Similarities Between The Last Battle and Till We Have Faces - Kate Bennett

 I couldn’t help but feel a bit of Deja-Vu as I was reading Till We Have Faces. The seventh book of the Chronicles, The Last Battle, depicts an ape named Shift and a donkey named Puzzle pretending to be the Great Aslan to the people of Narnia. As we could have guessed, this ultimately did not end well. Similarly, the beginning of Till We Have Faces exhibits Psyche accepting offers as if she were a Goddess, which eventually upsets Ungit - or Aphrodite. This “pretending” to be a goddess was not necessarily out of malice on Psyche’s part, like Shift’s intention was, but the similarities between the disruption these two situations caused are nevertheless clear. For one, both instances deeply upset the person they were supposedly impersonating. Aslan, however, took a much more passive approach. He knew those who were loyal to him and did not feel the need to prove himself to those who were willing to believe the mischievous ape. For Pscyhe in Till We Have Faces, her willingness to receive gifts led Ungit to call on Psyche for a sacrifice of herself. Interestingly, the offering of gifts was presented to Psyche simply because she was so beautiful, and this eventually grew to such a point that the people of Glome were convinced she could heal through touch. Shift, in The Last Battle, simply wanted glory. He brought the circumstances upon himself, while Psyche arguably was not as conscious of her wrongdoings at the time. Ultimately, it has been interesting to see Lewis’ depiction of this kind of impersonation transform over time. His works manage to be so uniquely themselves, yet just as connected at the same time.

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