“The Complaint Was the Answer”:

A Girardian Analysis of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces

By: Renatta Gorski

Those familiar with C.S. Lewis’s works are most likely also familiar with his

midlife conversion to Christianity—from being baptized in the Irish Church to atheism to

Christianity. Probably less well known, however, is the thought process that led to

Lewis’s conversion one night in 1931. Ultimately, the death of his father, the writings of

G.K. Chesterton, and his friendship with fellow author J.K. Tolkien all contributed to

Lewis’s conversion. Even more important was the role that mythology played in the

author’s change of heart. Indeed, this role was so important that it ultimately led to

Lewis’s final—and best, according to his own opinion—novel, Till We Have Faces: A

Myth Retold.

Many years prior to writing the novel Lewis put the death and resurrection of

Jesus Christ in terms of mythology in order to understand and accept Christianity. Noting

the similarities between the Gospels and mythology, he held fast to the difference of the

two: the Christian story actually happened. Because he was already so familiar and

comfortable with the general pattern of myth—that is, the story of a god dying and then

coming back to life—Lewis was able to come to terms with Jesus Christ’s death and

resurrection because though it was not unlike mythological stories, it was an actual event

in the world’s history. Thus, his conception of mythology was that the pagan stories were

not much different from the Christian story, other than that the Gospels are a true account

of history. The comparison he draws between mythology and Christianity was so

important to Lewis that it is the subject of a letter to Arthur Greeves, one of his close

friends, written shortly after and concerning his conversion.

However, when Lewis re-writes the myth of Cupid and Psyche in his last novel, it

does not seem as though he is illustrating the notion that myth and Christianity are similar

but for one important difference. Instead, Till We Have Faces actually understands

mythology in such a way that is more in line with French literary critic René Girard’s

conception of myth: mythology serves to conceal the violence at the heart of culture

whereas Christianity reveals it. Perhaps best known for his 1972 book Violence and the

Sacred, Girard (1923-2015) focused on patterns in literature that indicated the prevalence

of mimetic desire in personal relationships as well as an inherent link between violence

and religion. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that mythology contains this

paradoxical link, but the violence is concealed by way of a scapegoat, or a victimization

process. Instead of focusing on the similarities between mythology and Christianity as

Lewis did, Girard observes the difference: while myth is based on a falsehood that covers

up violence, Christianity is based on the truth of revealing that violence.

In spite of what Lewis seems to have believed about myth, he writes his myth

retold according to an opposite, Girardian perception of myth. That is, the truth is

concealed from the characters in Till We Have Faces; specifically, the narrator Orual is

blind to her jealous love for her younger sister, though it is apparent to the reader. In this

sense, the novel is Girardian because while the characters shield themselves from the

truth, Lewis exposes the truth to the readers.

The True Myth: Lewis’s Conversion to Christianity

C.S. Lewis’s famous works, including The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape

Letters, and Mere Christianity, can undoubtedly be traced back to his conversion to

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Christianity; it is unlikely that the atheist Lewis would have written a series modeled after

the Gospels or a satire written from the point of view of a demon. His conversion to

Christianity, meanwhile, can be traced back to J.K. Tolkien, the Inklings, and mythology.

According to biographer John Ryan Duncan, author of The Magic Never Ends:

The Life and Work of C.S. Lewis, “Lewis’s conversion to Christianity began to crystallize

on a dreary September evening in 1931” when he was dining with Tolkien and Dyson at

Magdalen College (Duncan 56). He had converted to Theism in 1929 while teaching at

the college; as he writes in his autobiography, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God,

and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all

England” (Surprised by Joy 228). Though he believed in God, Lewis was still confused

about Jesus Christ. His confusion led him to ask important questions, and his curiosity

frequently revealed itself in conversations with his Christian friends.

That September night in 1931, Lewis explained to his friends that he had been

putting myth and Christianity in the same category: because he perceived myths as

untrue, he therefore considered Christianity to be untrue. However, Tolkien challenged

Lewis on this idea; he pointed out that myths are not totally false, for they point to an

actual event that happened two thousand years ago. Tolkien insisted that myths point to

something actual and historical. Allegedly, Lewis asked Tolkien, “Do you mean… that

the death and resurrection of Christ is the old ‘dying god’ story all over again?”

(Carpenter 47). Understandably, Lewis was troubled: for if myths were untrue, and

Christianity was the same as a myth, then Christianity must also be untrue. Yet Tolkien

responded yes, the resurrection is the same old story, “except that here is a real dying

God, with a precise location in history and definite historical consequences. The old myth

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has become a fact. But it still retains the character of myth” (Carpenter 47). Thus, Tolkien

encouraged Lewis to transfer his attitude about myth to the story of Christ’s resurrection.

“Could [Lewis] not treat [the resurrection] as a story, be fully aware that he could draw

nourishment from it which he could never find in a list of abstract truths? Could he not

realize that it is a myth, and make himself receptive to it?” (Carpenter 47). Taking

Tolkien’s advice, Lewis decided to do just that: put the resurrection in terms of

mythology in order to become receptive to it.

