Face to Face With God

Face to Face with God Orual, in Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis, is a character who undergoes a complete transformation. From the ugly sister, obsessed with power, who only hurts those she loves, she becomes a true believer in the divine and model of unselfish love.

Speaking largely on the power of God, the Divine, love, jealousy, and family among other themes, Lewis creates a powerful character in Orual whose transformation reflects on the very nature of God's involvement in life and on love, spirituality, and holiness within an individual. While touching on numerous themes using Orual, Lewis is able to express his powerful views on conversion.

To Lewis conversion is a difficult task- it took Orual a lifetime for her to believe in the power of the gods and the divine- yet it is possible through self reflection. It is impossible to see the divine before the conversion, but once one gains a face and understands spirituality in his or her own life, conversion is possible.

Ultimately, Lewis believes that to convert to a believer in the divine one must undergo an internal spiritual awakening, and he uses Orual's transformation as an example as she develops from an ugly to beautiful person where it counts most, inside. At the beginning of the book Orual is unaware of her eventual transformation, and thus she thinks of herself as ugly and she is ugly.

The beginning of the book is the origin of the process which helps her to become spiritual aware, through the retelling of her own story. It is in this retelling of her story, that the reader becomes aware of Orual and her shortcomings. Early in the work, Orual reveals that she "wanted to be a wife so that I could have been her real mother" among other reflections of her obsessive, even blind love for the beauty of Psyche (Lewis, 31).

"It has no envy," Fox tells her of the divine nature and true love, but Orual does not believe it in the beginning of the story (Lewis, 32). Orual considers herself to be ugly, and although she does have love, it is not pure or spiritual love, but rather is clouded in envy and obsession. She wants the love of Psyche for herself. Additionally, Orual considers the gods to be unjust to her, and she becomes extremely bitter and protective of her own sister.

Her love of Psyche is untamed and goes too far; Orual is full of envy and does not love unconditionally. Orual's treatment of Psyche when she goes to bury Psyche's bones is a crucial point in Lewis' story that shows Orual's flaws and the need for conversion. Much to Orual's surprise, she discovers Psyche to be alive and Psyche maintains she is married to the greatest god, that of the mountain.

Psyche lives in a palace, but this palace is invisible to Orual, and Orual tries to convince Psyche that her husband is a liar and her life as the wife to the god of the Mountain is untrue. "Psyche, you are deceived," Orual tells her sistes (Lewis, 168). Psyche responds by saying that, "If you ever loved med, put them away now," which demonstrates Orual's corrupted love for her sister (Lewis, 169). All the beauty that Psyche sees is invisible to Orual and Orual is too rational to understand that.

As Orual convinces Psyche to betray her husband, Orual's true character is further revealed and Psyche expresses it to her: "This is the price you have put upon your life. Well I must pay for it" (Lewis, 176). This foreshadows the destruction that will be caused by Orual's actions and thus shows the flaws in Orual's love. Orual's love is not healthy for her sister. She is a very misguided person spiritually; she is ugly as she says she is.

Lewis' portrayal of Orual prior to her conversion is of one with no faith in the divine and a person with no awareness of what love truly means. Orual may love, but it is not the right love; it is out of control and impure love. Through Orual's relationship with the gods, Lewis helps to depict how this impure love interferes with true discovery. Orual considers to gods to have been unjust to her.

However, this is largely rooted in her sense of rationalism as she adopts the Fox's approach to issues of the divinity. Orual says that, "I could never be at peace again till I had written my charge against the god" (Lewis 256). This is a reflection her attitude in which the gods are responsible for her problems inside. She has become a strong ruler, much like a man, but she is not in touch with spirituality at all.

In fact, she wears a veil to cover her face and hide it from the truth. Her face had seen the god of the mountain, but she was not ready for the encounter yet. In her delusion, Orual also says "Why must holy places be dark places?" which is a reflection on her misunderstanding of the nature of the gods and of holiness in general (Lewis 259). Orual is not in touch with the actual positives of god and spirituality, and thus needs to improve her relationship with the gods.

Ultimately, however, Orual succeeds in conversion. She succeeds in realizing her errors. She is able to lift the veil from her face and sacrifice herself. "I never wished you well, never had one selfless though of you," Orual maintains thus showing her self realization (Lewis 317). She realizes how she has treated people wrong and has not had a proper outlook on life. The veil is a symbol covering her face, and only if she removes it can she gain salvation.

Visions help Orual to understand, however, and this means that maybe she did not convert on her own. Perhaps the divine helped her. And surely she could not succeed in conversion on her own because it required selfless action towards some one else, in this case her sister Psyche who she treated so badly earlier in life. But in the end, it is reflection on her own relationship to the gods, towards others, and in her own actions that one truly can convert towards the true spiritual path.

Lewis makes it clear that in this conversion process love is the most important thing. It must be self less love for others and willingness to do whatever it takes. Only then can one reach salvation and can one be beautiful, for even someone as ugly as Orual reaches beauty once she is able to convert. Orual's conversion, and her own struggles with the divine, is reflective of the challenges humans must overcome to discover God. To find God, one must first find God in him or herself.

Only through finding the divine inside, can one truly discover God. With the veil over the faces, to borrow Lewis' metaphor, humans have to face, and therefore cannot see the face of God. The face of God is not for humans to see anyway,.