An Opening Thought

In the opening paragraphs of Till We Have Faces, Orual, the narrator of the story, gives us her reasons for writing the tome. She burns with complaints against the gods of her land, and since her life is nearly over and her family secure, she feels she can finally voice these complaints. She writes her story, she says, “as if I were making my complaint of [the god on the Grey Mountain] before a judge.” She starts from the beginning and lays out the case against the local deity, for reasons we will presently see.

Orual refrains from writing in her native tongue, however. She had been taught Greek from a young age, so she writes the story in the hopes that a Greek speaker will bring her story to that land of free speech in the future.

Perhaps the wise men will know whether my complaint is right or whether the god could have defended himself if he had made an answer.

As we read through this novel, my personal favorite of Lewis’, let us keep this plea in mind. The above quote is one of the opening lines of the novel, and it seems as if Lewis is asking us to do the same.

Is Orual justified in her anger? Have the gods wronged her family? Is she overreacting? Why is she so angry? What is the significance of the veil, of the idea of faces?

These are questions astute readers will ask. I have not read this in several years, so I will be dusting out the cobwebs, as well. I hope we can read this together and come to some intellectual stimulation and growth in the end.

Onward and upward!
-Chris