The Pilgrim's Regress (another CS Lewis)

I've never read Bunyan, though I think I probably should. Yet I understood much of this story because of experiences (mostly intellectual I admit) from school. Many of the philosophies that John is exposed to I have studied to some extent and was therefore had a grounding intellectually for the story.
I didn't write periodic impressions because, honestly, I didn't feel like it. Unlike The Screwtape Letters, the chapters flowed into each other with the moving of the story, and though I could have stopped and mused, I chose instead to get the whole thing down and then comment once and for all.
With this partially autobiographic tale, Lewis paints a very vivid picture of the dualism of man. On the one hand there was John, the "natural man," given to impulse and desire, seeking for fulfillment, but discovering that every time he thinks he has found the object of his desire, it is in fact a diabolical counterfeit. The submitting of his will to the demands of these objects would only deaden the actual desire. On the other hand there was Vertue, or John's conscience personified as another character. Lewis characterized Vertue as "traditional morality," that sense within each of us to live by rigidity and obedience for the sake of obedience. The mere thought that any reward or punishment may be in the end of the journey was abominable to Vertue--that took away the purity of choice for choice's sake.
In the end Christ united the two halves, as He does in each of our lives. I like Lewis's idea of the Desire being the end in itself, that there is a "divine discontent" in each of us (as Elder Maxwell would say). A celestial homesickness as it were. If this drives us, and not to any worldly object (read idol) in particular, but instead to the Source of the Desire, we will find ourselves within the outstretched arms of the Savior.