Perelandra (Ch.1/Part 1)
C. S. Lewis stars as himself in this opening chapter to Perelandra . This is more than simply a literary device to hook readers into the story. How CSL describes his approach to his relationship to Elwin Ransom and the rather odd (to say the least) circumstances of his life bear an uncanny likeness to his own coming to faith in God as he wrote it up in his book Surprised by Joy . I think we do well, then, to read this chapter as the confession of faith of one who described his real life turning to God in these words: “You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now ...