Surprised by Joy

Peepiceek

Peepiceek

Well-known member
I've just been reading 'Surprised by Joy', and noted some interesting things that I didn't really expect. I wonder if anyone else has similar comments or thoughts about mine.

1) Several times as I was reading I felt a clear echo of 'Last Battle' themes - particularly in his discussion of heaven/eternal reality, judgement, and the dwarfs who 'refused to be taken in'. Then I looked to see when it was written and found that it was 1955, the same year (I think) as TLB was published. Does anyone know if these connections are deliberate, accidental, or imagined on my part?

2) To what extent do you think Eustace's character in VDT is intended by Lewis to be autobiographical?

3) I was really surprised that many of the things Lewis says do not fit with what you might expect a Christian writer to say - he seems far more honest about his actual feelings than I would have expected, and does not seem to try to rework them or explain hem away. I was quite stunned and shocked in places - especially on some of the descriptions of his school life and his attitude towards it.

Peeps
 
1) I don't think Mr. Lewis consciously told himself, "I shall make these two books alike;" I just think that he was thinking about eternal things that year, and this influenced him in both projects. But I could be wrong, for as I understand it he DID intentionally create the correlation between "The Abolition of Man" and "That Hideous Strength."

2) Edmund, more than Eustace, was an alter-ago of Mr. Lewis. Note that Lewis had an older brother who was more athletic and conventional, just as Edmund had Peter. Eustace would be more an embodiment of what Lewis saw in the rising generation.

3) Yes, Lewis was ruthlessly honest. "A Grief Observed" stands as a monument to his honesty.
 
Yes, I'm just reading 'A Grief Observed' at the moment as well.

I wondered about the Eustace thing because of his disparaging comments about how he had always kept a diary before his conversion, and also about how he liked to gather facts in order to feel better about himself and to look down on others who didn't know them. Also because of the way he describes his conversion, which is reminiscent of the tearing off of layers of himself, and ultimately having to submit to let God tear off the inmost layers (although this is pretty resonant with anoyone's conversion experience, I suppose).

Peeps
 
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They have been showing Shadowlands (the Anthony Hopkins' version) on Encore a lot recently. Which is good since you will have problems getting a DVD of the movie. Do we have a thread on just talking about the life of Lewis?
 
I'm not aware of it if we do. You can start a new one if you like. Is it the Joss Ackland (I think!) Shadowlands? I saw that once and thought it was better than the Anthony Hopkins one.
 
The Joss Ackland version is _immeasurably_ better. Anthony Hopkins was not cast in the big-movie version because he understood C.S. Lewis, he was cast because he was Anthony Hopkins. Far worse, the _scriptwriter_ for the Hopkins version chose to make it look as if Lewis PERMANENTLY LOST his faith, which is not true.
 
Maybe this should be on a separate thread on the life of Lewis. But this thread is his autobiography so I guess it works. I read A Grief Observed, and I never thought it was a book written by a person who gave up his faith. Lewis did die only a few years after his wife, but there is nothing about to show he lost his faith. I did like the Anthony Hopkins' version of Shadowlands. It was touching I thought, and Hopkins did a good job. But lets face it you are not going to get a Christian movie by people who want to sell to a general audience. None of the recent Narina movies were Christian. But I would like to know more about the last years of Lewis' life. I know his health was very bad for most of 1963.
 
I have not read an autobiography, so I don't know much about the last years of his life. He did not live to be very old. I wish he had; I would like to have sen what he would have written in his later years. Like CF I preferred the Joss Ackland version of Shadowlands, but I liked the Anthony Hopkins one, too.
 
Surprised by Joy is Lewis' autobiography. But it was written just before his marriage and had to do with his early years and how he became a Christian.;)
 
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