It was twelve days after this rather life-changing conversation with Tolkien that

Lewis wrote to Arthur Greeves about his conversion. He first explained that while he

could easily understand the necessity of salvation, he could not resolve the issue of

sacrifice as it relates to “help[ing] us here and now—except in so far as his example

helped us” (Letters 288). In other words, Lewis could not reconcile the continuing

importance of Jesus Christ, other than that Christians should model their thoughts and

actions based on Him. He adds, “the example business, tho’ true and important, is not

Christianity” (Letters 288). Lewis knew that there was much more to the Gospels, but he

could not grasp what exactly that was. As an academic motivated by logic, his conversion

essentially relied on his complete understanding of the religion.

In the letter, Lewis borrowed Tolkien’s teachings as he noted that the main

distinction between Christianity and “Pagan stories,” or myths, is that “the story of Christ

is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the

tremendous difference that it really happened” (Letters 288). Essentially, Christianity is

an account of a sacrifice that actually did work to save humankind from its depravity. Yet

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it is still similar to mythology in that both concern a dying god as sacrifice and a

victorious resurrection as a result.

Lewis acknowledges the fact that putting the resurrection in the same category as

myth had a great impact on him; he tells Greeves, “the Pagan stories are God expressing

Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there” (Letters 289).

Myth and Christianity, as told by the Bible, are similar in that God uses human authors as

instruments to reveal a meaningful truth in terms that human readers can best understand.

Lewis believed, “God sent the human race what I call good dreams: I mean those queer

stories scattered all through the heathen religions about a god who dies and comes to life

again, and by his death, has somehow given life to new men” (Mere Christianity 54).

Such “good dreams,” though historically untrue, still contain structural forms important

to Christianity: the aforementioned “dying god” and the triumphant ending.

Lewis further notes the similarity of the two when he writes, “this Christian story

is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths” (Letters 289). Rather than

fully rejecting mythology because of its origins in Pagan religions, Lewis accepts, and

then essentially ignores, its shortcomings in favor of understanding the “moving” truth of

the notion of sacrifice. In an essay in the book God in the Dock, Lewis talks about

Christianity as “The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down

from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history,” that actually occurs

(God in the Dock). Thus the biblical story is recognizable, as it repeats similar motifs

gleaned from ancient myths, but is profoundly more meaningful in that it actually

occurred at an actual time and place in history.

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Thirty years after his letter to Greeves, Lewis would analyze myths in more depth

in his 1961 book An Experiment in Criticism. In addition to analyzing other genres of

literature, Lewis lists what he believes to be six criteria of myth. According to Lewis, a

myth is extra-literary, or outside the bounds of genre in literature, and has a simple shape,

“like a good vase or a tulip” (Experiment 42). Second, it is not dependent on a twist or

surprise ending, but rather is felt to be inevitable. Another important component of myths

is that “Human sympathy is at a minimum,” or that the characters are merely a part of

something much bigger than themselves (Experiment 44). For example, in the original

myth of Cupid and Psyche (which is the basis for Lewis’s Till We Have Faces) the king,

queen, and their daughters are nameless, thus drawing little connection to the reader.

Fourth, myths have fantastical elements; they contain “impossibles and

preternaturals” (Experiment 44). Not only are myths fantastical, but they are also serious,

lacking comic elements. Again, the myth of Cupid and Psyche represents this criterion by

including a near-suicide and torturous tasks. Finally, Lewis’s sixth criterion of myths is

that it is “awe-inspiring” (Experiment 44). In the original Psyche myth, the goddess

completes seemingly impossible tasks. Of course, the author admits that these criteria are

not necessarily all-encompassing, but rather that “the same story may be a myth to one

man and not to another” (Experiment 45). Yet Lewis’s list of components remains

significant in that they are indicative of the progression of the formation of his perception

of myth, from his musings to Greeves to his publication of literary criticism. His criticism

shows the prevalence that myth held in Lewis’s life, which makes the analysis of Lewis’s

rewritten myth even more important, especially considering the curious imbalance

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between Lewis’s personal feelings about myth and the way that myth is portrayed in Till

We Have Faces.

The False Myth: Girard, the Scapegoat, and the Gospels

Lewis’s ideas concerning myths would probably have appalled fellow literary

critic René Girard. Like Lewis, Girard also analyzed myth and the Gospels side-by-side,

but he came to an entirely different conclusion: myths are not truthful because they cover

up an act of scapegoating violence.

In his initial study of major novelists including Miguel de Cervantes and

Doystoyevsky, Girard conceived the idea that all desire is mimetic. In other words, every

individual desires according to another’s desires: “our neighbor is the model for our

desires” (Satan 10). In doing so, he dismisses what he called the “romantic lie,” or the

notion that every person desires or acts entirely independently. Instead, an individual will

“desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is already desired by another person

whom he desires” (Deceit 7). Girard explains this phenomenon with a picture of a

triangle: if the desiring individual is one point and the desired object in question is

another, the mediator—or the person according to whose desires the first individual is

desiring—is the point between the first two. In other words, the desired object only

becomes valuable when the mediator desires it first.

