What is happiness? Do we have a right to have it? In the essay “We have no Right to Happiness” C. S Lewis claims that we do not have a right to happiness and sets his foundation on an anecdote. Throughout our life we meet so many different people; some are happy while some are not, but it is not up to us to decide whether they are happy or not, and what makes one person happy would make another person happy, or whether it is the right path to happiness. In the article mentioned above, Lewis describes a story about a husband who divorced his wife to be with other women which consequently drove the wife to committing suicide. He discussed this issue with one of his lady friends—Clare. Lewis and Clare’s opinion contradicts each other’s; Clare
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His argument is effective since he manipulates and plays with reader’s emotions, uses figurative language to paint a picture in the mind of a reader and uses law to strengthen the effectiveness of his argument. C.S Lewis uses the readers’ weakness against them and plays their emotions to make the readers side with him and understand his point of view. He argues why Mr. A was wrong to dessert his wife just to be in bed with another women— Mrs. B, and that it was not morally just, Mr. A had no right to happiness if it meant stepping over Mrs. A’s happiness. The author made the readers look at it with emotions, he stated in his essay regarding Mrs. A “Poor Mrs. A too. She had lost her looks and all her liveliness. It might be true, as some said that she consumed herself by bearing his children and nursing him through the illness that overshadowed their earlier married life” (44). By stating this, Lewis makes his argument effective because everyone would sympathies with Mrs. A— the poor wife who gave up …show more content…
He argues that when the pursuit of happiness was put down in the declaration, it did not mean that everything is just and legal to achieve happiness. Happiness is not a concept that one can just go ahead with a gun in his hand and massacre everyone and anyone who he thinks is standing in the way of his happiness and get what his heart desires. Similarly, sex is not something for which anything and everything becomes legal. C.S Lewis believes that fornication is not a moral ground for happiness and that people took it the wrong way when the right to happiness was mentioned in form of a legal document. He writes, “It is quiet certain what they did not mean. They did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud.” He further says that they meant to achieve happiness through lawful means which includes the law of nature. By using legal documents that govern our country he makes his argument very effective and since it is a law and legal readers will no doubt side with
His argument is effective since he manipulates and plays with reader’s emotions, uses figurative language to paint a picture in the mind of a reader and uses law to strengthen the effectiveness of his argument. C.S Lewis uses the readers’ weakness against them and plays their emotions to make the readers side with him and understand his point of view. He argues why Mr. A was wrong to dessert his wife just to be in bed with another women— Mrs. B, and that it was not morally just, Mr. A had no right to happiness if it meant stepping over Mrs. A’s happiness. The author made the readers look at it with emotions, he stated in his essay regarding Mrs. A “Poor Mrs. A too. She had lost her looks and all her liveliness. It might be true, as some said that she consumed herself by bearing his children and nursing him through the illness that overshadowed their earlier married life” (44). By stating this, Lewis makes his argument effective because everyone would sympathies with Mrs. A— the poor wife who gave up …show more content…
He argues that when the pursuit of happiness was put down in the declaration, it did not mean that everything is just and legal to achieve happiness. Happiness is not a concept that one can just go ahead with a gun in his hand and massacre everyone and anyone who he thinks is standing in the way of his happiness and get what his heart desires. Similarly, sex is not something for which anything and everything becomes legal. C.S Lewis believes that fornication is not a moral ground for happiness and that people took it the wrong way when the right to happiness was mentioned in form of a legal document. He writes, “It is quiet certain what they did not mean. They did not mean that man was entitled to pursue happiness by any and every means—including, say, murder, rape, robbery, treason and fraud.” He further says that they meant to achieve happiness through lawful means which includes the law of nature. By using legal documents that govern our country he makes his argument very effective and since it is a law and legal readers will no doubt side with