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As the white, pink and red fill up the stores, as the chocolates get eaten from cardboard hearts, we as a society reflect on what we will give and what we will get.  It’s the curse of consumerism.  Yet in the midst of all the gifts, bribery,  and advertising, there is a thread of true love.  In the middle of all the pressure there is the inkling of what it truly means to give without receiving, to hope without expecting, to live with the threat of continual and everlasting embarrassment. This hint of what love truly is happens to be embodied in a character. As we survey the stories around us, we start to see that certain authors put into their writing their views of the world. This is normal and expected. Dr. Seuss’s whimsy comes through on every rhyme, even though his World War 2 political cartoons were hard-handed against isolationism. The macabre of Alfred Hitchcock is in every dark and foreboding scene of his films – and it is said that it came from him being punished in a jail cell at a young age. The wonder of C.S. Lewis in his fictional works is very apparent, so much in fact that arguably it brought both science fiction and children’s fantasy away from pulp and into the mainstream. 