Category
Textual or Investigative
Description
More than three million individuals die annually in the United States (Ahmad et al., 2024). If each of these individuals leaves behind just three people who mourn their loss, that results in over nine million individuals enduring the torment of grief each year. In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis offers an excruciatingly candid reflection on loss, capturing the raw thrashings of his mind and heart in the grip of sorrow. This study utilizes a rhetorical criticism employing Burkean cluster analysis, to examine how Lewis rhetorically constructs his evolving perspective on grief, suffering, and faith. Drawing on Kenneth Burke, this analysis traces the emotional and cognitive shifts in key terms such as “God,” “faith,” “grief,” and “death,” and analyzes the associative clusters surrounding those terms. Through this analysis, the study demonstrates how Lewis’s language both mirrors and shapes his journey through pain and doubt—ultimately collapsing his intellectualized theodicy, the theology of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil, and then reconstructing his trust in God. In engaging with Lewis’s lament, readers are invited to confront their own vulnerability and consider what remains when their foundations are shaken. Through this perspective on lament, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of biblical mourning and ultimately demonstrates how language mediates between doubt and renewed faith in the midst of mourning.. Keywords: Grief, Death, C. S. Lewis, Faith, God, rhetorical criticism, cluster criticism
When Faith Becomes a House of Cards: C.S. Lewis’ Lament
Textual or Investigative
More than three million individuals die annually in the United States (Ahmad et al., 2024). If each of these individuals leaves behind just three people who mourn their loss, that results in over nine million individuals enduring the torment of grief each year. In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis offers an excruciatingly candid reflection on loss, capturing the raw thrashings of his mind and heart in the grip of sorrow. This study utilizes a rhetorical criticism employing Burkean cluster analysis, to examine how Lewis rhetorically constructs his evolving perspective on grief, suffering, and faith. Drawing on Kenneth Burke, this analysis traces the emotional and cognitive shifts in key terms such as “God,” “faith,” “grief,” and “death,” and analyzes the associative clusters surrounding those terms. Through this analysis, the study demonstrates how Lewis’s language both mirrors and shapes his journey through pain and doubt—ultimately collapsing his intellectualized theodicy, the theology of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil, and then reconstructing his trust in God. In engaging with Lewis’s lament, readers are invited to confront their own vulnerability and consider what remains when their foundations are shaken. Through this perspective on lament, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of biblical mourning and ultimately demonstrates how language mediates between doubt and renewed faith in the midst of mourning.. Keywords: Grief, Death, C. S. Lewis, Faith, God, rhetorical criticism, cluster criticism
