Questions in relation to the DVD ‘Shadowlands’

1. What are the sources of the pain and suffering depicted?

2. What are the sources of the joy depicted?

3. How are suffering and joy related in the video and in the broader sense for everybody?

4. How can people ‘grow’ through suffering?

5. Perhaps the crucial period in Jack and Warnie’s early life - that bound them so closely as brothers - was the death in 1908 of their mother. C. S. Lewis later cited this trauma in explaining his own emotional reticence; the person he loved most in the world was taken from him. How does Jack describe this time in the film ‘Shadowlands’?

6. How is the pain of losing a parent “re-lived” for C. S. Lewis in ‘Shadowlands’?

7. How does Lewis say he copes differently with the death of Joy than the death of his mother?

8. What are the responsibilities of a parent to the children he or she is leaving? What does Joy mean by “old enough to hurt”?

9. In the film, what key lines from the C. S. Lewis speech below are used repeatedly to express his attitude to God’s plan in allowing suffering?

“When a loved one dies we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid-career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off - something truncated and therefore lacking its due shape, whereas it is really a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship, or as autumn follows summer. It is not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance but the next figure.”

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1. The death of his wife, Joy

2. Joy in fact brings joy/happiness to jack in conjunction with his interaction with others. The peace he finds in Christianity

3. Joy helps bring happiness to jack whilst she also brings him great pain knowing that she is soon to pass away.

4. Suffering can allow people to become more sympathetic, understanding and grow/develop.

5.-

6. His mother's death

7. Unlike his mothers death, Jack was prepared for the death of Joy making it that little bit easier to deal with.

8. I believe that it is a parents responsibility to allow the child to know of the situations so that they may also cope with the inevitable tragedy. They too can become stronger through such tragedy. Keeping the truth from them could cause them the most suffering of all. This may be what Joy means by 'old enough for suffering'.

9.'God allowing suffering' vs Love cut short