Heroic Orual and the Tasks of Psyche (Critical Essay‪)‬

C.S. LEWIS'S LAST NOVEL, TILL WE HAVE FACES: A MYTH RETOLD, concerns transformations. After all, it deals with the myth of Psyche. In Greek, Psyche means not only soul but also butterfly. (1) This brings to mind the metamorphosis of a crawling caterpillar into a winged butterfly, analogous to the protagonist's transformation from mortal to goddess. In Lewis's retelling, not only does a mortal human becomes an immortal goddess, (2) but also, an ugly soul turns beautiful, a coarse, barbaric populace grows into a gracious civilization, and cruel divinities with a thirst for human blood become loving guardians of the human race. Lewis's protagonist and narrator, Orual, who only becomes "Psyche" at the end, both enacts and observes these transformations, which, to be sure, can only be completed by the divine power with whom she seems to be at odds until the end. Orual herself is a heroic character who strives to change for the better the ugly and undesirable situation around her. Before the end, she perceives that no lasting happiness will reach her until her own ugly and undesirable nature is transformed. Her narrative, in two parts (the first much longer than the second), is itself an instrument both of self-illumination, as she states (253; Part II, Ch.1) and of transformation. But Orual also learns, with increasing clarity, that while she can desire and strive toward transformation, she cannot accomplish it herself. At about the same time, she realizes that "divine Surgeons" (266; Part II, Ch.1) are at work on her. She does not, at first, trust that their intervention is therapeutic, for she is entangled in a struggle with them, in fact a legal battle. The stated purpose of her entire composition was to "accuse the gods" (3; Ch.1) and prove them guilty of mistreating her and giving her a wretched life.