The+Persona,+or+False+Self


 * Personality. Persona. False Self** //This page discusses those ideas in Lewis's writing.

The idea of the persona, or false self, is a common one in Lewis' writings. In his non-fiction, Book 4 of "Mere Christianity" largely deals with this concept, particularly in the final chapter or two. In his fiction, we find the best example in his final novel, "Till We Have Faces," though it is also true that the theme runs through many of his earlier fictional writings, "The Great Divorce" especially. In fact, a close examination of these two novels will show that both really have, as perhaps their main message, this business of finding one's true identity, or self, as opposed to the false self that most people take to be "themselves" but really isn't.


 * The Great Divorce** illustrates the idea of holding onto false selves.

In TGD what one finds is a whole host of characters who have either surrendered their false selves, or are tenaciously holding on to them. The contrast between the Bright People of Heaven's foothills, and the Ghosts who arrive in those foothills from the Grey Town whence they came, couldn't be more stark. As theological fiction the novel effectively uses drama to point out the many ways in which human beings resist redemption. Self-justification is often involved, as is self-pity, self-centeredness, self-righteousness and plain old selfishness. The common thread to all these attitudes is, of course, the self, or more exactly, the false self, the self in its fallen state.

Lewis presents us with a cast of characters who run the gamut from those who suffer from a sense of their own importance, whether because of artistic or intellectual, or even worse, "spiritual" gifts (the artist, the young "unappreciated" suicide who had written an unpublished manuscript, the bishop for whom the spiritual "journey" inordinately becomes more important than arriving) to those who are unable, through self-righteouness, to forgive (the foreman who meets his former underling, who happened to have been a murderer), to those who cannot relinquish control of the lives of others (the nagging wife who finally goes up in a puff of smoke, the mother of Michael whose only aim is to be reunited with the son she lost early in his life, even if that meant spending eternity in Hell with him, and of course, the Dwarf/Tragedian.)

Ultimately, what all these people have in common is an unwillingness to surrender themselves, or more accurately, to die to their false selves. In contrast to them all, Lewis presents the man with an addiction to lust as represented by a lizard upon his shoulder. When this lustful Ghost finally consents to having the lizard slain by the angel both he and his lustful passions become tranformed into new creatures.

Put another way:

"...our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to 'be myself' without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. In fact what I so proudly call 'Myself' becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call 'My wishes' become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men's thoughts or even suggested to me by devils. Eggs and alcohol and a good night's sleep will be the real origins of what I flatter myself by regarding as my own highly personal and discriminating decision to make love to the girl opposite me in the railway carriage. Propaganda will be the real origin of what I regard as my own political ideas. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call 'me' can be easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own." (Mere Christianity, Book 4, Chapter 11.)

In "Till We Have Faces" Lewis again explores the theme of death to the false self, but in a more in-depth fashion. The mask of Orual represents the persona. It is the mask we all wear. To rid ourselves of it is the journey she, and we, must all undertake, and it is not an easy one, because dying is not an easy thing to do. But if we are to live the// zoe //life Lewis mentions in MC, if we are not content to continue to live the merely natural life, what Lewis calls// bios, //then, like Orual, die we must. Because, again as Lewis says in MC, "Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead."//

To be continued.....//