Christian Holmes- Outside Reading 1

I have decided to do my outside reading blogs on one of my favorite books of all time, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. These blogs will apply to both the Religion in the Film course, and the C.S. Lewis course. As such, they will count for credit in both classes, (as we have previously discussed, Dr. Redick.)

            One of the most interesting portions of the Screwtape Letters is the very beginning. In the first chapter, the demons begin to talk about holding their subjects in “real life”. They do everything they can to deter their patents from actually thinking about reality and what is true, and push them to hold onto a constructed idea of “real life”. Telling themselves that “they can’t be thinking about God, this is real life! Such a thing would be absurd.” Lewis seems very keen on the question of what is real and what is not and he uses the characters of these demons to show how society and normal culture will attempt to convey constructed and false truths to individuals despite what general reason may say. This first chapter tackles the idea of ontology, which has been a crucial foundation for our discussions in 451.

Not only is this a very important philosophical concept that dates back past Plato and finds roots in more modern philosophers like Heidegger, but it is also a topic found in contemporary film. The film “Big Fish” is based around the question of what is ultimately real. The son, attempting to understand his fathers story, must attempt to pick apart real life from fiction. However, that which he ultimately finds to be real is not what society would generally accept to be reality. Much in the same way that the film suggests that truth might not lie in the every day, Lewis in The Screwtape Letters suggests that perhaps culture is lying to us and that there is a great truth that many of us are being conditioned to reject.