Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis

This book is basically about Lewis' lifelong search for what he termed "joy" and how he finally found it where he least expected.

He had a somewhat sad childhood although an amazing education despite his poor boarding school experiences which were downright awful. Anyway, his parents were readers and his mother started teaching him Latin at a very young age, but his childhood sorrow began with the death of his mother. He was very close to his brother and they read a lot and made up ongoing play stories together which seemed similar to what Lewis wrote in his chronicles of Narnia. His brother was sent off to boarding school, and soon after, Lewis followed. it really was a terrible place, they didn't get enough to eat, the school master really probably had sever mental problems by the way he ran the school and treated everybody and the school was soon after closed down. It was a waste of time academically for Lewis, and he never felt comfortable with mathmatics and my guess is that he never had a chance to learn it well. Anyway, his next boarding school was quite good and he had some good teachers who introduced some good subjects for him and he was able to learn some things, but he was only there about a year and then was off to Wyvern which was horrid. The upper class men were allowed and even encouraged to haze the lower classmen. There was a ton of emphasis placed on some type of games like rugby and others which Lewis hated because he was no good at them and he'd rather be in the library. He actually thought he was the strange one for enjoying literature. Anyway, he was finally able to talk his father into finding him another mode of educational training and started his true formal training under the one on one mentorship of "The Great Knock", and finally on to Oxford.

It was very interesting to read about all the books Lewis felt were important to his development. Honestly it made me realize again how lacking my own education has been. I also enjoyed reading how he and "The Great Knock" read Homer in the original Greek and other texts in their original languages. Over the course of Lewis' young life, he became an atheist although he continually sought after "joy" which he seemed to find mostly in Norse mythology. A lot of his reasoning and the way he thought about life and he world were foreign to me, because I think that deep down I have always known there is a God. I had to take some time to let some of his ideas make sense to me, because they weere so different from anything I had thought before.

It was really nice to get to the final 2 chapters, because the rest of the book especially the chapter called "The Bloods" was downright sad and depressing. In the final 2 chapters he talks about how although he didn't want to believe in God, he was finally forced in a sense to acknowledge the logic and light of the truth. One of the first ideas he let go of was that just because a time such as the dark ages has past and we are so much "more advanced" now doesn't necessarily mean that we can't learn from past ages and that maybe they had some wisdom we could learn from now. That seems to be a common belief of atheists and "progressives", that modernity is better and the past is archaic and unuseful to the present. This combined with Lewis' thirst for knowledge understanding and "joy" led him to continue to learn and read. He found less and less "joy" and satisfaction in his mythology, and much to his unexpected expectations, the Christian writers seemed to be the ones that made the most sense.

This caused him to reevaluate over time and at last accept Jesus as the Christ and Savior of the world. He had at last found "Joy", and that is where the book ends. This is probably my least favorite of all the Lewis books I've read. He said that knowing about a person doesn't necessarily give one more insight into the things they write about and I would have to agree. I had a hard time relating with his atheistic ideas of youth, but I suppose it does give me a greater understanding and appreciation of those who think that way. I have enjoyed his other works much more although this book does let me see why and how Lewis can express himself so well in his other works. Overall, I do recommend this book. Enjoy!!!