Shadowlands, the Movie: Part 1

CS Lewis, in response to Harry about Joy Gresham: "Not my wife. No, how could she be? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? She'd have to be more important to me than anything in the World. I'd have to be suffering the torments of the damned. The thought of losing her..."

CS Lewis, in his sermons about pain: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

Write about these quotes, or other ones that particularly stood out to you. Reference and quote from the three other works that we've read this semester; what C.S. Lewis seems to be expressing about love, pain, and/or any other motif/idea that comes to mind.

The Great Divorce Chapters 11-the end

Presentation Proposals

Please list:
1. Members in group
2. Project proposal, to include format of project. Please be as specific as possible!

More information:

The project proposal should be a reflection of and response to various topics we have discussed in our three books. Presentations should be 5-10 minutes. The day of, you will need to turn in a hard copy of your presentation.

This will need to be at least 800 words. If you are doing a skit, for example, you will need to turn in a script of the skit. If you have written letters to supplement The Screwtape Letters, you will need to turn this in. You can also write an explanation/preface to your Screwtape Letters to count as part of the 800 words.

The Great Divorce Chapters 6-10

The Great Divorce Chapters 1-5

What sort of society does one get in Lewis’ depiction of hell?  Feel free to incorporate discussion of the characters that appear, and what vices they represent.

Week 8 Reflections - Screwtape Letters 25-End, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Over the course of The Screwtape Letters, the state of the patient's soul fluctuates as he experiences a conversion, doubt, dangerous friendships, war, love, and finally, in death, oneness with God. What major strategies does Screwtape use to tempt the patient into the Devil's camp? Why do these temptations fail? In what ways can the patient be seen as an everyman?


or/and


In spite the patient's triumph over temptation, his glorious entrance to Heaven-"the degradation of it!-that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits" (p.122)-Screwtape does not lose faith in his own cause. Why do you think Lewis chose to end the book in this ambiguous light? Why is Screwtape sustained by "the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end"? (p. 124). What warning is implied in the book's ending? In what ways does The Screwtape Lettersspeak to contemporary moral and spiritual issues both within and outside of the Christian Church?


(from HarperCollins)

Week 7 Reflections - The Screwtape Letters 17-24

Lewis exhibits throughout his writings an uncanny sense of human nature and a style capable of brilliant aphorism: "Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury"; "Gratitude looks toward the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead", to cite just two examples. Where else inThe Screwtape Letters do you find universal statements about human nature? Do these statements accurately reflect not just a Christian ethos but the workings of human psychology more generally?


or


Love is an important theme in The Screwtape Letters. Describing the human idea of love and marriage, Screwtape tells Wormwood: "They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion". Screwtape is also confounded by God's love for man, which he grants as real but irrational. What is Lewis saying, in the book as a whole, about human and divine love?


(from HarperCollins Reading Guide)

Week 6 Reflections - Screwtape Letters

In the first of Screwtape's letters, he instructs Wormwood not to attempt to win the patient's soul through argument, but rather by fixing his attention on "the stream of immediate sense experiences" (p. 2). Why is immersion in the particulars of "real life" fertile ground for temptation? Why is argument a risky strategy for devils to employ? Where else do you find this opposition between the particular and the universal-between materialism and spiritual faith-in The Screwtape Letters?


or


Why is Screwtape so pleased when the patient becomes friends with a group of people who are "rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world"? (p. 37). What influence does Screwtape hope they will have on him? Why should their "flippancy" build up an "armor-plating" against God? In what ways does Lewis merge theology and social satire in this and other passages throughout The Screwtape Letters?

(Questions from HarperCollins)

Week 5 Reflections - Screwtape Letters

Screwtape advises Wormwood to tempt the unnamed Person.  ”What theme/issue does Screwtape emphasize?  Trace this theme/issue by choosing select passages in his letters which address this.  

