Shadowlands – The Story Behind One of the Greatest Christian Authors – English Essay
Shadowlands. – C. S. Lewis, the celebrated Oxford professor, fervent Christian and children’s author, meets Gresham, American divorcee, poetess and mother. She comes to England as a fan, seeking out the admired author. He is intrigued by the bright and impetuous American. They become friends and they have a marriage
of convenience to satisfy some immigration difficulties for her but then she becomes ill with cancer and Lewis, realizing his love for her, marries her again, this time in a religious ceremony. They enjoy a couple of years of happiness and then she dies.
But it is not as simple as this plot. The film describes and leads the viewer to one of the most important of life’s questions. Does our suffering mean anything? The question that everyone asks himself at the worst moments of his existence, when we tend to think that we were the last person that would suffer the misfortune of the death of our loved ones. It is due to our love for other people that we suffer when we are abandoned for one reason or another. Therefore, we should think that it is not only a matter of the pain what we suffer but also the period of happiness we live or have lived. These states of mind, spirit and soul have and will always go together or at least continuous, one after the other; and assuming this irrevocable truth we ought to ask ourselves if we prefer to lament the pain of loss or give thanks that it was you and not your beloved relative or friend who lived the loss of the other.
We are here to live, to experience everything: hate and love, illness and health, life and death because if we never encounter the negative sides of the world we would never appreciate as much as we do now its positive face.