References to wine and beer, and the nurse frequently gets drunk. Animals' blood is mentioned on the altars of Ungit. The priests try to sacrifice Pysche to the gods, but there is no bloodshed. She stabs herself at one point, though not fatally.
Orual learns swordfighting and practices with the captain of the guard. Later it is mentioned that he threatens to drown some of his illegitimate children. The king stabs a boy to death toward the beginning of the tale and though it is quick, the scene is portrayed pretty graphically. Now she realizes that the Voice itself, whom she only calls 'Lord', is in and of Himself the answer, and that before his face all questions such as hers die away. All her life she has been searching for an answer and fighting the will of that voice, and of the 'gods'. One major parallel between this tale and Christianity comes at the very end of the story, just before Orual's death. At the end of the tale, 'a great voice' is spoken of as even greater than those gods.
However, Lewis often uses the pagan ideas of 'gods' and 'goddesses' as spiritual beings we know as angels and demons - something that comes out in many of his other writings. It was hard to find Christian allegory in this story. Venus (Aphrodite) is the goddess Ungit in the tale, while her son Cupid plays a major role. It talks throughout the book about gods and goddesses, planets like Jupiter and Mars. Very pagan, coming from a Greek myth as it does.
Her father, the king, is a cruel man with no moral laws at all. Orual struggles throughout the story with morality, but as a queen she is just to the people. The story takes the reader from the death of Orual's mother to Orual's own death. She tells her sister's story by what she remembers and in her own words. The story jumps into the present day with Orual reminiscing over her now-goddess sister, Psyche. The tale is told from the perspective of Orual, half-sister of Psyche. The plot is built around the old Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche with Lewis putting a twist to the original plot. A good book with some non-graphic sexual content and deep spirituality.
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