The Pilgrim's Regress, by C. S. Lewis, Annotated: Only the Best Bits! Part 2: Puritania
Our Hero Learns of Death and Hell
This series was first posted on Data Secret Lox-I’m posting one entry per week here.
You can find Part 1 here.
A Quick Note on Allegory
Before we dive into the book itself it’s worth taking a moment to talk about the book’s format. The Pilgrim’s Regress is proper allegory where you have characters walking around with names like Reason, or Mammon, or Wisdom. People say that The Chronicles of Narnia are an allegory but they’re really not. In Narnia Aslan doesn’t represent Jesus: he literally is Jesus, just in the form of a talking lion. This book is allegory played straight.
So what's the point of writing an allegory anyway? It’s certainly not subtlety, and in fact the first version of this book suffered from being so subtle that Lewis decided to just add running headers on the top of each page explaining what was actually going on (as an example, one header for today’s section reads “Knowledge of broken law precedes all other religious experience.” The headers just spell out the point for you). Clearly this book is not allegory at its best, or the headers would not be necessary. Lewis takes a moment in the preface to explain how allegory is supposed to work:
In the present edition I have tried to make the book easier by a running headline. But I do so with great reluctance. To supply a ‘key’ to an allegory may encourage that particular misunderstanding of allegory which, as a literary critic, I have elsewhere denounced. It may encourage people to suppose that allegory is a disguise, a way of saying obscurely what could have been said more clearly. But in fact all good allegory exists not to hide but to reveal; to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment. My headline is there only because my allegory failed—partly through my own fault (...) and partly because modern readers are unfamiliar with the method. But it remains true that wherever the symbols are best, the key is least adequate. For when allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination, not with the intellect.
With that said lets begin. We’re going to skip some parts of Chapter 1 and start with our protagonist, John, as a young boy. John is basically a young C. S. Lewis, though Lewis notes in the preface that “you must not assume that everything in the book is autobiographical. I was attempting to generalise, not to tell people about my own life.” Here John learns about sin, God, Hell, and death.
Puritania
And then, (on a) fine morning, John had a little sling and he went out into the garden and he saw a bird sitting on a branch. And John got his sling ready and was going to have a shot at the bird, when the cook came running out of the garden and caught John up and smacked him soundly and told him he must never kill any of the birds in the garden.
‘Why?’ said John.
‘Because the Steward would be very angry,’ said cook.
‘Who is the Steward?’ said John.
‘He is the man who makes rules for all the country round here,’ said cook.
‘Why?’ said John.
‘Because the Landlord set him to do it.’
‘Who is the Landlord?’ said John.
‘He owns all the country,’ said the cook.
‘Why?’ said John.
And when he asked this, the cook went and told his mother. And his mother sat down and talked to John about the Landlord all afternoon: but John took none of it in, for he was not yet at the age for taking it in. Then a year went past, and one dark, cold, wet morning John was made to put on new clothes. They were the ugliest clothes that had ever been put upon him, which John did not mind at all, but they also caught him under the chin, and were tight under the arms, which he minded a great deal, and they made him itch all over. And his father and mother took him out along the road, one holding him by each hand (which was uncomfortable, too, and very unnecessary), and told him they were taking him to see the Steward. The Steward lived in a big dark house of stone on the side of the road. The father and mother went in to talk to the Steward first, and John was left sitting in the hall on a chair so high that his feet did not reach the floor. There were other chairs in the hall where he could have sat in comfort, but his father had told him that the Steward would be very angry if he did not sit absolutely still and be very good: and John was beginning to be afraid, so he sat still in the high chair with his feet dangling, and his clothes itching all over him, and his eyes starting out of his head. After a very long time his parents came back again, looking as if they had been with the doctor, very grave. Then they said that John must go in and see the Steward too. And when John came into the room, there was an old man with a red, round face, who was very kind and full of jokes, so that John quite got over his fears, and they had a good talk about fishing tackle and bicycles. But just when the talk was at its best, the Steward got up and cleared his throat.
He then took down a mask from the wall with a long white beard attached to it and suddenly clapped it on his face, so that his appearance was awful. And he said, ‘Now I am going to talk to you about the Landlord. The Landlord owns all the country, and it is very, very kind of him to allow us to live on it at all— very, very kind.’ He went on repeating ‘very kind’ in a queer sing-song voice so long that John would have laughed, but that now he was beginning to be frightened again. The Steward then took down from a peg a big card with small print all over it, and said, ‘Here is a list of all the things the Landlord says you must not do. You’d better look at it.’