However, the mediator is in the way, preventing the desiring individual from

attaining the object in question, and ultimately leading to antagonism between the two

individuals. In a later work, Theatre of Envy, Girard puts forth one of the most famous

examples of mimetic rivalry: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, the story of the group

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assassination of the Roman emperor. Though he claims to love Caesar, the senator Brutus

is at the center of the assassination plot. Readers may be tempted to view this rivalry as a

manifestation of political differences, but Girard insists that mimetic desire is actually

causing the conflict. Though Brutus wants what Caesar has—or desires according to

Caesar’s desires—he cannot have possess it because Caesar already possesses it. Caesar

is in the way between Brutus and Caesar, thus causing the former to hate the latter, and

the two to become rivals.

Girard explains, “Mimetic desire is the mutual borrowing of desire by two friends

who become antagonists as a result. When mimetic rivalry becomes intense, tragic

conflict results” (“Collective Violence” 400). As Shakespeare shows in the play, Brutus

loves Caesar. Because Caesar loves Rome, Brutus loves Rome. It is not that Caesar is a

threat to the republic, then, that causes Brutus to hate Caesar—it is his imitation of

Caesar’s desires.

Girard posits that mimetic rivalry can easily spread to the rest of the community;

he dubs this phenomenon “mimetic contagion” (Satan 22). Indeed, in Shakespeare’s

Rome, “the rivals engage in endless conflicts which undifferentiates [sic] them more and

more; they all become doubles of one another” (“Collective Violence” 401). Thus, the

members of the Senate all begin to turn on each other and destroy the Republic.

Many years prior to Shakespeare, Girard argues, the same cycle occurs in myths.

In I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard points out that myths “almost always begin

with a state of extreme disorder” (Satan 62). For example, in the myth of Oedipus, the

city of Thebes is on the brink of destruction due to famine; in other cases, the imminent

threat may be an otherworldly being rather than a natural phenomenon. In the end, the

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details of the threat itself are not of much importance. As Michael Kirwan explains in his

book Discovering Girard, these threats are actually just “veiled references to an

escalating mimetic crisis” (Kirwan 46). In Girard’s own words, “At the height of the

crisis the unanimous violence is set off” (Satan 63). Essentially, mass violence inevitably

erupts once the threat has fully escalated.

The “outside” threat in myths is actually individual personal rivalries that tend to

create a snowball effect as they increase. Eventually, the rivalries escalate until the point

where “all against all would finally annihilate the community if it were not transformed,

in the end, into a war of all against one” (Satan 22). The conflict inevitably transforms

itself, aimed at a single person. This individual, typically an outsider or possessing

characteristics that somehow separate him from the community, is blamed for the

escalated threat. The goal for the rivals then becomes the expulsion of that one person

instead of against one another.

At this point of heightened violence, the war is transformed into “all against one”:

the violent mob turns on a single individual, a scapegoat, believing that outsider to be the

true cause behind the population’s distress. Once that outsider is marked, the mob turns

on him, intent on expelling him from their community along with their troubles. At the

death of the victim, peace is restored to the community. The restoration gives rise to the

victim’s transformation from guilty party to deity because the mob now attributes the

peace to the very individual they had just victimized. This moment is paradoxical in that

it combines two seemingly unrelated things: religion, often related to pacifism, and

violence and death. To return to Girard’s Shakespeare example, the mimetic crisis that

began with Brutus and spread to the other leaders ultimately leads to the assassination of

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Julius Caesar. The murder of Caesar, then, marks an attempt to re-found the Roman

Republic—his killers even bathe in his blood.

Though the jealousy underneath the violent actions may seem obvious, the

characters themselves are blind to what is beneath the entire process. Likewise, Girard

notes that attributing the restoration of peace to the victim from the start covers up the

transformation from scapegoat to deity. This process of transformation characterizes

myths: “Lynchings restore peace at the expense of the divinized victim. This is why they

are associated with manifestations of this divine figure and the communities recall them

in transfigured accounts that we call ‘myths’” (Satan 66). To recall Lewis’s language,

myths are “the old dying god story.” They explain the origin of religious communities,

but in doing so, they disguise the cathartic violence that brought them to the point of the

deity’s creation.

Even more significant than the violence itself, though, is the fact that the victims

in myths are transfigured. In other words, the myths cover up the violence that caused the

deification of the victim and instead suggest that the individual existed as a god the entire

time. The participants in mythology lie to themselves about the true nature of their gods;

they refuse to see the “god” as victim first. In Satan, Girard uses the example of

Apollonius of Tyana and the city of Ephesus to illustrate this mythological pattern, which

Girard describes by using the borrowed label “scapegoat mechanism.” In order to cure

the Ephesians of some persistent epidemic, Apollonius encourages the crowd to hurl

stones at “the enemy of the gods,” who is actually an old, blind beggar—an outsider

nonetheless. Doing so ultimately cures the city of its plague, for the Ephesians become so

caught up in their actions that “they finally see [the beggar as]… the source of all their

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misfortunes, the ‘plague demon’ that must be expelled in order to heal the city” (Satan

51). The beggar seemingly turns into a wild dog and the Ephesians put up a statue

honoring the god Hercules in the exact same spot. Yet in the Ephesians mind, the god had

been responsible the entire time.

