The Abolition of Man Literary Elements

Nonfiction, essays

The essay was written in England in the mid-twentieth century, but it is still applicable today.

The essay is from the perspective of C.S. Lewis, a professor, classicist, Christian apologist, and writer, who sees a problem with modern educational practice and warns against a possible future.

The tone of The Abolition of Man demonstrates Lewis's sharp, witty and sardonic view of the world. His writing is intelligent, quick, and often humorous. Lewis is careful to avoid any pretentiousness in his language or ideas, instead of adopting a very conversational tone and style. He uses simple words and concepts that are easy to understand, but he also makes references to Greek mythology and other classic topics, which lends depth to his writing.

The antagonist is the movement toward subjectivism and the rejection of objective value, which is epitomized in the pseudonymous characters of Gaius and Titius. The protagonists would be those who take a stand against this movement and fight for objectivism.

The major conflict of The Abolition of Man arises when Lewis argues that the modern world has lost faith in objective values. The only way to stand firm on a moral ground is to have an objective, unshakable idea of justice and morality. In ancient times, this was the realm of the gods. In modern times, it is science. However, as Lewis points out, science is not a particularly strong base for morality. In fact, he believes it will lead to our downfall because it does not give us any reason for being moral.

Lewis uses the story of the Tao Te Ching and the Green Book to illustrate how this loss of objective values can lead to an "abolition" or extinction of man. The authors of these two books teach their students that there is no objective truth about morality or ethics. They teach them that all value judgments are subjective — in other words, a matter of personal preference — and that there are no absolute rights and wrongs, only what people like and dislike. As a result, the students lack any sense of morality or humanity. They have become "trees without roots," living beings without any real purpose or meaning in life.

At the end of the third essay, Lewis brings his arguments to a head by predicting a future in which Nature has conquered Man, and the skeptics have essentially reasoned the world away. It's a warning against the terrors of rejecting the Tao, and it's an effective one.

C.S. Lewis uses foreshadowing in a subtle way in The Abolition of Man to give a sense of the gravity of the situation. He writes an entire section about how the author’s of “The Green Book” are not as extreme or scary as some may think, and how their ideas are actually fairly common. This is a seemingly out of place section that seems to serve no clear purpose. That is, until the readers read the next section, which details their ideas in much more depth and shows that they are, in fact, quite dangerous and extreme. Readers believe this because they have been foreshadowed to believe that these authors are not so different from ourselves.

The Abolition of Man is an excellent example of understatement. The title itself is a fine example: 'The Abolition of Man' does not refer to the complete destruction of humanity; it instead refers to the destruction of what makes humans human (our moral faculties).
A more critical example occurs in the introduction when Lewis explains that he is not attempting to write some kind of vague treatise but instead will address a straightforward problem in which a practical attack on man's mind has already begun.

Lewis speaks of how the attack has begun and cannot be stopped. He says that he hopes his discussion will be more timely than I have any right to expect. This is undoubtedly an example of understatement. It would have been ridiculous for Lewis to have claimed that this work would become a classic text and would be read for centuries or that its warnings would prevent a catastrophe. At the time he wrote the book, he was just another author with a few books under his belt. He had no way to know whether or not his writing would be valid and influential enough to make any difference at all in the world.

C. S. Lewis uses multiple allusions in The Abolition of Man to convey his thoughts to the reader. In both the introduction and preface, he references how a society can come together and make decisions that can impact themselves and future generations. In the introduction, he alludes to the way communities can easily be swayed by an idea even though it may be destructive. He also references how people are treated in newer societies by comparing them to cogs in a machine, highlighting how they are viewed simply as a means to an end.
Another example of an allusion from this book is when Lewis compares the Tao or “the way” to nature, using criteria such as gravity and vegetation growth. This particular allusion is used to explain that things in nature follow a specific pattern without being taught similarly to humans; he believes that there is a set pattern for humans to follow that will lead them along with the Tao or their path without them knowing it.

In the first essay, "Men Without Chests," Lewis uses various body parts as symbols for different elements of a person. The head is used to represent the intellect, the chest symbolizes the will (or the ordo amoris, order of loves, in the terminology of Augustine), and the stomach represents the desires. This anatomical imagery is crucial for understanding the premise of the book, and it can be seen as a reinterpretation of Plato's tripartition of the soul into the rational, spirited, and appetitive parts.

Lewis represents difficult concepts with symbolic visuals. For instance, the "Green Book" represents contemporary educational relativism, while the "chest" represents a person's moral and emotional core. This visual aids in giving abstract ideas more substance.

The paradox is the main theme of the entire book. Lewis argues that if we try to abolish "man", or, as we might say, mankind or humanity, we in turn will become less human; whereas, on the other hand, if we choose to retain man, there would be no need to have abolished him in the first place. In other words, by trying to abolish our humanity in order to be more "logical" and "scientific", we actually end up being less logical and becoming more emotional. This is an example of the paradoxes presented by Lewis throughout this book.

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." ("Men Without Chests," 26)

Lewis uses parallelism to emphasize how we are creating a world where we view man as simply a machine with no moral center. We may be able to teach him how to read and write but we will never be able to teach him the moral virtues that make him human. Lewis is speaking out against the idea of eliminating the human element from education and replacing it with simply learning facts and knowledge.

To Lewis, this would create a generation of people with no sense of what is right or wrong. They would not see the difference between good and evil and such people would become slaves to those who know right from wrong. In other words, we cannot give men the knowledge without giving them the moral framework through which this knowledge should be used.

In C.S Lewis’s Abolition of Man, he uses metonymy and synecdoche to describe how the evolution of society is changing the way we think about morality. In his first chapter, he describes how our world is moving towards a more scientific view on life. The education systems are using this scientific view to teach students that there are no moral absolutes and we should not teach them otherwise. For example, when Lewis explains that if the headmaster says that Christianity is nonsense, he cannot mean that it appears nonsense to him as an individual teacher: he means that it appears nonsense as an educator . This shows us that teachers are being told not to teach morals because they will be teaching children what they think and feel instead of what science tells us. Lewis uses metonymy and synecdoche to show how the influence of science has changed how they teach when it comes to morals.

Lewis uses personification to explore the idea that there is an objective standard of value (the Tao) by which all people can judge. The Tao is a set of principles or ideals that are found in all cultures and are hidden within the heart of man. Lewis believes that if men use reason and logic, they will discover these moral principles and apply them to their lives. Lewis also uses this literary device to show how the “green book” will destroy the Tao and its values. Lewis personifies the book as a creeper, a semi-parasitic plant that grows on trees. This image represents how the Green Book intends to grow on children’s minds and destroy their ability to evaluate moral choices.