Block Day, April 19 ~ TWHF Chs.17-19

Discuss J23: Chs.15-16

• How do you think Orual ought to react to the events of the stormy night?
• Guess at the meaning of the curse. 

Journal 24: Chapters 17-19

1. Explore the way Orual views her Queen identity. Why did Orual want to become queen?  How did she see "the Queen" as separate from "Orual"?  How does the role help Orual cheat the gods?  Do you see any parallels between Orual and Queen Elizabeth I?

2.  Contrast the way the Fox and Orual understand love.

3.  Describe Orual's exhilaration after winning the duel.  Why does her mood change?  What is the significance of her statement, "I am the Queen; I'll kill Orual too" (p.225)?
4. Remember the four loves? How is each tainted at this point in the book?

Wednesday, April 18 ~ TWHF Chs.15-16

Discuss Chs. 13-14

•  Read the following excerpts from The Four Loves.  How does Lewis flesh out these concepts in chapter 14?

The rivalry between all natural loves and the love of God is something a Christian dare not forget.  God is the great Rival, the ultimate object of human jealousy; that beauty, terrible as the Gorgon's, which may at any moment steal from me-or it seems like stealing to me-my wife's or husband's or daughter's heart (p.38).

Change is a threat to Affection.... Few things in the ordinary peacetime life of a civilized country are more nearly fiendish than the rancour with which a whole unbelieving family will turn on the one member of it who has become a Christian, or a whole low-brow family on the one who shows signs of becoming an intellectual.... It is the reaction to a desertion, even to robbery.  Someone or something has stolen "our" boy (or girl).  He who was one of Us has become one of Them.  What right had anybody to do it?  He is ours (p.45-47).

If we try to live by Affection alone, Affection will "go bad on us" (p.55).

But then a love like Mrs. Fidget's contains a good deal of hatred.  It was of erotic love that the Roman poet said, "I love and hate," but other kinds of love admit the same mixture.  They carry in them the seeds of hatred.  If Affection is made the absolute sovereign of a human life the seeds will germinate.  Love, having become a god, becomes a demon (p.56).

• What does Psyche mean when she tells Orual, "You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know" (p.165).  Compare the love of Orual with the love of Psyche.

Read Chs. 15-16

Journal 23

1. Describe the creature Orual sees when Psyche lights the lamp.  What did he reveal to Orual about herself?

2.  What do you think the judgments on Psyche (exile) and Orual ("you also shall be Psyche") mean?

3.  Orual contends that the gods are to blame for Psyche's fate because had the gods let her know Psyche was safe with the Beast she would not have acted as she did.  Is Orual being honest with herself? 

4.  How does Orual's secrecy about what happened on the mountain diminish her relationship with the Fox?

5. Look at the times Orual is veiled.

     a. the king's marriage (p.11)

     b. trips to the mountain (p.93 and 154)

     c. to wear her veil permanently (p.180)

Why was Orual veiled?  What might the veil symbolize?  Consider also the scriptures below:

Exodus 34:33-35 New International Version (NIV)

33 When Moses finished speaking to them, he put a veil over his face.34 But whenever he entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him, he removed the veil until he came out. And when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 they saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 3:13-18 New International Version (NIV)

13 We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away. 14 But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. 15 Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 16 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Tuesday, April 17 ~ TWHF Chs. 13-14

Discuss Ch. 11-12

Is Psyche the first Disney princess? 

• Significance of the dream/sleeper motif? 
• Does Psyche have any motives to lie? 
• Consider Orual's questions on pages 133-34: (a) Does [a glimpse of the palace] tell against the gods or against me?  (b) If they had an honest intention to guide us, why is their guidance not plain?

Do you know about Medieval architecture? 

Medieval/Gothic Style

Classical Greek Style

More Greek style

Read Ch. 13-14

• What does Psyche mean when she tells Orual, "You are indeed teaching me about kinds of love I did not know" (165).  Compare the love of Orual with the love of Psyche.
• Why won't Orual tell anyone about seeing the castle in the fog? 

Some vocab..

hellebore (ch.13) - an herb that works as an anti-depressant

ferly (ch.13) - something strange and marvelous

Alcibiades (ch.13) - a Greek orator who was known to have a lack of a spine, known for his cunning and treachery.

hoplites (ch.13) - a soldier

Monday, April 16 ~ TWHF, Chapters 11-12

Last chance to turn in Mere Christianity papers.

Discuss 8-10

Reading Quiz on Chapters 1-10

HW: Read Chs. 11-12

• As you read, highlight key quotes. Be ready to share them and what you believe Lewis is revealing in these two chapters. 

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).

Wednesday, April 11 ~ TWHF Chs.6-7

Discuss Chs.4-5

• "Holy places are dark places."  What does Lewis mean here? Can you relate this to a modern experience of your own? Is it ever true?
• How trustworthy is this priest?
• If we consider the ancient view that the gods will curse the land until the "sin" has left via  a scapegoat, is Psyche's beauty and adoration the only injustice that could be causing the curse?  (Don't forget that Ungit is a fertility goddess.)
• Consider the archetypes in Oedipus. Do you see a "blind seer" like Tiresias or a person whose eyes are open, but cannot perceive the truth? What truth is being presented with these archetypes? 

Journal 21: Chapters 6-7

1. Contrast the Fox and the priest.  Consider the following excerpt from "Christian Apologetics" in God in the Dock, p.102-03:

We may salva reverential [without outraging reverence] divide religions, as we do soups, into ‘thick' and ‘clear'.  By Thick I mean those which have orgies and ecstasies and mysteries and local attachments: Africa is full of Thick religions.  By Clear I mean those which are philosophical, ethical and universalizing: Stoicism, Buddhism, and the Ethical Church are Clear religions.  Now if there is a true religion it must be both Thick and Clear: for the true God must have made both the child and the man, both the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly.... But Christianity really breaks down the middle wall of the partition.  It takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey an enlightened universalist ethic: it takes a twentieth-century academic prig like me and tells me to go fasting to a Mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord.  The savage convert has to be Clear: I have to be Thick.  That is how one knows one has come to the real religion.

1. How can we relate the story to the idea of "men without chests" form Abolition?
2. Why does Orual perceive Psyche's willingness to be the sacrifice as repudiation of her love? 
3. Consider the thesis from The Four Loves. My paraphrase....Natural loves can "hold" only when infused and transformed by divine love (agape). Left alone and cut off from agape, natural loves seize to be loves at all, but eventually become corrupted into bitterness and eventually a hatred. Can you see a degradation of Orual's storge love? 

Tuesday, April 10 ~ TWHF, Ch.4-5 tonight

First, agree or disagree?





EQ: What is Stoicism? Click here for a quick overview.

• Who represents stoicism in the novel? How?
• Contrast the ways the Fox and Orual view divine nature.
• Discuss Orual as a narrator? Impressions? Is she trustworthy?
• Themes so far? 

HW: Read Ch.4 & 5, annotate for progress of the themes you see, especially that of Stoic thought, beauty vs. ugly, and the nature of the divine. Continue to assess the reliability of Orual's narration.