C. S. Lewis - A look into the biography of Lewis by Sam
Wellman.
C. S. Lewis, born in 1898, is acclaimed as one of the
greatest Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. During
his life he undergoes enormous struggles concerning himself,
his family, and the biggest struggle-his belief in God,
which are portrayed by the author Sam Wellman in C. S. Lewis.
During the first half of his life he is an atheist with mind
provoking questions unanswered, and all his struggles come
together in this book to show he accomplished what very few
have done.
Sam Wellman starts the book jumping into the
experience Lewis had in the army during a war, and from there
explains in flashbacks his life up until that point, and then
the war ends for him, when he receives a purple heart and is
sent home. During that war Lewis had his most atheist
thoughts, when constantly everyone is dying around him. The
starting point of Lewis’s search for God begins shortly after
the war, which is shown throughout this Biography.
Lewis had many people he looked up to, W.T.
Kirkpatrick, his first private teacher, the person Lewis most
adored. This is where he gets most of his motivation to learn,
and receives many high academic achievements as a result. Soon
after the tutoring he receives from Kirkpatrick Lewis was
awarded a scholarship to University College, Oxford. Lewis
had done all this before he was sent off to war, but the
author flashes back to this strong
accomplishment. Warren, brother to Lewis, was a heavy
alcoholic who Lewis loved and cared for. They both looked up
to each other including their decision to later move in with
Mrs. Moore. Later it is learned their mother had died of
cancer in 1908, and because of this they searched for a new
mother, Mrs. Moore took this role when they moved in with her
in 1919. They had a life long strong relationship, and Lewis
and Warren lived with her for most of their lives. The author
shows how Kirkpatrick, Warren, and Moore affected Lewis
highly, which led to Lewis learning much about the world, and
led him to God.
"I always before condemned as sentimentalists or
hypocrites the people whose view of the dead was so
different from the view they held of the same people living.
Now (I find) out that it is a natural process. . ." Lewis
wrote this to his friend Warnie after their friend Albert
died. As portrayed in this quote from C. S. Lewis, he is
always changing his mind about the world. Sometimes these
changes occurred because of people he loved and their deaths.
During the story many people he knows and loves die. Lewis
changes and learns from those events among others, which is
the strongest point of this book. He keeps an open mind and
strives to search for all answers, including his belief in
God. The biggest change in his life occurred in 1931 when he
finally figures out God is real at the midpoint of his life.
From then on he writes many renown books: Mere Christianity,
The Screw Tape Letters - (One of the best books I've read),
and many others. The author Wellman explains that for Lewis to
fix his wrongs he tries to tell the world up until his death
that God is real.
On top of his mother dying from cancer, many of
Lewis’s friends die to it as well (Albert), and even his wife
Joy whom he was married to for four years since 1956, and
later even him in 1963! Many people died from cancer in his
life, but it only further pushed him closer to God. My
grandfather died of cancer on May 1, 2004, the day of my
Prom. I read this book a year before that and went back to
it and found comfort. This book explains and tells well how a
man would go through struggles in life, and find God only to
die with a smile on their face. Despite the high amount of
discouraging events that happened in C. S. Lewis’s life, this
book proves that they are easily overcome with the correct
attitude and faith in God, just like Lewis had.