David Thornton - Lewis and Myth

After reading Lewis’ fiction, I appreciate more and more the power of myth. I think Lewis’ appreciation of myth allows him to value more than just the myths themselves. A characteristic of Myth, in its delivery of a message greater than its own existence, portrays how powerful stories can be. In my own life, memories seem to be hard for me to articulate. Because the feelings I had in those experiences are so hard to put into words. But, something that Myth and the way Lewis conceives of it is that concepts and memories can be articulated allegorically and literally. I have always tried to explain exactly what happened in terms of how I saw it, but the people listening to my descriptions could understand those ideas more powerfully through different ways than the way I choose to describe. In On Stories, Lewis writes, “In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch in our net of successive moments something that is not successive” (Lewis 19). Myth provides a delightful experience for the human imagination and truth for human existence. Thus, Myth has shown me that I need to try to communicate the meaning of those memories and experiences, rather than the specific ways in which those memories and experiences occurred. This is because the ways I experienced certain things may not communicate the meaning of what I actually experienced.