In
the passage from The Pilgrim’s Regress
on pages 6 and 8, C.S. Lewis uses literary references and allusions to
emphasize the beginning of John’s spiritual journey, an event important within
the plot of the allegorical novel in which John’s physical journey represents
his needed and necessary spiritual growth.
The
Pilgrim’s Regress is a structural “copy” of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, also a theological
novel about a character who makes a physical journey representing his spiritual
growth. In the passage from The Pilgrim’s Regress, the narrator
says, “Now the days and weeks went on again, and I dreamed that John had little
peace either by day or night for thinking of the rules…” (Lewis 6). The narrator in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, too, exists in a dream-like state, watching the
main character of his dream realize his need for something more in life. John, in this passage, realizes this as he
receives “from beyond the wood a sweetness and a pang so piercing that
instantly he forgot his father’s house, and his mother, and the fear of the
Landlord, and the burden of the rules” (Lewis 8).
The rules themselves that John has
been told he must keep are an allusion to the Bible, specifically the Old
Testament. In the Old Testament, the
Jews were given a strict list of rules by god that they were supposed to
keep. The list of rules can be found in
the chapters of Deuteronomy and Leviticus in the Old Testament of the
bible. The Jews were told that the only
way to achieve salvation and enter heaven was by keeping all of these rules
(i.e. Laws). John, too, is told that he
must keep the overwhelming list of rules give n to him. Lewis’ use of imagery
entails how burdensome this list of rules was to John. As the narrator says, “There were so many
[rules] that [John] never read them all through and he was always finding new
ones” (Lewis 6).
As an educated Christian scholar,
what C.S. Lewis would have understood was that the laws weren’t enough to save
the Jews which is why Christ needed to come into the world as a human and die
to save humanity. If the rules John was
given are an allusion to the Old Testament laws, then these rules aren’t enough
to fulfill John’s desire for the “sweetness and pang” (Lewis 8) he experiences
in this passage. John must go on a
spiritual journey to seek the true Christianity that won’t be burdensome as the
rules he must keep are.
References to Pilgrim’s Progress and the Old Testament laws—both an image of a
necessary spiritual journey and growth—guide this passage in The Pilgrim’s Regress on pages 6 and 8,
purposefully fitting as this passage is indeed John’s start of the journey and
spiritual growth he makes over the course of the novel.
I thought you did a great job of addressing the use of allusions throughout Lewis' work to support his writing's connection to his religion. It seems, from what I've read of C.S. Lewis' works along with the other novels incorporated into your presentation, that allusions to the bible and christianity in general are present very frequently in his writing. Within this story, it seems as if John's journey not only alludes to the stories of the bible, but to Lewis' own spiritual journey as well. It makes me wonder if he uses his own experiences as a basis for plotlines, or perhaps even, bases the characters in these stories off of himself.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that the rules, being a reference to the bible, were called a "burden" in this passage. Perhaps Lewis was trying to portray other religions as too strict, thus swaying the reader to side with the religious values he shows in John's spiritual growth (and therefore his own personal values as well)?
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