Devine Love vs Human Love Essay

residuum of the Affair both distinguish betwixt comprehend recognise and human hump. A common string up that runs throughout is the inconsistencies that be associated with human sexual chouse and the unconditional nature of divine get by. Both Greene and Lewis use familial, Platonic and erotic love to illustrate the distinction between divine love and human love with the pass that the reader appreciates that human love is superficial given for the wrong reasons while divine love is regular(a) love given for all the right reasons.Moreover, both Greene and Lewis use their protagonists to demonstrate that while human love is characterized by negative emotions such as green-eyed monster and selfishness, divine love is mental and unselfish. This paper focuses on the varieties of love featured in both books and demonstrates how modernity tends to prioritize human love over divine love with a view to rationalizing how and why romantic, familial and erotic love, all forms of h uman love are displaced in both novels. In each of the novels, the inescapable message is that erotic love is fragile and recklessly teeters on the outer fringes of hate.C. S. Lewiss Till We put on Faces A falsehood Retold As in Greenes The End of the Affair Lewiss Till We Have Faces A Myth Retold Human love is expose for all its inherent flaws. Orual, the central figure in Lewiss Till We Have Faces A Myth Retold recounts her relationship with her baby heading. Through Orual Lewis permits his reader to follow the progression of that relationship laying bare the weaknesses associated with well-disposed love that Orual has for her sister judgment and how that love develops into possessive love.Exemplifying the frailties of human love, fateicularly familial love, Lewis to a fault demonstrates how human love can be conditional and selfish by exposing the fragile relationship between Orual and her father. Perhaps more importantly, Lewis uses these unique familial relationships to demonstrate how selfish human love can modify into hate. In summary Till We Have Faces is a re-telling of the Greek mythical story of Cupid/Eros and header. In Lewiss re-telling the story is reconstructed through the eyes of Orual who is represented as unattractive and jealous and unequivocally disgruntled by the Gods mistreatment of her.Psyche, the beautiful sister is the object to Oruals affections. In this re-telling Lewis deliberately complicates familial love in that Oruals love for her sister is obsessive. On the otherwise side of the spectrum, Redivals love for Orual is inauthentic and the love for Psyche by King Trom is self-deceptive. Foxs love for Orual and Psyche is withal transient. Lewis excessively ventures into sexual/erotic love which is multifaceted in Till We Have Faces. Oruals love for Bardia is unrequited, Ansits love for Bardia is frustrating and of course there is the superficial infatuation of men for Orual in her veiled condition.Lewis also takes pains to demonstrate that self-love is destructive in presenting dichotomy in Orual who loves and hates herself all at once. This duality is selfish and damaging at the same time. Above all however, the emphasis is on divine love and implicit in this re-telling is a transition from Greek Philosophical times to modern Christianity. (Hooper, 1996, 250) Father shit Milward writes of Till We Have Faces The main themes are, (1) Natural affection, if left to mere nature, easily becomes a special kind of hatred, (2) God is, to our cancel affections, the ultimate object of jealousy. (Hooper, 1996, 250) Psyche as reconstructed by Lewis has a natural predisposition for affection for divinity whereas Psyches love for divinity coincides with Oruals love for manhood particularly her love for Psyche. While Psyches love for the gods are first and foremost in her heart, Oruals love for Psyche comes first and each sister regards her love as the natural love. For Orual Psyche represents the beginning o f my Oruals joys. (Lewis, 20) On the other hand, Psyche derives her strikingest at a time just onwards she is sacrificed to Cupid as it is a means of bringing her closer tot he gods.(Lewis, 74) Oruals love for Psyche however is aligned to hatred and becomes a means by which Lewis demonstrates the superficial nature of human love whether familial or romantic in nature. Oruals so-called love and affection for her sister fluctuates from love to hate in a manner which can only leave the impression that the love is fickly to begin with and not based on sound principles or values. For instance the night before Psyche is sacrificed Orual reveals that her sister has made me, in a way, angry. (Lewis, 71) Moreover the following day, Orual dreams her sister was my Oruals greatest enemy. (Lewis, 71) The remainder of the first part of Till We Have Faces is characterized by this king of fluctuations of Oruals affections for her sister. The inconsistencies are not lost on Psyche who observes I am not sure whether I like your kind of love better than hatred. (Lewis, 165) Superimposed in this aspect of human love as illustrated through Lewiss Orual is the damaging elements of human love whether romantic or familial. Oruals love for her sister is characterized by two fatal flaws. First she loves her sister in such a way that she easily allows it to fall into hatred.Secondly, Orual permits her hatred to rebound to the gods. The love-hate scenario from Orual to Psyche is connected to the gods to the effect that Orual permits her love for Psyche to become possessive. That possessive love turns to a dangerous jealousy which is borne out of the arrogance that Psyche loves the gods to the exclusion of Orual who in turn holds the gods accountable for taking Psyches love from her. Oruals jealousy is so strong that shed rather the gods had killed her sister than made her immortal. She laments Wed rather they were ours and unwarranted than yours and made immortal. (Lewis, 291)Ps yches love for the gods is interpreted by Orual as a theft by the gods. To her way of cerebration the gods took Psyches love from her and she says as much, Psyche was mine and no wizard else had any right to her. (Lewis, 291-292) Lewis intent with respect to Oruals reaction to Psyche and her affection for the gods were specifically show in a letter he sent to Katerine Farrer. Lewis explains in the letter that Oruals jealousy and emplacement toward her sisters relationship with the God was intended to convey the typical reaction of family members when a relation gives his life to Christianity.Lewis explained in the letter that the reaction of family members is typified by Oruals when someone becomes a Christian, or in a family nominally Christian already, does something like become a missionary or enter a religious order. The others suffer a sense of outrage. What they love is being taken away from them. (Hooper, 249) In other words Oruals angst with the gods finds its place in the kind of jealousy that one family member experiences when it appears to them that a love one religion replaces them.In much the same way Oruals bitterness stems from a jealousy which is founded on love. The self-destructive and selfish nature of human love is also succinctly illustrated through Orual. In Lewiss characterization of Orual she increasingly subscribes to the notion that if she cant have her sister then she go forth not permit anyone else have her. Orual convinces Psyche to look upon her lover, despite his warning to the contrary. In her way of thinking Orual perceives that she is saving Psyche and to prove her intention she cuts her arm.The danger of Oruals love and the dangerous manner in which her love for her sister influences her thinking and perception are revealed in the following excerpt from Till We Have Faces How could she hate me, when my arm throbbed and burned with the wound I had given it for her love? (Lewis, 169) Ironically, the gods whose love Orua l condemns closely mirrors Oruals idea of love which is self-serving and consuming. It is not until the novel nears its conclusion that Orual comes to the receivedization that how love was commandeered by rapacity and self-satisfaction.In this way Lewis is able to expose the superficial nature of human love. This is finally accomplished with Orual flood tide to terms with and accepting that her desire to have Psyche, the Fox and Bardia all to herself was entirely wrong. Lewis uses Ansit to voice the meaning of real or divine love by having him provide a brief commentary on Oruals love. Ansit, referring to Oruals pursuit of Bardia notes that He was to live the life he though best and fittest for a great mannot that which would most pleasure me. (Lewis, 264)