An Allegorical Conversion Story: C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress

This week I finished re-reading C.S. Lewis’s The Pilgrim’s Regress, and guys—it was thrilling. Seems like an odd description for a spiritual allegory from almost a century ago, but it’s true. I’d read it before, maybe during high school, so I found plenty of stars in the margins from my younger self. But this time around, I added more.

So. Many. More.

The More You Know

What was the difference? A better knowledge of Lewis’s spiritual biography. I’m now familiar with some of the philosophical and moral hurdles Lewis had to reject in order to accept Christianity, and Lewis spends most of this book describing and debunking those hurdles. Even though he writes about them in allegorical terms, I was able to track with most of them because I’d already read his non-allegorical version: Surprised by Joy.

The Pilgrim’s Regress is the first book Lewis published after becoming a Christian, so it was filled with foreshadowing of so many of his later books and thoughts. It was like going back in time and meeting one of your best adult friends as a teenager—you can tell it’s the same person, but the flowers you enjoy in their personality today are still seedlings in their younger self. I had a similar feeling when I read his letters to Arthur Greeves. Simply delightful.

How to Enjoy The Pilgrim’s Regress

I think nearly any Lewis lover could relish reading Regress, but a few preliminaries would increase enjoyment and reduce confusion. Here, in compounding order, is how you can get the most out of this book. Any one of these is a good enough reason to read it, but the more you can stack up, the more you’ll enjoy it.

1. Love C.S. Lewis.
2. Know the story of his conversion.
3. Have a pretty good knowledge of classic and British literature as well as the pervasive schools of thought before and during his day.
4. Be fluent in Latin and a few other modern and ancient languages that he casually sprinkles in here and there.

Alternately:

1. Love C.S. Lewis.
2. Read the afterword that he write to explain his own allegory.
3. Google anything that feels like a quotation or reference.
4. Also google anything in a foreign language.

I pretty much took the alternate approach, and it worked out just fine.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

If you feel motivated to read the book, then hop on over to ThriftBooks or your favorite book site and nab a copy today. In my next post, I plan to write about a poem from the last chapter of Regress. If you’ve read the book by then, you can sit in the front of the class and wave your raised hand like Hermione Granger.

And, just between you and me, you’ll be my favorite.