Chapter 3 Summary and Analysis

The opening of the third chapter, and the second half of the book, begins with Lewis wondering to the page whether the feeling of something being wrong, missing, nauseating about life will be the new state of things in his perception. He notes that old familiar things either hold new senses of wrongness or are missing their old sense of goodness and expresses fear that his grief will merely settle into bored acceptance of this new "dead flatness".

Frustrated at the fruitlessness of thinking in that way, he shifts his focus back to rationality. He wonders what promise has been broken that was once made him, or what new question has it introduced to his contemplation of the universe. We were, after all, promised suffering, mourning, pain by God himself is Lewis' reminder. While he grants that it is very different...