The early life of C.S. Lewis- Heidi Naylor

Many people have heard of C.S. Lewis or have at least read one of his books, but probably very few know much about his life and the aspects that shaped him into the great writer/thinker that he became. As I talked about in one of my earlier entries, Lewis started creating stories with his brother from an early age. He was also prone to extreme clumsiness due to a missing joint in his thumb. These two things really set the stage for him becoming a writer, but what I was really surprised to learn was that his extensive vocabulary can be traced back to his childhood as well.

His father was a public prosecutor and had been very accustomed to public speaking long before he became a father. As Lewis describes, “Words came to [my father] and intoxicated him as they came… I can still remember such words as ‘abominable’, ‘sophisticated’, and ‘surreptitious’” (39). This early exposure to a variety of words caused Lewis to talk much like his father; he was often accused of being conceited due to the types of words he used, when in actuality, he was just using the words he had learned as a child.

Another factor that shaped Lewis into the man the public knew him as, was the focus placed on classics in his schooling. According to Lewis, this was one of the greatest aspects of his education. As he stated, “the greatest disservice we can do to education today is to teach fewer subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life” (113). Lewis, by focusing on fewer subjects in school, and reading the classics, allowed him to overcome mediocrity. Overall, these forces came together to create the C.S. Lewis many know and love.