"Of Man by Nature" Synthesis

"Of Man by Nature" and C.S. Lewis

            In John Bunyan’s poem “Of Man by Nature”, John Bunyan emphasizes what he believes to be the nature of man through his use of syntax and informal language so the meaning of the poem is easier for less educated people to understand the topic’s importance.

            Bunyan, concerned essentially with the “inward” man rather than the “outward one”, wrote the poem “Of Man by Nature” reflecting on what the poem’s title implies: what man’s inherent nature is.  The syntax he uses points out the most important points he raises in his poem, the most important characteristics of man’s internal nature.  By using the capitalization of specific words throughout the poem, he places specific emphasis on what he believes to be man’s foundational nature.  He says, “Of Ways, he loves the wider;\ With Wickedness a Sider,\ More Venom than a Spider” (Bunyan 2-4).  By capitalizing words such as “ways”, “wickedness”, “sider”, “venom”, and “spider”, Bunyan makes it clear to all who read the poem that these are characteristics that describe man apart from the good of God, man who is inherently evil.  Even the most uneducated person who reads this poem can innately know that the capitalized words are what are most important within the poem.

            Furthermore, the language John Bunyan uses in “Of Man by Nature” is not formal language that may be difficult for all to understand but informal and colloquial language.  The deliberate use of contractions in the first lines of each quatrain is an example of Bunyan’s use of colloquial language.  In these lines he writes, “From God he’s a Back slider” (Bunyan 1) and, “In Sin he’s a Confider” (Bunyan 5).  The contraction “he’s” as opposed to the more formal writing “he is” demonstrates Bunyan’s use of colloquial and informal language.  Bunyan also uses informal language in his word choices throughout the poem.  Where formal language could be used to describe something as important as man’s foundational nature, Bunyan uses words such as “guider” (Bunyan 7), “spider” (Bunyan 4), and “a sider” (Bunyan 3) to describe man’s inherent nature.  The more formal rendering of “guider” and “a sider” would be “guide” and “sides” but by using these words to fulfill a rhyme scheme in which every line rhymes, Bunyan must resort to informal language.  Bunyan, though, does understand that something as important as man’s inherent sinfulness apart from God should be something every person understands, whether educated or uneducated, so by using colloquial language by means of contractions which are used daily in conversation and by means of his word choices, Bunyan gives his poem an easy rhythm and feel that common men can understand.  

Similarly to the depiction of how man is inherently sinful apart from God in “Of Man by Nature”, C.S. Lewis’ collection of fictional letters in The Screwtape Letters also depicts how apart from God, man will be in the presence of and manipulated by devils, exhibited by the very fact that the letters are written by a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew demon, Wormwood.  The novel shows how these devils rely on man’s tendency to sin (“the daily and hourly temptation” (Lewis 69)) to keep him from converting to “The Enemy’s” religion.  As Screwtape writes in his letter #1, man is not like God or demons.  He is not “a pure spirit” (Lewis 2).  If by nature “From God [man’s] a Back slider,\ Of Ways, he loves the wider” (Bunyan 2-3) and “The Devil is his Rider” (Bunyan 8), one of Lewis’s major purposes in The Screwtape Letters was to show just this—to show that man is easily manipulated because he is not that “pure spirit”.  Lewis, however, takes this idea one step further than Bunyan does in his poem.  While Bunyan never explicitly says that God man can be changed through a relationship with God, Lewis in The Screwtape Letters explicitly shows that in the end “The Enemy” (who is Christ) can change man’s soul.  As C.S. Lewis concludes in the last letter Screwtape writes to Wormwood, “You have let a soul slip through your fingers.  The howl of sharpened famine for that loss re-echoes at this moment through all the levels of the Kingdom of Noise down to the very Throne itself.  It makes me mad to think of it” (171).