Psyche And War

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that were necessary in order to ensure spiritual survival were clearly shown. These traits were faith, courage, and loyalty. In the course of this paper, special attention will be given to the character traits described above. The significance of their presence or absence in the personalities of a number of literary characters will be considered. In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis’ portrays an anonymous English protagonist struggling to maintain his spiritual integrity against the assaults of temptations of Hell during World War Two. In The English Patient, Ondaatje portrays a group of characters, brought together by their circumstances, reacting to what the author portrays as the tidal wave of war.
The importance of faith, courage and loyalty enable Lewis’ character to spiritually survive all the assaults of wartime. The absence of these characteristics cause Ondaatje’s characters to flounder. Faith, courage and loyalty provide a necessary framework for moral thought and action, ...

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leaves the war deeply scarred in the spiritual sense. In the work of C.S. Lewis, faithfulness to God is the factor that ensures the soul’s survival. Lewis describes the danger of being overwhelmed by “the stream of immediate sense experiences” (Lewis pg.12). A man’s tendency to focus on the immediate and the personal at the expense of the universal threatens his ability to survive in any spiritual sense. When focusing on his own inconvenience, hunger and pain, a man tends to lose sight of broader concerns, such as his spiritual wellbeing and the common good. Faith enables a man to focus on the spiritual and the eternal, to face each day’s trials with commitment and determination and to ...

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