Week 4 Reflections - Surprised by Joy Chapters 11-15

Week 3 Reflections Surprised by Joy Chapters 6-10

Week 2 Optional Reflections

“Why should creatures have the burden of existence forced upon them without their consent?” pg.62     I think this is a very important quote that deals with many of the ideas that people are confused about and are burdened with even today.  The idea of “free will” versus predestination.  Now I wont get into that at all right now, but I just wanted to point out that it is a very relevant quote to the present day problems.  Another statement that really got me was in the same story of how Thor was complaining that Loki didn’t respect the Gods, and Loki replied with, “I pay respect to wisdom not to strength.”  I believe this is a powerful and empowering quote to people in present day who feel that wisdom has not quality or superiority with the value of strength (comparing it with physical strength).  But in fact, the value of wisdom has kept more people alive for longer than strength ever has.  Strength is only one aspect of a person’s physical/mental character which guides and protects only a few aspects of the person.  But wisdom is the observer, the communicator, the decision maker, the pathway to longevity and life.  Wisdom cannot be taken from you, but strength dwindles away with every forceful attack.
--Spenser Hagan



“And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else-
whether a distant mountain of the past…does the 'thrill arise'… This, I say is the first and deadly error
which appears on every level of life and is equally deadly on all, turning religion into a self-caressing
luxury and love into autoeroticism.” (94).

The “thrill” or “old thrill” that C. S. Lewis refers to in this passage is understood as his religious
experience. In the early chapters of Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis describes how he denounced his
Christianity. The passage above, located in Chapter 6 gives a deeper understanding of C. S. Lewis’ take
on religion. A common error that he highlights is the perversion of religion by individuals who use God as
a personal genie to satisfy personal desires. This falsification of God and spirituality is empty because it
seeks gratification in desires that derive from our social and political being to whom is driven by self
indulgence. Rather, the “thrill” and true connection with God can only be fully recognized when one
extends the focus from him/herself to the outward. Christianity is not about using the authority that God
has given us to satisfy what we want but rather how we can use this power in assisting individuals around
us. This is where true Joy resides and this is where our spiritual desires are met. Once we realize the
essence of God we began to understand ourselves and therefore recognize that our spiritual being
transcend our politically and socially constructed self. This reminds me of a brilliant quote from C. S
Lewis, "I find in myself desires which nothing in this earth can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that
I was made for another world."
--Breana Collins


There is a distinct break in form between chapter five and chapter six. Renaissance was almost
entirely occupied with episodes related to the internal and the imaginative; indeed Lewis comments
that this whole period was an “imaginative renaissance”. Here, Lewis relates the effect on him
of Rackham’s illustrations of Siegfried and the twilight of the gods; Wagner and mythology in
general. In contrast to this in chapter six the reader is confronted with a seemingly straight forward
description of Lewis school. We are plunged into his so called outer world. Here, Lewis discusses
the social make up of the school, and the practice of fagging in detail. Lewis uses chapter seven to
express his objections to Wyvern and the Wyverian system.. The grounds on which Lewis objects
to the school are interesting and indicative of the intention of the work as a whole. He objects to
Wyvern, the Wyverian system because it made him, and seems to have made others intellectually
priggish. He does not specifically object to ‘impure love’ which seems to have been endemic in the
Wyvernian system. He even states that such pederasty or the momentary loss of pure self interest
associated with the practise was the only thing at Wyvern which could have a good effect on the
students, that “Eros, turned upside down, blackened, distorted, and filthy, still bore traces of his
divinity”. He sees Priggishness as a much greater and more harmful sin than homosexuality. These
views, as Lewis acknowledges, (p 57) are not a natural fit with traditional Christian values and views
on sin. Such views, however, are arguably in keeping with Lewis’s intention with Surprised By Joy, a
so-called “suffocatingly subjective” story of his conversion, which here is detailing the “build-up” to
his “explicitly spiritual crisis”. It is not in keeping with this intention to moralise on sin in a tradition
and general way.
-Althea Francis

The Who's Who and Who Said What: ID!

Answer this, and you'll receive a prize next time in class! :)

Please identify the picture/passage and provide a one-sentence description of the picture/passage.  Don't forget to number which picture you are answering for.

ie:

1. C.S. Lewis

One of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who discussed ideas of atheism, theism, imagination, joy, love, and temptation in Surprised by Joy, The Screwtape Letters, and The Great Divorce.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 

7. 

8.

9.

10. So is there in us a world of love to somewhat, though we know not what in the world that should be.

11. For all these fair people in hall were in their first age; none happier under the heaven; their king, the man of noblest temper.  It would be a hard task to-day to find so brave a fellowship in any castle.

Week 1 Reflections Surprised by Joy Preface and Chp. 1-5

Please post your reflections on the Preface and Chapters 1-5 of Surprised by Joy, by commenting here: