Block Day, April 12 ~ TWHF, Chapters 8-9

Discuss Chs.6-7.

A wee quizze?

Journal 22
For Chapters 8-9

1.  What failures of perception do you see in these chapters?
2. Describe Orual's struggle as she and Bardia journey to the Mountain.  Is her view of the world (p.97) correct?  Do the gods send us delight right before a new agony?
3. .  How does Orual defend against the gods?  Compare Orual's approach with this excerpt from The Four Loves. 

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possible broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.... The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell (The Four Loves, p.121).

Ch.10

1. Why is Orual unable to see the palace?  Compare with these excerpts from "The Chronicles of Narnia." Consider some of our past texts:
   * * * * *
   Aslan raised his head and shook his mane.  Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs' knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand.  But it wasn't much use.  They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn't taste it properly.  They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a Stable.  One said he was trying to eat hay and another he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he'd found a raw cabbage leaf....
      "You see, said Aslan.  "They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they can not be taken out" (The Last Battle, ch.13, p.147-48).
    * * * * *
     We must now go back a bit and explain what the whole scene had looked like from Uncle Andrew's point of view.  It has not made at all the same impression on him as on the Cabby and the children.  For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are (The Magician's Nephew, ch. 10, p.125).