Summary by Andrew Hess

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life the god of the Mountain has been wooing me. Oh, look up once at least before the end and wish me joy. I am going to my lover. Do you not see now—?” (Till We Have Faces, bk. 1, 7, p. 76)

C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is the story of Orual, queen of the fictional kingdom of Glome. The first part of the book is Orual’s accusation against the gods told through the story of her early life as a princess and her eventual reign as Glome’s wise and just queen. She accuses the gods of being cruel in meddling in the affairs of humankind.

At the end of her life, however, Orual has a change of heart. She desires to rewrite her book but settles – due to weakness and illness in old age – to adding a new, more humble ending. In the end, Orual admits she was wrong to accuse the gods and that they were always lovingly present. She comes to see that her accusations against the gods resulted from her own weakness, bitterness, and failure.

This novel has a mysterious depth to it. Lewis takes inspiration from the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche. In the story, the local goddess Ungit who, like Aphrodite in the myth, is jealous of Psyche’s beauty and so withholds her from wouldbe lovers. This taking away of Psyche makes up a large part of the queen’s complaint.

Orual also wrestles with the pain of her own trials; she shares the pain of her own lesser beauty and the physical and emotional abuse from her father during her childhood.  This wound grows deeper as she is compared first to her sister Redival and then to the even more beautiful Psyche. Lewis uses this veiled queen to convey something profound about the nature of true beauty.

One of the most poignant mysteries weaved into this story is the one anchored in the title. What are we to learn from the symbolic use of faces and the lack thereof? There is much to discuss here, but perhaps most of all, Lewis is exploring the idea that mortal flesh cannot and will not understand all the mysterious purposes of God in this life. Especially in times of trial and suffering, Till We Have Faces offers comfort and a reminder that God himself is the best answer to our deepest soul questions. Even our strongest accusations will one day fall away when we are able to see the God of love and mercy face to face.

In our present ignorance, we all at times have accusations we’d like to bring before our Creator: Couldn’t this tragedy have been prevented? Why was I given this gift and not another? Wisdom is found in discovering that our best posture is in humbly letting our questions and accusations feed a deeper longing and desire to one day be with God himself, who promises to answer our questions and wipe away our tears. May we learn as Orual did that God himself has always been the answer to our heart’s deepest longings.