the years, all of the parts of the ship have been replaced with new ones, so that not a single part of the ship is original. Is it still the Ship of Theseus, or is it a different ship? A modifier to this problem I have heard occasionally begins the same way, but adds that a second ship is built, and it is entirely built from the original parts of the Ship of Theseus, that had been replaced on the first ship overtime. Which of the two ships, if either, is the Ship of Theseus?     This issue of identity is hardly limited to ships, and the Greeks were not the only people to notice this paradox. In a Buddhist sutra, the  Mahāprajñāpāramitopadeśa, there is a parable concerning it, which I have taken the liberty of quoting a section here as it is likely unfamiliar to most readers: "[The second demon] grasped the man...

      The development of object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist when not observed is one of the important early mental developments for young children. Eventually they also learn that while unobserved objects remain existent when not observed, they do not always remain unaltered. The most "Academic" way to demonstrate this is Schrodinger's Cat- object permanence informs us that the cat remains existent, philosophy tells us we cannot be certain whether there is an alive cat or deceased cat until we see it. For a much less academic example, consider a helium balloon that has been released by a young child and lost track of. For the child, object permanence informs him that the balloon still exists even though he can no longer see it, but he cannot be sure whether the balloon is whole or popped. For both Schrodinger's Cat and the child's balloon, the only remedy to reacquire certainty is to see the subject again.      For a cat or ...

      Any author of prominence is often asked to review other books, so that snippets of their reviews might be used in advertising materials, or as filler in subscription publications, and of course there is the fringe benefit hardly worth mentioning that the public might actually like to know what a famous author thinks of a book- a matter I find very strange. It seems to me that in the creative fields, the opinion of one creator on the works of another is hardly more relevant to me than the opinion of a friend, for some very talented artists have very horrible taste. Much of the incessant needling for famous people to review things is left safely ignored by secretaries or agents, but for those too modest to have a secretary, too weak-willed to say no, or too unfortunate as to have friend's who seek your reviews, from them we receive reviews.     In On Stories , we are either blessed or cursed with three reviews by Lewis of his friend and fellow Inkling J.R.R....

    By the time "Darmok" was released as the 102nd episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1991, Star Trek  already had a mythos far more developed than the handful of stories that the Darmoks are shown using as communicative tools in the episode. The fandom of affectionately named Trekkies already had a deep network of fan-writings, quotes, references, and even songs such as the wonderful 1987 "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm. An original song rather than a parody as many novelty songs are, "Star Trekkin'" is a tribute to the series that makes little initial sense to anyone who doesn't already know at least the baseline stories and characters of the first Star Trek  series.      In addition to requiring a knowledge of Star Trek  to understand, "Star Trekkin'" has left its own marks on the fandom's lingo. The phrase "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" is now a beloved franchise line but originated as a lyric ...

     One of the most entertaining inclusions in C.S. Lewis' On Stories  is "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946), a reply to a scathing article attacking Lewis' Space Trilogy by J. B. S. Haldane, a man Walter Hooper describes as "a theoretical biologist, disillusioned Marxist, and violently anti-Christian" in his introduction to On Stories . Hooper considered it unnecessary to include Haldane's article in the essay collection, but Lewis samples enough of it in the eighteen pages that his reply stretches over to make Hooper's decision likely justified.      Lewis, though he characterizes much of his reply as "removal of mere misunderstandings" must have been reasonably aggravated by Haldane to spend as much effort on his rebuttal as he did. His annoyance is fairly understandable though when Haldane supposedly said Lewis' characters "were like slugs in an experimental cage who get a cabbage if they turn right and an electrical shock ...

