If you are looking for the beginning of the study for C. S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces then you can go HERE for a brief introduction. At the bottom of the introduction you will find the links to each section of the study guide as it becomes available. If you would like to see the growing list of book studies available for free on this site you can go HERE. Enjoy!
Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find these in the Text and Note them in the Margins)
Indifference, Friendship, Resurrection
Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)
What had Orual “already settled with [her] council” concerning Trunia’s and Redival’s second son?
How did Orual’s young companion behave at first and how did this change as the trip went on for some time?
What “curious work of nature” did Orual’s party decide to go see?
Whose story did the priest in the woods tell to Orual?
What are a couple of things which the priest got “hideously and stupidly wrong” in his tale?
What reason did the priest give for why the two sisters tried to separate Istra from the god?
According to the priest, what happens in the spring and summer?
What did Orual and her party see “everywhere” after they “had crossed the border” back into Glome?
What did Orual begin to do “every morning” during the last bit of the party’s return journey?
What did Orual learn about Bardia upon arriving home?
What did Orual say the gods would not give her though she had “begged for it?”
According to Orual, why did the gods not answer her?
Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)
Why was Orual unwilling to let herself love Daaran?
What did Orual mean when she said, “Glome and Phars in alliance had made Essure change her tune?”
Why would the priest begin his story “Once upon a time in a certain land…?” What does such a beginning to a story tend to make you think about the story?
What parts of Istra’s (Psyche’s) story did the priest get right and what did he get wrong? What are we to think about the fact that the priest knows the story at all? Why might the priest’s story not sync up with what Orual has told us?
Why did Orual resolve to write her book after hearing the story from the priest?
What did Orual mean when she said, “though I had seen a god myself, I was near to believing that there are no such things?” Why would this be?
Orual asked the priest, “You mean she will some day be reunited to the god; and you will take off her veil then? When is this to happen?” Why did the priest not understand her question? How are Orual and the priest thinking differently about the matter?
What did Orual mean when she said, “I was with book, as a woman is with child?”
Orual noted “in Glome, after we had crossed the border, we saw everywhere such good peace and plenty and such duty and, I think, love towards myself as ought to have gladdened me.” What should we infer about Orual’s reign as Queen from this information?
Why was Orual’s party “in the end…travelling like those who fly from a victorious enemy?” What was the need to rush?
Why might Orual have thought that the gods “have no answer?”
Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)
Orual said, “I thought (between sadness and smiling) how the Fox would have scolded me if I had been so near any curious work of nature and not examined it.” How is it that the same thought (or memory) can be simultaneously happy and bitter? What kinds of thoughts tend to have this quality? How important is it to think such thoughts, or dwell on memories, which have such a mixed quality? Would it be better to think only of those things which make us happy and are unmixed with sadness or should we entertain thoughts such as Orual’s here in this chapter? Why or why not?
The priest charged Istra’s two sisters with being jealous of her. Do you think Orual was jealous of Psyche? If so, in what way? If not, why not? Either way you answer, provide citations from the book in order to support your argument.
With all that you know up to this point in the story, do you think Orual’s complaints against the gods are just or unjust? Either way you answer, provide citations from the book in order to support your argument.
Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)
Read Job 1 and relate it to Orual’s need to accuse the gods of wrongdoing. How are these two cases similar and different?
Read Isaiah 45:15-25. How might we relate this passage of Scripture to our present story?