Point of View

Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis is narrated in the first person past tense by Queen Orual, an aged, husbandless, childless, and nearly friendless woman, who has overcome her lifelong fear of the gods, has heard a distorted version of her beloved sister Psyche/Istra's tragic story, and vows to correct the record. She hurriedly pens a polemical text intended someday to reach the Greek lands, where her late tutor has taught her wise men appreciate free speech even about the gods. Orual lays out her case against the gods, who she claims have done her great wrong in life. She is particularly angry at the god on Grey Mountain who accepts Psych as a sacrifice to his mother, Ungit, and asks the Greeks to judge whether she or the gods are in the right.

Orual frequently quotes bits of dialog from memory, in...