Lewis’ final two characteristics focus on the reader’s experience and reaction: myth is both “grave” and “awe-inspiring” (44). This also fits well with his fourth characteristic of myth, which is that myths are always “fantastic” and deal with the supernatural (44). This is because myths deal with universal truths rather than particular people, even when a myth tells a particular story. Thirdly, Lewis writes that when reading a myth, “we do not project ourselves at all strongly into the characters” (44). A myth is extra-literary, which means that it has “value independent of its embodiment in any literary work,” and it also delights the reader without “such usual narrative attractions as suspense or surprise” (Lewis, An Experiment 41, 43).

Lewis never provided a clear or simple definition of myth as he understands it, but in his book An Experiment in Criticism, he gives six characteristics which can help a reader identify a myth. Lewis has a unique understanding of myth, which affects the way that he writes Till We Have Faces. As a consequence of her desire to be god, Orual seeks to dominate and possess the people in her life. Orual must face the reality of who she truly is before she can understand the gods because she is projecting her own character onto them. In Till We Have Faces, Orual’s struggle to understand the gods is linked to her struggle against them. Several of the characters in the novel construct different narratives about the nature of humanity, the gods, and the world around them as a result of the mysteriousness of the gods. In his novel, Lewis shifts the focus of the myth to the human struggle to understand the divine by making Cupid’s palace invisible to Orual and the other mortals. Lewis retells Apuleius’s myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Orual, Psyche’s older sister, who narrates the story.

Lewis uses myth to illuminate the struggle to comprehend the divine and the universal human desire to be god. Nevertheless, myths can be obscure or confusing because the truths they express transcend human reason.

In “Till We Have Faces,” myth’s ability to convey truth is invaluable because of the human inability to comprehend the divine.

Cs lewis until we have faces