Girard’s perception of myths is best described as an origin story that conceals or

covers up the wrongdoings of a people group. In consideration of myths as stories that

account for the foundation of a religion, the author claims, “The peoples of the world do

not invent their gods. They deify their victims” (Satan 70). Pagan gods only become so

following a violent victimization.

Significantly, this appears to be true of Christianity as well. The Gospels and

foundational myths are similar in that both point to a sacrificial ritual of a single victim as

the foundation of religion. Yet Girard insists that the main and most important difference

between myths and the Gospels is that the biblical story is transparent; it reveals the

mimetic contagion rather than tries to cover it up or deny it. Though both contain

collective violence, Girard poses the question “Is [the violence] warranted? Is it

legitimate?” of each (Satan 109). In myths, the collective violence is always justified

through the deification of the scapegoat. In the Bible, the violence is never justified, but

rather is shown to be unwarranted and illegitimate.

In order to highlight this fundamental difference, Girard points to both the Old

Testament and the New Testament. Similar to myth and the New Testament, the Old

Testament contains examples of rivalry, mimetic crisis, and collective violence.

However, it differs from both in that the victim of the crisis is never deified. Also similar

to the New Testament, though certainly not to myth, is that in the Old Testament the

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victim is never implied to be guilty of what he is accused. Girard uses Joseph from

Genesis as an example. Though Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers—an event

which is analogous to the mythological victimization of a single character—he is

innocent; he is innocent of his brothers’ envy, he is innocent of the charges that put him

in the Egyptian prison, and he is innocent of the accusations of rape. His innocence is

also revealed when his brothers fail to idolize him as a sacred being; instead, he is still

Joseph, their brother.

Likewise, the New Testament is similarly transparent in revealing the truth about

its victim: Jesus is innocent—completely innocent. Departing from the Old Testament,

though, the Gospels do indeed show a deified victim. However, because Jesus is not

guilty of what he is accused of, “his divinity cannot rest on the same process as mythic

deifications” (Satan 123). The biblical story reveals the concealing nature of myths by

discussing the violence for what it really is and by not attempting to justify it. Girard

believes the Gospels indicate that, “the resurrection of Christ sheds the light of truth on

everything that had always been concealed from human beings” (Satan 125). Because of

the revelatory nature of the Gospel story, the New Testament cannot be considered in the

same genre as myths; though the two certainly share common characteristics, mythology

masks violence whereas the Gospels exposes it.

Though both Lewis and Girard found myths to be especially important in relation

to the Christian story, they evidently held very opposing perceptions of the two. While

Lewis believed that myths contain some of the truth revealed in the biblical story, Girard

held that myths are concealing and dishonest by nature. In fact, it almost seems as though

Girard is responding to Lewis’s ideas about mythology in I See Satan, when he writes,

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The myth and the biblical account are much closer to one another and resemble

each other much more than most readers suspect. Is this to say they agree on

everything essential? Can we view them as more or less equivalent? Completely

to the contrary. Locating the common data allows us to take note of an irreducible

difference, an impassable gulf between the biblical story (Satan 108).

Ironically, however, Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces is more in line with Girard’s

conception of myths than with his own. Lewis’s retelling of the myth illustrates how the

characters of the novel, Orual in particular, cannot see the truth. In other words, Lewis’s

myth conceals the truth for the novel’s characters while revealing the truth to the readers.

The Cupid and Psyche Myth: Lewis Versus Girard

First, it is necessary to understand how Lewis made an ancient legend his own.

The original myth of Cupid and Psyche is found the Latin novel Metamorphoses, also

called The Golden Ass, written by Apuleius. According to the ancient novel, Psyche is the

youngest daughter of a king and queen of an unnamed city. Not only is she far more

beautiful than her two older sisters, she is also so astonishing that men choose to worship

her as a goddess over Venus. The jealous Venus sends her son Cupid to pierce Psyche

with one of his arrows, thereby afflicting her with intense love for the first thing she sees.

Meanwhile, Psyche’s father gleans from the oracle of Apollo that his daughter will not

have any human suitors but will instead be prey for a dragon. Psyche is therefore taken to

a mountain, giving Cupid the perfect opportunity to fulfill his mother’s wishes.

Yet when he finally sees Psyche, Cupid is so captivated by her beauty that instead

of obeying his mother’s orders, he takes her to a secret palace. He visits her only in the

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night so that he can hide his identity. Eventually, Psyche convinces her mysterious suitor

to allow a visit from her sisters. The other princesses are filled with envy when they see

the luxurious life that their youngest sister now leads and thus seek to rob Psyche of her

happiness. They convince the girl that her husband must surely be a hideous monster and

should therefore be destroyed; naïve Psyche agrees to take a covered lamp and a knife

with her to bed in order to expose her husband and then kill him.

That night, Psyche brings a lamp into their bedchamber Instead of being repulsed

by Cupid, though, Psyche falls desperately in love with him. He wakes to find her

looking at him and quickly vanishes, angered by her betrayal. Despairing, the beautiful

princess seeks to take her own life, but is thwarted by the god Pan. Ultimately, Venus

captures Psyche and forces the girl to perform a series of seemingly impossible tasks.

Psyche does manage to complete these tasks and is also forgiven by Cupid. Ultimately,

the pair marries and lives happily ever after.