     In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  by C.S. Lewis (1950), the Middle Eastern (the exact origin of the dessert is contested) dessert Turkish Delight is used as an allegory for the addicting temptations of evil. Perhaps an apple would have been too on the nose even for Lewis, a man who delighted in allegory, occasionally to the annoyance of associates like Tolkien. Or perhaps Lewis thought that while an apple may have been sufficient temptation for Adam, even in taste-bereft wartime England a young boy would need something decidedly sweeter than a tree fruit to take a bite on behalf of a snake. Regardless, Lewis' choice (and the incredible David Crowder Band song modeled after it) has led to an increased popularity of Turkish Delight in the Western world, where many associate it with the series of Narnia books.     The idea of evil and sin being appealing and, once consumed, addictive is a constant across any religion I know of. In Christianity the...

      In the creation of a secondary world, both Tolkien and Chesterton remark on the importance of having rules and forbidden things. These are important because they establish that the secondary world is "real." How much these rules align with the rules of our own world is irrelevant, because the rules of our world only make sense because we observe them regularly. If the inhabitants of a fantasy world observe the rules of their existence, then those rules are just as real there as ours are here for they are in their own primary world, to which ours is secondary.     A wonderful example of this occurs in the 1884 novella Fl atland: A Romance of Many Dimensions  by Edwin Abbott Abbott. The first half of the book features the main character describing in detail the many rules and facts of existence in the secondary world of Flatland, where there are only two dimensions upon which everything exists. The narrator describes the systems of Flatland not only in ...

     My favorite story from Lewis Carroll is his 1876  The Hunting of the Snark, subtitled as An Agony in 8 Fits . It is a nonsense poem, with Carroll denying to know the meaning of the poem and the plot having little semblance of anything rational. As C.S. Lewis laments however, literature is subject to the most monstrous exegesis ("Unreal Estates" in On Stories ) and this has only encouraged scholars to delve deeply into it, searching for some meaning that Carroll either did not know or refused to share. The poem is fairly short, a mere 31 pages in my reproduction copy of an early edition and less in my omnibus volume of Carroll's work. My own interpretation of the story has changed several times through the years, and I'll embarrass myself with my current one after sharing some of the interpretations others have arrived at.     One of the generally accepted things about The Hunting of the Snark  is that it is a tragedy. This view began with the orig...

    In the 1968 Understanding Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings (alternatively titled The Tolkien Relation ) by William Ready, C.S. Lewis is mentioned more regularly than anyone but Tolkien himself. This itself is entirely rational, Lewis having been another member of the Inklings club to which Tolkien also belonged, but the treatment of Lewis by Ready is often strange or otherwise notable.     Lewis is first mentioned in Understanding Tolkien in the first chapter, after Ready discusses the Andrew Lang lecture by Tolkien that we read at the beginning of class to lay a framework for how myth and story can be understood. Ready takes umbrage with what he sees as an unfair treatment of Tolkien by scholars, blaming the fame of Lewis for coloring their opinions of him (Dr. Thompson states it is his recollection that Lewis was indeed more famous than Tolkien prior to the LotR movies). Ready complains that "Tolkien has been tarred by [Lewis'] brush" and that the resulting mi...

    In Big Fish  (2003), a frustrated William Bloom describes the relationship between himself and his father as being that of "strangers that know each other very well." This relationship and his thoughts on it are also a topic of the song "Stranger" from the 2013 musical adaptation of Big Fish . This strangeness, which is felt in both ways- William has certainly failed to hear his father's stories, but father Edward has also failed to be a storyteller that William can understand- is only resolved in the end, when the pair is able to communicate through a story they can both understand.      Their failures to understand each other is not entirely due to lack of effort, but William and Edward both believe they are making an effort that the other is not responding with. In the early song "Stranger," William asserts that "I'll try, I'll really try... to see brighter days for Dad and me... so that strangers we will be no more," but even ...

     Dear Orual, you poor wretched soul. You complain of something you do not understand. Furthermore, you write a book of your misunderstandings that should be spread, you are no better than the gods you yell at. I am Apate, goddess of deception, guile, and fraud. You would do well though to trust me now, though it is apparent you are unable to tell lies from truth. You have lied to yourself enough that any further lies from me are entirely unnecessary. What I speak to you will be true.     Oh Orual, you decrepit disbeliever. You claim to love your sister but were unwilling to listen when she spoke. You must have thought her vain and foolish to remain on the Mountain when you had been ill and awaiting the time that you might save her. Were you so anxious that all your worry for her might have been in vain, that you were willing to ignore her pleas and even go so far as to coerce her? So trusting in the judgements of only those who spoke what you wanted to ...

