Surprised by Joy

“Joy,” in Lewis’s sense of a longing that is more delicious than any earthly fulfillment, is at the heart of this book. Look for the moments in the book when Lewis experiences this Joy. What do the places where Lewis finds himself feeling Joy tell us about who he is?

Lewis is careful to say early on that he will leave out a lot of information about his later life, sticking only to the facts that he sees as pertinent to his conversion. Did any of these gaps surprise you? How does the omission of parts of Lewis’s life story that we might expect to be important—for instance, his service in World War I—affect your reading of the book?

Lewis often writes of being moved to Joy by artistic experiences, or experiences of the natural world. How do Lewis’s experiences of art and nature relate to each other?

Reread the first chapter of the book and consider what Lewis describes as his most important early experiences: his fear of the beetle picture-book, and his love of his brother’s miniature garden. Why do you think he might juxtapose these two images, and what do they reveal about Lewis’s philosophy when considered together?

Lewis writes that the process of learning to accept things for what they are, whether or not you like them, is good training for the Christian life. What might he mean by this, and where do you see examples of Lewis adopting this attitude in Surprised by Joy?

Lewis describes his father as a man who couldn’t take anything at face value, but who always needed to find a complex (and often incorrect) explanation behind the simplest matters. How does Lewis’s reaction to this tendency seem to influence his own habits of thought?

In Chapter 13, Lewis makes note of an incident in his life that he says he can’t retell; something emotionally important happened to him, and he hints that it might have to do with a romance. Why do you think Lewis brings up this incident if he isn’t going to tell the story?

Part of Lewis’s conversion involved the overcoming of “chronological snobbery”: the idea that the modern world automatically understands everything better than any era that came before it. What pieces of your own understanding do you imagine might look dated in the future—and what ideas from the past still hold true?