Block Day, April 26 ~ TWHF finished!

Discuss the end!

Bring your $5!!!

As a final assessment of this novel, let's process motifs for meaning.

MOTIF - any recurring element (symbols, images, phrases, actions, etc...) that has symbolic significance in a story.

Goal: Create an artistic expose of what idea(s)/themes you believe Lewis is expressing through the use of a specific motif.

Requirements: You must be ready to present your art piece on Monday. Please include at least five quotes in your presentation (these could be printed or emailed to me). At least one quote must be from another source (other Lewis works, the Bible, Greek texts, etc...) and be used to find meaning via inter-textual comparison.  


Shall we brainstorm some motifs?


HW: TWHF Motif project is due Monday!





My Example Project

Motif: "Dark places are holy places."

1. "I know that they [the gods] dazzle our eyes and flow in and out of one another like eddies on a river, and nothing that is said clearly can be said truly about them. Holy places are dark places. It is life and strength, not knowledge and words, that we get in them. Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood" (50).

•  Like our hearts, the dark places can feel confusing and muddled.
• Holiness is about what is inside us, not just our facades and the things we build like knowledge and words. We can see clearly through water. Blood is thick and hides things.

2. "I have never seen anything more wonderful that the priest's stillness" (53).

• The priest spends enough time in the darkness (in vulnerability) that he is simply solid...he knows his mission and fears nothing. No insecurity is left in him.

3. "For a while after that an ugly fancy used to come to me in my dreams, or between sleeping and waking, that  I had walled up, gagged with stone, not a well but Psyche (or Orual) herself. But that also passed. I heard Psyche weeping no more. The year after that I defeated Essur" (235).

• The only holy place of vulnearability is in Orual's sleep...the only place of darkness or imagination. Holy places are places of the raw spirit, not the material concerns. 

4. "It was the calmest day--pure autumn--very hot, yet the sunlight on the stubble looked aged and gentle, not fierce like the summer heats. You would think the year was resting its work done. I whispered to myself that I too would begin to rest" (239).

• In the light, beautiful setting, Orual feels good and satisfied. She has not yet met any recognition about her misdeeds. In the daylight, she only judges her life by the material truth that she can see right now. It is only in the dark places that she must face her hubris. 

5.. "It's well for me I didn't hear this story fifteen years ago; yes, or even ten. It would have reawakened all my sleeping miseries. Now, it moes me hardly at all" (242).

• Here, Orual admits that she has been sleep walking. Though she has been awake and in the light, her spirit was "sleeping," ignoring her miseries and flaws. 

6. "The memory of his voice and face was kept in one of those rooms of my soul that I didn't lightly unlock. Now, instantly, I knew I was facing them--I with no strength and they with all; I visible to them, they invisible to me; I easily wounded (already so wounded that all my life had been but a hiding and staunching of the wound), they invulnerable; I one, they many" (245).

• The dark places are the places of vulnerability and truth we don't want to face or admit.

7. "I say the gods deal very unrightly with us. For they will neither (which would be best of all) go away and leave us to live our own short days to ourselves, nor will they show themselves openly and tell us what they would have us do. For that too would be endurable. But to hint and hover, to draw near us in dreams and oracles, or in a waking vision that vanishes as soon as seen, to be dead silent when we question them and then glide back and whisper (words we cannot understand) in our ears when we most wish to be free of them, and to show to one what they hide from another; what is all this but cat-and-mouse play, blindman's buff, and mere jugglery? Why must holy places be dark places?" (249).

• The light/dark imagery is backed by waking/sleeping and day/night. It is clear that the day time is ours, but the sleeping/darkness is where the gods speak truth. The "waking vision" shows that the goal of that truth is to wake us up not just to let us be blind and go about our days. 

Inter-textual References:

• "Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Love the  Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." (from the Shema based on Deut. 6:4-5). To be One means to be solid, consistent, unchanging, legitimate. (One means holy!)
• "Thus you are to be holy to Me, for I the LORD am holy; and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine" (Lev. 20:26). 

Other evidence

• Orual sees the house in twilight (132)
• Cupid only comes in the night when Psyche will know him by his vulnerable heart & thoughts. She cannot judge him by looks in the daytime. 
• The god is named the "shadowbrute" & Psyche is okay with this vulnerability and longing (75).
• Bardia was a way for her to avoid the solitude of her own dark place.

Therefore.... "Holy places are dark places" really means "True places are vulnerable places."