  Storge is one of the four loves that Lewis identifies in his book The Four Loves . He defines it as affection that typically comes from a parent to their children or other similar relationships. I think it’s a beautiful type of love in theory – but I’ve found that oftentimes when I receive storge from my own parents, it’s only beautiful in a tragic-esque way. My mom and I have always had a very rocky relationship. I get my independence and stubbornness from her – good traits when mixed with certain types of people, and catastrophic ones when mixed with other types (like her). We have very differing views on almost everything in life, but since neither of us is the type to back down, most of our conversations turn into arguments and end in hurt feelings. I know she loves me more than anything else in the world. She always wants what’s best for me (in her opinion, at least), but doesn’t know how to express that in a way that doesn’t come off as controlling. For example, we’ll go sh...

The internet seems like its own source of myth with its own unique language to me in many ways. With its wide and fast access to billions of people of all demographics, language and myths develop so quickly and in such niche spheres that if you blink you’ll miss it and be lost.  One example I have of this is the generational difference between gen z and gen alpha on TikTok. I was not on the “side” of the app where most of the gen alphas were when “brainrot” terms like “sigma” and “skibidi” were developing. As such, I was very confused when fellow netizens began adding them to their vocabulary because I had no idea what they meant (and still don’t really now, but my point is made). Similarly, when my generation began using terms like “sus” and “slay,” my gen x parents were at a loss as to how to communicate with me and have struggled with it since, especially because a new term or phrase seems to pop up every week. In fact, my dad is so far behind that it was only within the past ye...

I read this one article for my honors seminar class that discussed how America was unique in the sense that it is one of, if not the only highly industrialized nation that is still highly religious. This is due to the nation’s deep Puritan-Protestant roots, and while you might think at first glance that this doesn’t apply to less religious and non-Protestant Americans, you’d be incorrect: they are just as likely to have an implicit Puritan-Protestant bias as devout American Protestants. And now that I’ve written at least two journal entries on how religion and God are basically myths in themselves, I don’t think it’s a long shot to claim that God is one of if not the most prevalent, everyday myths in American society. We see Him everywhere. “In God we trust” is not only on our currency but is also the nation’s official motto. The Pledge of Allegiance states that we are “one nation under God.” While the United States Constitution does not explicitly reference God, it ensures that religi...

Our discussion about Hellen Keller finally grasping language early in the semester made me ponder just what other methods of language are available to us. Yes, there are countless written and oral languages with all different characters and grammar structures, but what else is there? Plays and stories are obviously others, as we’ve been learning about them all semester. As we saw in the Star Trek episode, myth can function (literally) as a language of its own. For example, if I were to reference Jesus, only those familiar with Christianity would understand, thus making it a language only we could communicate in. (I will discuss how social media affects language and myth in a different post due to length reasons.) Body language, facial expressions, gestures, and natural physical reactions are others. If someone is biting their nails, they have effectively communicated to me that they are nervous. If someone laughs, they’ve communicated that they are entertained. If someone shrugs, they’...

When I hiked the AT with Kip and Jacob this summer, towards the end of the trip I had a total of 40 Slim Jims in my pack that I had not eaten because, even after two weeks of eating nothing but ramen, I was still a picky eater. So I did was any normal person would do: started a currency. I would pay other people to do things that I didn’t want to do (like clean my pot, hang up my bear bag, and get water, to name a few) with two to three Slim Jims, depending on how I was feeling at the time. This started a trend, and by the end of the trip, everything had turned into an exchange. I vividly remember another student, Kate, getting really frustrated about it, and somewhere along the way, Jacob and Kip ended up arguing about the existence of true gifts. I think it’s much easier to function like a well-oiled machine when expectations are present. You clean my pot, you get three Slim Jims, and there’s no argument about it because everyone understands the bargain. (Note that this theory reflec...

