C. S. Lewis - A look into the biography of Lewis by Sam Wellman.

C. S. Lewis, born in 1898, is acclaimed as one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. During his life he undergoes enormous struggles concerning himself, his family, and the biggest struggle-his belief in God, which are portrayed by the author Sam Wellman in C. S. Lewis. During the first half of his life he is an atheist with mind provoking questions unanswered, and all his struggles come together in this book to show he accomplished what very few have done.

Sam Wellman starts the book jumping into the experience Lewis had in the army during a war, and from there explains in flashbacks his life up until that point, and then the war ends for him, when he receives a purple heart and is sent home. During that war Lewis had his most atheist thoughts, when constantly everyone is dying around him. The starting point of Lewis’s search for God begins shortly after the war, which is shown throughout this Biography.

Lewis had many people he looked up to, W.T. Kirkpatrick, his first private teacher, the person Lewis most adored. This is where he gets most of his motivation to learn, and receives many high academic achievements as a result. Soon after the tutoring he receives from Kirkpatrick Lewis was awarded a scholarship to University College, Oxford. Lewis had done all this before he was sent off to war, but the author flashes back to this strong accomplishment. Warren, brother to Lewis, was a heavy alcoholic who Lewis loved and cared for. They both looked up to each other including their decision to later move in with Mrs. Moore. Later it is learned their mother had died of cancer in 1908, and because of this they searched for a new mother, Mrs. Moore took this role when they moved in with her in 1919. They had a life long strong relationship, and Lewis and Warren lived with her for most of their lives. The author shows how Kirkpatrick, Warren, and Moore affected Lewis highly, which led to Lewis learning much about the world, and led him to God.

"I always before condemned as sentimentalists or hypocrites the people whose view of the dead was so different from the view they held of the same people living. Now (I find) out that it is a natural process. . ." Lewis wrote this to his friend Warnie after their friend Albert died. As portrayed in this quote from C. S. Lewis, he is always changing his mind about the world. Sometimes these changes occurred because of people he loved and their deaths. During the story many people he knows and loves die. Lewis changes and learns from those events among others, which is the strongest point of this book. He keeps an open mind and strives to search for all answers, including his belief in God. The biggest change in his life occurred in 1931 when he finally figures out God is real at the midpoint of his life. From then on he writes many renown books: Mere Christianity, The Screw Tape Letters - (One of the best books I've read), and many others. The author Wellman explains that for Lewis to fix his wrongs he tries to tell the world up until his death that God is real.

On top of his mother dying from cancer, many of Lewis’s friends die to it as well (Albert), and even his wife Joy whom he was married to for four years since 1956, and later even him in 1963! Many people died from cancer in his life, but it only further pushed him closer to God. My grandfather died of cancer on May 1, 2004, the day of my Prom. I read this book a year before that and went back to it and found comfort. This book explains and tells well how a man would go through struggles in life, and find God only to die with a smile on their face. Despite the high amount of discouraging events that happened in C. S. Lewis’s life, this book proves that they are easily overcome with the correct attitude and faith in God, just like Lewis had.