In the introduction to Till We Have Faces, Lewis claimed he was haunted by this

myth his entire life. Lewis sets his retelling in Glome, a kingdom that worships the

goddess Ungit. Glome is ruled by Trom, the father of three girls. Orual, the eldest, is the

story’s narrator, and the youngest is Psyche. As in Apuleius’s myth, Psyche is an

astonishing beauty But unlike in the original myth, Psyche develops a close relationship

with her eldest sister, Orual. In fact, Orual considers her half-sister her best friend as well

as her beloved child: “I wanted to be a wife,” says Orual, “so that I could have been her

real mother” (Faces 23).

When Glome eventually becomes plagued by bad harvests, widespread fever, and

trouble with neighboring cities, the priest of Ungit informs the king that a sacrifice—a

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“Great Offering”—must be made in order to expiate the god’s anger toward the city

(Faces 47). Typical sacrifices like a bull or a ram are not enough in this instance; instead

the “Accursed” must die by way of sacrifice. He tells the king that upon casting lots,

Psyche is the unfortunate victim: “She is the Accursed. The Princess Istra must be the

Great Offering” (Faces 55). Psyche must die in order to save the kingdom.

Orual of course is adamantly against the sacrifice and she implores her father to

prevent it and even insists that she takes the place of her younger sister. Psyche, however,

is strangely willing to go to the mountain. In a private meeting, Psyche explains to her

sister the “longing for death” she has always felt, which Orual takes personally, asking,

“Have I made you so little happy as that?” (Faces 74). Though older and more

experienced, Orual fails to understand that Psyche’s longing for death is less of a desire

to escape life but instead a longing for something else, something that she cannot quite

comprehend. Despite her best efforts, Orual is unable to prevent the sacrifice and

mournfully watches from the sidelines as her beloved, beautiful younger sister is “painted

and be-wigged… like a temple girl” and led up to the mountain by her father (Faces 80).

Some days following the sacrificial offering, Orual journeys to the Tree on the

Mountain to collect her remains. Astonishingly, she is reunited with her sister and listens

to the girl explain about the beautiful god and the god’s House that she now inhabits—yet

unlike the original myth, Orual cannot see this palace. Later on, as in the original myth,

Orual gives Psyche a lamp and oil to test the god, only convincing the younger girl to

perform the test by way of threat. Unlike the original myth, Psyche’s reluctance to test

her husband stems from her love for him rather than her fear of him. Yet, presumably

from the god himself, Orual learns of her sister’s test and subsequent exile; an impossibly

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bright figure tells her, “You shall also be Psyche” (Faces 174). In anguish, Orual finds

her guard Bardia and retreats from the mountain, once again believing her sister to be lost

forever.

Unlike the original myth, the rest story focuses on the rest of Orual’s life instead

of on Psyche’s impossible tasks. Orual eventually inherits the kingdom, serving as the

veiled ruler of Trom for the rest of her life. A visit to a temple where she learns of the

goddess Istra ultimately inspires Orual to bring a charge against the gods, thus revealing

the original purpose of the story.

Understood through the prism of a myth, the sacrifice of Psyche seems to

resemble the Gospel account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. In the common

understanding of the Gospels, Jesus takes on the sins of mankind and restores order to

humanity in that his sacrifice absolves every man of their guilt. Jesus is the perfect

sacrifice because He is without sin. This condition is precisely what we see in Faces,

where the priest of Ungit announces, “In the Great Offering, the victim must be perfect”

(Faces 49). Furthermore, both the story of Psyche’s death and the biblical account of

Jesus’ death are stories of “a god who dies and comes to life again, and by his death, has

somehow given life to new men” (Mere Christianity 54). Of course, the original myth

and Lewis’s fictional retelling are not a part of history while Jesus’ crucifixion really did

take place. However, Lewis’s myth is still clearly in the same category as he would

consider all the others: the dying god come back to life, similar to the Gospels.

While this comparison is accurate, it is not sufficient, for the novel contains more

depth. In addition to the biblical story, the novel also shares similarities with Girard’s

interpretations of myths versus the Gospels. Not unlike Girard’s explanation of the

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plagued Ephesus or the state of the world in the Gospels, the city of Glome is similarly

afflicted by a number of things including famine, plague, and lions; this is fitting, for

Girard points out that, “myths almost always begin with a state of extreme disorder… In

all cases the initial mythic situation can be summarized in terms of a crisis that threatens

the community and its cultural system with total destruction” (Satan 63). In fact, as the

conditions in Glome worsen, the citizens gather at the doors of the palace. The “mob”

cries out, “We are starving,” accusing the King’s lack of a male heir as the cause for the

famine. Indeed, their protests become so fierce that the King orders a bowman to kill one

of the mob men (Faces 36). Evidently, the city is on the brink of destruction and is

desperate for an antidote. Just as Apollonius’s cure was to expel the enemy of the god by

means of murder, the alleged only cure for Glome is to expel a member from the

community, transforming him or her into “the Brute’s Supper” (Faces 49). The priest’s

language connotes violence, for the Accursed in Lewis’s novel is destined to be

devoured.

