C. S. Lewis Speech Analysis

C.S. Lewis is known for the world-wide phenomenon, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe but Lewis is also a phenomenal orator. One of Lewis’ most famous excerpts Beyond Personality uses superb precedents of said techniques. C.S. Lewis’ Beyond Personality speech uses effective techniques to motivate his listeners and to get people to believe what he believes. C.S. Lewis uses figurative language, anecdotes, and repetition and parallel structure to help his audience withhold a better understanding of his point. C.S. Lewis often intertwines superlative examples of figurative language into his works. He doesn’t only use one form of figurative language; he uses multiple forms to assist his audience’s understanding of his point. For example, “...just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world” (Lewis Online) is an excellent example of the kinds of similes he uses. This improves the quality of his speech because it made the speech personal by using ‘you’. When making the speech personal the people listening feel more engaged because it interacts with them. Another example of figurative language he used was another simile, “...he invented it as an author invents characters in a book, all

He addresses a difficult topic to begin with so he uses tangible examples so the audience can comprehend what he is trying to explain. For example, when Lewis is trying to explain that time does not apply to God he uses “Suppose I'm writing a novel. I write “Mary laid down her book; next moment came a knock at the door.” For Mary, who's got to live in the imaginary time of the story, there's no interval between putting down the book and hearing the knock. But I, her creator, between writing the first part of that sentence and the second, may have gone out for an hour's walk and spent the whole hour thinking about Mary…” (Lewis Online) as an anecdote to aid the audience’s