So John took the card: but half the rules seemed to forbid things he had never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing: and the number of the rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all. ‘I hope,’ said the Steward, ‘that you have not already broken any of the rules?’
John’s heart began to thump, and his eyes bulged more and more, and he was at his wit’s end when the Steward took the mask off and looked at John with his real face and said, ‘Better tell a lie, old chap, better tell a lie. Easiest for all concerned,’ and popped the mask on his face all in a flash.
John gulped and said quickly, ‘Oh, no, sir.’
‘That is just as well,’ said the Steward through the mask. ‘Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he’d do to you?’
‘No, sir,’ said John: and the Steward’s eyes seemed to be twinkling dreadfully through the holes of the mask. ‘He’d take you and shut you up for ever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters—for ever and ever. And besides that, he is such a kind, good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him.’
‘No, sir,’ said John. ‘But, please, sir . . .’
‘Well,’ said the Steward.
‘Please, sir, supposing I did break one, one little one, just by accident, you know. Could nothing stop the snakes and lobsters?’
‘Ah! . . .’ said the Steward; and then he sat down and talked for a long time, but John could not understand a single syllable. However, it all ended with pointing out that the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext. ‘And you can’t blame him,’ said the Steward. ‘For after all, it is his land, and it is so very good of him to let us live here at all—people like us, you know.’ Then the Steward took off the mask and had a nice, sensible chat with John again, and gave him a cake and brought him out to his father and mother. But just as they were going he bent down and whispered in John’s ear, ‘I shouldn’t bother about it all too much if I were you.’ At the same time he slipped the card of the rules into John’s hand and told him he could keep it for his own use.
Crossing the Brook
John had a disreputable old uncle who was the tenant of a poor little farm beside his father’s. One day when John came in from the garden, he found a great hubbub in the house. His uncle was sitting there with his cheeks the colour of ashes. His mother was crying. His father was sitting very still with a solemn face. And there, in the midst of them, was the Steward with his mask on. John crept round to his mother and asked her what the matter was.
‘Poor Uncle George has had notice to quit,’ she said.
‘Why?’ said John.
‘His lease is up. The Landlord has sent him notice to quit.’
‘But didn’t you know how long the lease was for?’
‘Oh, no, indeed we did not. We thought it was for years and years more. I am sure the Landlord never gave us any idea he was going to turn him out at a moment’s notice like this.’
‘Ah, but it doesn’t need any notice,’ broke in the Steward, ‘You know he always retains the right to turn anyone out whenever he chooses. It is very good of him to let any of us stay here at all.’
‘To be sure, to be sure,’ said the mother.
‘That goes without saying,’ said the father.
‘I’m not complaining,’ said Uncle George. ‘But it seems cruelly hard. ’
‘Not at all,’ said the Steward. ‘You’ve only got to go to the Castle and knock at the gate and see the Landlord himself. You know that he’s only turning you out of here to make you much more comfortable somewhere else. Don’t you?’
Uncle George nodded. He did not seem able to get his voice.
Suddenly the father looked at his watch. Then he looked up at the Steward and said:
‘Well?’
‘Yes,’ said the Steward.
Then John was sent up to his bedroom and told to put on the ugly and uncomfortable clothes; and when he came downstairs, itching all over, and tight under the arms, he was given a little mask to put on, and his parents put masks on too. Then I thought in my dream that they wanted to put a mask on Uncle George, but he was trembling so that it would not stay on. So they had to see his face as it was; and his face became so dreadful that everyone looked in a different direction and pretended not to see it. They got Uncle George to his feet with much difficulty, and then they all came out on to the road. The sun was just setting at one end of the road, for the road ran east and west. They turned their backs on the dazzling western sky and there John saw ahead of them the night coming down over the eastern mountains. The country sloped down eastward to a brook, and all this side of the brook was green and cultivated: on the other side of the brook a great black moor sloped upward, and beyond that were the crags and chasms of the lower mountains, and high above them again the bigger mountains: and on top of the whole waste was one mountain so big and black that John was afraid of it. He was told that the Landlord had his castle up there.