The sacrifice of Psyche is similar to Jesus’ death for other reasons as well. Like

Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God (or like Oedipus’s limp and foreign birth, for instance),

Psyche’s beauty separates her from the majority. First, the people of Glome throw stones

at her and talk amongst one another, claiming, “’She is the curse itself’” (Faces 39).

Then, an authoritative figure, the Priest of Ungit, uses her uniqueness to name her

removal the cure for the city. The case of Psyche is just like other mythological stories

because the crises in the cities are transformed from what Girard dubs “a war of all

against all” into a “reconciliation of all against one” (Satan 53). Instead of continuing to

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war against each other and against the king, the citizens of Glome turn against a single

victim.

Perhaps most significantly, the sacrifice is successful; following the violent death,

order is restored to the community. In Glome, the drought is broken, the cattle are saved,

and the fever is gone once Psyche is brought up the mountain. As a result, the violence is

justified and thus, the violence is concealed. Instead of being regarded for what it is—that

is, violence—the brutal sacrifice is a healing mechanism. At this point especially,

Lewis’s novel is no longer a mythic story containing some truth of the biblical story

because, as Girard asserts, the violence in the biblical story is not warranted and is not

justified. The crucifixion of Jesus is told for what it is, whereas myths, including Lewis’s

retelling of myth, condone the sacrifice.

Another important element of Lewis’s story to consider is the ultimate deification

of Psyche. Her sacrifice, of which the ultimate purpose is to save Glome, certainly bears

resemblance to the crucifixion account in the Gospels. Furthermore, Psyche’s story does

not end with her death—she reappears on the mountain. Of course, Lewis never intended

for Psyche to be an allegory for the death and resurrection of Jesus (say, for example, like

Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe may have been). Instead, as he tells his

friend Clyde Kilby in a letter, Psyche is only Christ-like in the same way that every man

or woman is like Christ (Sammons 180). Nevertheless, the similarities between the two

stories remains and thus indicate that Lewis may have been pointing out the truth that is

present in all myths, including his own retelling.

In fact, his stated intention to Kilby to not make her Christ-like, except insofar as

that every human is like Christ, echoes Lewis’s ideas about myths as similar to the

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Christian story, but not necessarily the real thing. He writes in God in the Dock,

“Christians also need to be reminded… that what became Fact was a Myth, that it carries

with it into the world of Fact all the properties of a myth,” something Girard would no

doubt disagree with (Duncan 60). According to Girard, such “properties of a myth”

would mean that the Christian story also conceals the truth, just as mythological stories

conceal the truth. If the Christian story did have all the properties of a myth, as Lewis

believed, then it would be inherently untrue.

Indeed, the incorporation of a Christ-like figure is once again an illustration of a

Girardian principle of myths. As aforementioned, Psyche reappears on the mountain

following her death, claiming to be the bride of a god; much later in the novel, Orual

visits a temple where she learns from the priest of Istra that her sister Psyche, is now

regarded as a goddess. The priest of Istra even suggests that Orual make an offering to

the altar, explaining to the queen that the goddess wanders the earth, weeping, until she is

released and “becomes a goddess” (Faces 246). She remains a goddess throughout all

spring and summer. Such a transformation, from scapegoat or sacrifice to benevolent

god, is precisely what Girard found in myth after myth—and, notably, not in the story of

Jesus. Despite the evident similarities, the story of Jesus contains no scapegoat

transformation because, as the Gospels show, Jesus was innocent from the beginning to

the end.

Notably, in no part of the priest’s story does he mention that Psyche was unjustly

accused. He only explains that she was made to be an offering for a brute on a mountain.

The subsequent deification of the sacrificed girl implicitly justifies the sacrifice.

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Therefore, Lewis’s myth seems like all other myths in that, as Girard would say, it is

concealing the truth for the characters in the novel.

Because it conceals and covers up the truth for the characters but reveals it to the

readers, Faces cannot be considered in the same light that Lewis considered mythology.

Instead, it is far more Girardian: Girard explains that Christ’s divinity is unlike the

process of mythic deifications in that Christians maintain Jesus’ innocence instead of

justifying his persecution. Not only is there no justification for the mimetic cycle, but

“contrary to what happens in the myths, it is not the unanimous mob of persecutors who

see Jesus as the Son of God and God himself; it is a rebellious minority” (Satan 123).

These few people—Christians or Jesus disciples—reject the story of Jesus’ guilt from the

beginning. On the other hand, in myths, the majority deifies the victim. By paralleling the

sacrifice of Jesus to the sacrifice of Psyche, Lewis is not so much indicating the

similarities, but instead pointing out the “irreducible differences.” In the Gospels, namely

only Jesus’ disciples insist He is God, even though they are scorned for their beliefs. On

the other hand, in Lewis’s myth, the “unanimous mob of persecutors,” that is, the citizens

of Glome, affirm Psyche’s deity.

Interestingly, Orual’s character and first-person narration actually best illustrate

these “irreducible differences.” She is unable to see that her actions are motivated by a

jealous love, but this fact is undeniably clear to the reader—her own story acts to conceal

the truth. For example, when Orual first decides to journey up the mountain with Bardia

in hopes of giving Psyche’s bones a proper burial, the act is considered noble and

courageous. Orual’s decision makes her out to be a mourning, loving sister. Surely, her

joyous reunion with Psyche confirms this role. However, as Orual listens to her younger

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sister, now so mature, tell her about her new home on the mountain and her Bridegroom,

the god, Orual’s possessiveness and disbelief begin to overcome her.

