Learning in Wartime

"Learning in War-time" is another excellent essay by C. S. Lewis.  It is perhaps the most clear essay we have read as a class so far, though it is not my favorite of his.

In the essay, Lewis writes about one particular effect of war-time.  Writing to in insecure public of the late thirties and early forties, Lewis lays out a huge problem in society.  He attacks the fact that nobody can focus on anything but the War, and if you do, you are looked upon as someone who should care more.  "The moment we do so we can see that every Christian who comes to a university must at all times face a question compared with which the questions raised by the war are relatively unimportant. He must ask himself how it is right, or even psychologically possible,for creatures who are every moment advancing either to heaven or to hell, to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology."

Lewis proceeds to examine this very real situation, and he then assesses it.  "The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it."  The purpose of this statement is to reveal that War-time is just as relevant as "peace"-time, so we always need to focus on literary things.  Later on, Lewis provides three things that stand in our way of not thinking about the War: excitement, frustration, and fear.  Each provides its own distraction from the eternal, and we all fall into one some time or another.

Why I really like this piece, though, is because it can still be related to my life, even though Lewis does not come right out and say it.  We all go through wars, such as someones mother dying of cancer.  Or parents getting a divorce.  Or...anything really bad.  We all have it in some way, and I believe that instead of using these things as excuses during war-time, we need to be strong.  Of course I have sympathy for the fifteen-year old who watches his mother leave earth.  I understand that his grades will fall because of it.  However, that boy has no excuse to cheat on his wife twelve years down the road, and then blame it on tragedy he faced as a young boy.  That is not War-time.  We must be careful to know when War-time is, and when it is not.  I could go on with more examples (perhaps even more concrete), but I believe that Lewis would agree with what I have said so far...