Joy Laxton: The Role of Myth in Revealing Truth in Till We Have Faces

 One thing I found interesting in the book Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis in Part 2 chapter 3 when Orual began to read her complaint and did not recognize it.  She stated, “I looked at the roll in my hand and saw at once that it was not the book I had written.  It couldn’t be; it was far too small.  And too old- a little, shabby, crumpled thing, nothing like my great book that I had worked on all day, day after day, while Bardia was dying…It was vile scribble-each stroke mean and yet savage, like the snarl in my father’s voice” (289).  After reading it over and over Orual finally recognizes the truth and how she has no reasonable complaints against the gods.  “At last the judge spoke, ‘Are you answered?’ he said.  ‘Yes,’ said I” (293). 

            Orual’s wrestle with the writings, being separated from it and not recognizing it as her own, but then finding truth from it relates to the earlier essays we discussed in class of finding truth through the relay of myth and stories.  As Gadamer states, “Part of game  [mirror of language] with speaking is that certain things are hidden, preconceptions, we can get to through the disruption of oneself through stories.  Language itself hides these misconceptions, but we can uncover them through disruption, myth” and Lewis in On Stories states, “That is one of the functions of art: to present what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude.”  Myth and stories allow individuals into a new perspective where they cannot be blinded from their own preconceptions.

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