First of all, Orual cannot bear that Psyche might love anyone more than she loves

her older sister. She cries out to Psyche, “Do you even hear me? I can’t reach you…. You

loved me once… come back” (Faces 124). Not unlike an overprotective parent, Orual

refuses to accept Psyche’s personal growth without her. The fact that Psyche might not

need her anymore upends Orual’s world and takes her most prized role from her. Second

of all, Orual cannot acknowledge that the gods might actually be good because this belief

would go against the conviction that she has held her entire life. In Orual’s own words,

“If this is all true, I’ve been wrong all my life. Everything has to begin over again”

(Faces 115). Unwilling to relinquish her role as Psyche’s most beloved and her belief that

the gods are cruel, Orual retreats from the mountain.

Despite physically leaving Psyche on the mountain, Orual is unable to move

forward with her life while such troubling thoughts still linger. Disguising her actions as

“a time for love to be stern,” she resolves to return for a second time to the mountain

(Faces 152). Rather than admit to herself that her troubles stem from her jealousy, Orual

insists that she is acting out of an almost parental “tough love.” She claims that she

simply does not want Psyche to be taken advantage of by whomever it is that she is

claiming is her husband.

Much to her dismay, Psyche repeats what Orual does not want to hear: that

Psyche belongs to her husband now and that he, a god, is good. At this point, Orual

decides to take extreme measures. She insists that Psyche expose her mysterious husband

using the oil and lamp she has brought for her. When Psyche refuses to disobey the god,

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Orual threatens to end her own life, forcing a dagger through her own arm to indicate her

seriousness. Allegedly out of love, she tells Psyche, “Both of us die here, in plainest truth

and blood, unless you swear” (Faces 165).

By forcing Psyche’s hand, Orual is in a way recreating the unjust sacrifice of

Psyche. Ironically, she had previously told the Fox, “If anyone in Glome knew that she

had not died, they would seek her out and sacrifice her again” (Faces 147). In order to

resolve her inner turmoil, Orual drives out Psyche and all of her unbearable truths. Just as

the communities in myths are enveloped in chaos before turning on a single victim, the

stability of Orual’s life up to this point has completely erupted since her reunion her sister

—unless she can expel what she believes to be the source of this chaos. Indeed, after

Psyche “goes out in exile,” and Orual returns to Glome, life becomes relatively ordered

again. Peace is restored: Orual dons a veil for almost the rest of her life, becomes her

father’s trusted advisor, and ultimately is named queen.

Even though Lewis the literary critic, the Christian convert, found myths to be in

part truthful, Lewis the novelist participates in the misleading myth by concealing the

truth from Orual. Orual’s first-person narration does not initially admit that her need for

Psyche’s expulsion stems from a jealous, possessive love—it instead disguises her need

by the cover of protective love. Orual justifies her actions by telling Psyche, “There’s

your lover, child. Either a monster—shadow and monster in one, maybe, a ghostly, un-

dead thing—or a salt villain” (Faces 160). She acts as though her scapegoating is

necessary and not a culmination of and a way to resolve her inner unrest. Not only is this

part of the plot a further replication of the Girardian scapegoat mechanism, it also echoes

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the Girardian belief that myths are by nature concealing. Evidently, Orual is blind to what

is happening beneath the surface.

But the reader is not. The first person narration invites the reader into Orual’s

mind, but thanks to Lewis’s artistry, does not ever imply that Orual should be completely

trusted. The truth behind Orual’s scapegoating is revealed to the reader even if it is not

initially revealed to Orual. In this way, Lewis is conveying a distinctly Girardian

conception of myth: the violence is concealed to the participants, but not to the

readers/observers. Thus, Lewis’s critical understanding of myth differs from his

novelistic understanding of myth.

Finally, the myth at the end of the novel is worth revisiting. As previously

mentioned, Orual encounters a temple dedicated to a goddess whom she soon learns is

actually Psyche. She is deeply troubled by what the priest tells her, however, because the

story is not at all what actually took place between her and Psyche. According to the

priest’s sacred story, both sisters visited Psyche on the mountain and both sisters saw the

palace that the real Orual could not see. Orual’s narration in regards to the priest’s tale

could just as easily be Lewis speaking as himself in regards to myth: “That much of the

truth [the gods] had dropped into someone’s mind, in a dream, or an oracle, or however

they do such things” (Faces 243). Similarly, Lewis had written to Greeves, “the Pagan

stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He

found there” (Letters 288). In other words, Orual might as well say that the priest’s tale

would be another example of what Lewis called “good dreams.”

As Orual’s narration proceeds, however, her musings become distinctly Girardian.