They trudged on eastward, a long time, always descending, till they came to the brook. They were so low now that the sunset behind them was out of sight. Before them, all was growing darker every minute, and the cold east wind was blowing out of the darkness, right from the mountain tops. When they had stood for a little, Uncle George looked round on them all once or twice, and said, ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ in a funny small voice like a child’s. Then he stepped over the brook and began to walk away up the moor. It was now so dark and there were so many ups and downs in the moorland that they lost sight of him almost at once. Nobody ever saw him again.
‘Well,’ said the Steward, untying his mask as they turned homeward. ‘We’ve all got to go when our time comes.’
‘That’s true,’ said the father, who was lighting his pipe. When it was lit he turned to the Steward and said: ‘Some of those pigs of George’s have won prizes.’
‘I’d keep ’em if I were you,’ said the Steward. ‘It’s no time for selling now. ’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said the father.
John walked behind with his mother.
‘Mother.’
‘Well, dear?’
‘Could any of us be turned out without notice like that any day?’
‘Well, yes. But it is very unlikely. ’
‘But we might be?’
‘You oughtn’t to be thinking of that sort of thing at your age.’
‘Why oughtn’t I?’
‘It’s not healthy. A boy like you.’
‘Mother.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can we break off the lease without notice too?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, the Landlord can turn us out of the farm whenever he likes. Can we leave the farm whenever we like?’
‘No, certainly not. ’
‘Why not?’
‘That’s in the lease. We must go when he likes, and stay as long as he likes.’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose because he makes the leases.’
‘What would happen if we did leave?’
‘He would be very angry.’
‘Would he put us in the black hole?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Mother.’
‘Well, dear?’
‘Will the Landlord put Uncle George in the black hole?’
‘How dare you say such a thing about your poor uncle? Of course he won’t.’
‘But hasn’t Uncle George broken all the rules?’
‘Broken all the rules? Your Uncle George was a very good man.’
‘You never told me that before,’ said John.
Some Context
This is one of my favorite sections of the book, particularly John's conversation with the Steward. There do seem to be many believers, even Church leaders, who clearly don't take what they teach too seriously.
Despite the name Puritania, Lewis was not raised with strict Christianity or anything near Fundamentalism (as we can see by how lightly the Stewards take the rules in the passage above). In his autobiography he describes his childhood religious experience in this way:
If (childhood) aesthetic experiences were rare, religious experiences did not occur at all. Some people have got the impression from my books that I was brought up in strict and vivid Puritanism, but this is quite untrue. I was taught the usual things and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church. I naturally accepted what I was told but I cannot remember feeling much interest in it. My father, far from being specially Puritanical, was, by nineteenth-century and Church of Ireland standards, rather "high", and his approach to religion, as to literature, was at the opposite pole from what later became my own. The charm of tradition and the verbal beauty of Bible and Prayer Book (all of them for me late and acquired tastes) were his natural delight, and it would have been hard to find an equally intelligent man who cared so little for metaphysics. Of my mother's religion I can say almost nothing from my own memory.
Later in his childhood, after being sent off to his first boarding school in England, he acquired a more serious belief in God:
But I have not yet mentioned the most important thing that befell me at Oldie's. There first I became an effective believer. As far as I know, the instrument was the church to which we were taken twice every Sunday. This was high "Anglo-Catholic". On the conscious level I reacted strongly against its peculiarities--was I not an Ulster Protestant, and were not these unfamiliar rituals an essential part of the hated English atmosphere? Unconsciously, I suspect, the candles and incense, the vestments and the hymns sung on our knees, may have had a considerable, and opposite, effect on me. But I do not think they were the important thing. What really mattered was that I here heard the doctrines of Christianity (as distinct from general "uplift") taught by men who obviously believed them. As I had no scepticism, the effect was to bring to life what I would already have said that I believed. In this experience there was a great deal of fear. I do not think there was more than was wholesome or even necessary; but if in my books I have spoken too much of Hell, and if critics want a historical explanation of the fact, they must seek it not in the supposed Puritanism of my Ulster childhood but in the Anglo-Catholicism of the church at Belsen. I feared for my soul; especially on certain blazing moonlit nights in that curtainless dormitory--how the sound of other boys breathing in their sleep comes back! The effect, so far as I can judge, was entirely good. I began seriously to pray and to read my Bible and to attempt to obey my conscience. Religion was among the subjects which we often discussed; discussed, if my memory serves me, in an entirely healthy and profitable way, with great gravity and without hysteria, and without the shamefacedness of older boys. How I went back from this beginning you shall hear later.
Next post will be Thursday, where we'll see John leave home and meet Mr. Enlightenment.