This document summarizes and analyzes C.S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity and how it was influenced by his understanding of mythology. It discusses Lewis's conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien in 1931 where Tolkien challenged Lewis's view that Christianity and myths were untrue by pointing out that myths point to an actual historical event of Jesus's death and resurrection. This conversation helped Lewis see Christianity in terms of mythology and led to his conversion. The document then contrasts Lewis's view of mythology with that of literary critic Rene Girard, who saw myths as concealing violence rather than revealing truth like Christianity. It analyzes how Lewis's last novel Till We Have Faces reflects Girard's view of

1. “The Complaint Was the Answer”:
A Girardian Analysis of C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces
By: Renatta Gorski

2. 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.

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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

5. Gorski 5
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

6. Gorski 6
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

8. Gorski 8
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

20. Gorski 20
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.

21. Gorski 21
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

22. Gorski 22
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,

23. Gorski 23
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

24. Gorski 24
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

25. Gorski 25
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

26. Gorski 26
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

27. Gorski 27
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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Reassessment of Mimetic Desire.” 2000. Print.
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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.
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---God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. Print.
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---‘Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957. Print.
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