A major premise of Till We Have Faces is Orual’s search for justice in the form of correcting the ‘exaggerated’ stories told about her in relation to Psyche. However, her version of justice later turns out to be a false, invalid form of it, which reminded me of the definitions of justice offered in Plato’s Republic. One of the definitions offered in Plato’s work comes from Cephalus, who argues that the definition of justice is to tell the truth and repay one’s debts. This is very similar to what Orual originally wanted: her version of the truth to be told (which she believed was the objective truth at first), and to get revenge on the gods who ruined her life and took Psyche away from her. However, this definition does not hold up because it is too shallow and conventional to be considered real justice. Another definition comes from Polemarchus, who claims that justice is helping one’s friends and harming one’s enemies. However, this is too subjective to be true justice – and Orual her...

For me, at least, it feels incredibly difficult to create a second world. When writing my Narnia story, I spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out what to write about. With seven books, you’d think I’d have a lot to choose from, but that was not the case. I truly struggled with finding a direction, and it was only once my first couple of sentences were down did the writing process became easier. If creating a very minor, not well-thought-out second world was that hard, I can’t imagine creating on the level that Lewis or that one guest speaker did. (I mean, writing a literal Bible for your own second world is an insane thing to do, and I’d probably end up pulling all my hair out before finishing it.) That made me start consciously thinking about the little things in Narnia that helped shape the second world. By adding a couple of fantastical elements to the mundane things seen all around in the primary world, it is much easier for the reader to get pulled into and immersed...

Lewis claims that agape is a type of selfless, unconditional love. It is sometimes used to express God’s love for humanity in the New Testament, and throughout myth and story itself, agape is often portrayed through sacrifice. I attended Catholic school for ten years, so I am very familiar with this type of love as portrayed in the Catholic faith. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross in order to save people from their sins. In this way, He allowed us to experience forgiveness from and reconciliation with God. This is seen as the ultimate act of love because He, according to the Nicene Creed, came down from heaven solely “for us men and for our salvation.” He did so with no intentions of getting anything in return and with the full expectation that we, as sinners, would continue to sin, making it a true act of unconditional love. Aslan takes on Jesus’ role in the Narnia books when he sacrifices himself on the stone table in order to save Edmund, who had will...

       Oh Orual, poor Orual, always led to believe that it is not the truth that is laid out in front of you. You claim that it is I who tricked you into ruining dear Psyche’s life, but once again, you allow the tall tales spun by finite mortals to cloud your senses with frivolous fantasies. I am not your fellow trickster, poor Orual, but Kathreptis, the god of truth and mirrors – the god of that which you have refused to see all your life. You have spent every day since your beloved Psyche’s sacrifice cursing my name and declaring that it was I who planted the images of palaces in her head and that it was I who misled you into believing that the God of the Mountain was nothing but a nameless criminal. But no, blind Orual, it is not I who has deceived you – for once you look impartially upon the glass of truth, you shall blame none other than yourself. You willed the Fox to sway you with fickle reason, refused to believe your senses even when your eyes directly ill...

So far, we have discussed, through various lenses, that a good story requires the reader to interpret the “other world” through their own life story.  Many ethical issues revealed in the Magician's Nephew are conveyed through Andrew’s decisions. In the book he uses the term “Ignorant people”, saying that Mrs. Lefay, before her death, had come to dislike them. For the purpose of this writing, we can define Ignorant people as those who don't know certain things. When we treat someone as if they don't know, we commit unethical acts, a grievance against the person.  Digory is the character who interacts with Andrew in a dialog that lets us uncover Andrew's true nature as Digory himself comes to realize it. After Andrew tells him about Mrs. Lefays box and how he didn't burn it against her wishes, Digory says that this act is “downright” rotten.  Andrew appears to be puzzled by this name calling. He insists that people like him are above regular social rules or acts. He c...