"The Inner Ring" - C.S. Lewis

           At first glace, I thought to myself, I really DO NOT want to read this, but once I was able to overcome that negative aspect and just read, I began to actually enjoy this essay, a lot!
          This essay had a message hidden in it, and it seems, to me, to be quite simple. I feel as though Lewis wants us to forget about trying to fit in with everyone and basically just live our lives as we are natually, they are trying to say that there is another Inner Ring within each Inner Ring. This is communicated in a more complicated fashion when Lewis says, "...perhaps you discovered that within the ring there was a Ring yet more inner, which in its turn was the fringe of the great school Ring to which the house Rings were only satellites. IT is every possible that the school ring was almostin touch with a Masters' Ring." We, as humans always seem to be more aware of Rings when we are outside of them, thus feeling low. The essays states, "You discover gradually, in almost indefinable ways, that is exists and that you are outside it." I read this and right away was able to connect with the essay more and I connected it with lower school and somewhat middle school, since that when there's a drastic change and all of a sudden we have cliques, the jocks, the geeks etc.
         All of us have trouble when we aren't part of that clique. "A terrible bore...ah, but how much More terrible if you were left out! It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free becauseyou don't matter, that is much worse." I LOVE this! Its satire makes it much more effective! The way Lewis pokes fun at these "Inner Rings". He makes it seem like "Inner Rings" are insignificant and irrelevant, most likely in an effort to ease his audience and have them understand and connect with him. He has a great message laced within all of the analogies and allusions: Inner Rings are bad and should be avoided.