She continues, “That much [truth]; and wiped clean out the very meaning, the pith, the

Gorski 24

central knot, of the whole tale” (Faces 243). The fact that the true story—the story in

which Orual visits Psyche alone and cannot see the palace—is so far removed from what

the priest tells her happened forces Orual to come to the conclusion that the myth is

covering something up. Of course, it should be noted that Orual believes that the gods are

responsible for this dishonesty whereas Girard solely blames the men who invent the

stories to cover up their violence and scapegoating. Regardless, in consideration of the

priest’s sacred story, or myth, Orual and Girard observe the same problem. Though she is

blind to any concealment on a personal level, Orual recognizes the dishonesty from afar.

Just as Orual participated in the scapegoating of her own sister, though, she also

participates in the dishonesty of the myth of what actually happened. Although she

accurately finds that the priest’s myth is masking the truth of the events on the mountain,

she still denies her own motivations for what happened between her and Psyche. As she

is listening to the priest, she resolves to write the very book the reader is holding to bring

her charge against the gods and set her story straight. She exclaims, “Jealousy! I jealous

of Psyche? I sickened not only at the vileness of the lie but at its flatness” (Faces 245).

By refusing to admit her jealous love for Psyche, Orual is doing precisely what she had

accused the priest of doing: wiping clean the very meaning of the whole tale.

However, by writing her own story, Orual does eventually come to know the

truth. She explains visions in which she reveals that she is Ungit, the bloodthirsty

goddess. Her attitude toward Psyche was no better than what she thought was the god’s;

she was not acting out of love, but out of jealousy. Once she brings her charge against the

gods, Orual realizes, “The complaint was the answer” (Faces 294). Following this

revelation, she is reunited with the Fox. Together, they consider paintings on the walls of

Gorski 25

the palace, viewing pictures that depict Psyche performing seemingly impossible tasks,

then a picture of both Psyche and Orual toiling together, then a recreation of the scene on

the mountain. Horrified, Orual asks the Fox, “Did we really do these things to her?…

And we said we loved her” (Faces 304). The Fox replies, “And we did. She had no more

dangerous enemies than us” (Faces 304). At last, with the help of the Fox and her own

writing, Orual understands the truth that the reader has known from the beginning. Orual

sees the entire myth for what it is: a story that serves as a mere veil.

Just as Orual understood the truth about her own life through writing her story,

Lewis reveals the truth about myth in writing this novel. Though the conflation of

Christianity and myths may have helped Lewis become a devout Christian, writing the

novel conveys a different, Girardian perspective about myth and Christianity: while one

conceals, the other reveals.

Conclusion

Orual’s transformation and understanding does not truly begin until she begins to

write; she reflects, “The change which the writing wrought in me… was only a

beginning” (Faces 253). This literary move makes a statement about the power of

writing, which no doubt would have resonated with Girard. In an essay on Marcel Proust

and the author’s book Remembrance of Things Past, Girard writes, “The book made the

author, no less than the author the book” (Mimesis 57). Though Proust never declared

himself a Christian, “his masterpiece espouses the Christian structure of redemption more

perfectly than the carefully planned efforts of many conscientious Christian artists”

(Mimesis 68). Perhaps the act of writing revealed the truth to Proust just as the act of

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writing revealed the truth to Orual—and maybe even to Lewis. The conception of myth

that is revealed in Faces—despite Lewis’s prior beliefs about myth formed in 1931—

suggests that the author may have undergone a transformation not unlike his narrator’s.

Perhaps penning his final novel wrought a change in Lewis that may have been “only the

beginning,” had his life not ended in 1963. Though it is impossible to say for sure,

considering the Girardian configuration of Till We Have Faces, Lewis may have

experienced a deeper conversion more in line with Girard’s perception of myth and the

Gospels.

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Works Cited

Adams, Rebecca. “Loving Mimesis and Girard’s ‘Scapegoat of the Text’: A Creative

Reassessment of Mimetic Desire.” 2000. Print.

Apuleius, and E.J. Kenney. The Golden Ass, Or, Metamorphoses. London: Penguin,

1998. Print.

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles William, and

Their Friends. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. Print.

Duncan, John Ryan. The magic Never Ends: An Oral History of the Life and Work of C.S.

Lewis. Nashville: TN: W Pub. Group, 2001. Print.

Girard, René. “Collective Violence and Sacrifice in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.”

Salmagundi 88/89 (1990): 399-419. Web.

-Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins, 1965. Print.

-Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953-2005. Stanford,

CA: Stanford UP, 2008. Print.

---The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986. Print.

---I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2001. Print.

---A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.

Gruenler, Curtis A. “C.S. Lewis and Rene Girard on Desire, Conversation, and Myth:

The Case of Till We Have Faces”. Christianity and Literature. Winter 2011

(60.2): 247-265.

Kirwan, Michael. Discovering Girard. Darton, Longman & Todd. 2004. Print.

Lewis, C.S. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge: U, 1961. Print.

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---God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Print.

---Mere Christianity: Comprising the Case for Christianity, Christian Behaviour,

and Beyond Personality. new York: Touchstone, 1996. Print.

---Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt, Brace,

1956. Print.

---‘Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957. Print.

Lewis, C.S., and Walter Hooper. Letters of C.S. Lewis. Orlando: Harcourt, Brace, 1993.

Print.

Sammons, Martha C. A Far-Off Country: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s Fantasy Fiction.

Lanham, MD: U of America, 2000. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories.” The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. Print.

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