58 - C.S. Lewis's Ransom Series

the Silent Planet, Perilandra and I Hideous Strength. And if you've never read these books before, well you definitely need to because they are They're incredibly profound, incredibly timely, and it's largely because they're timeless, but they also do specifically particularly relate to a lot of things happening in our current age, and of course that are very well written, as you would expect given the author. Know that there are going to be some spoilers in this episode, and

so be warned about that if that bothers you. But honestly, I'm really not too concerned about spoilers byself, not like I used to be. Cus Lewis explains in I think it's on stories that the best stories are not the ones carried by anticipation of the plot, but by familiarity. The more familiarity you have with good stories, with a good story, the more profundity is able to present itself clearly, the further up and the further in you are able

to go. And so make of that what you will. Really, the spoilers probably aren't that terrible anyways, as we discuss a lot of material in a relatively little amount of time, which means that there's a lot that we don't discuss here. But in any case, I really enjoy this conversation, and I hope that you do as well. All Right, So here we go, all right, So welcome to the reunion of the Floxy and Fiction of C. S. Lewis. So we have here a few of the participants from that course.

You know who I am, But let's just go ahead and start off by going around the room. Here. Just give us your name and your favorite C. S. Lewis book, and that way everybody can associate your name with your boys. Chase, why don't you go in and kick us off?

But you know he's doing something very profound, and I appreciate that mystery and that struggle to get our minds around it. But this is not an till we have faces episode. Today. We are here to primarily talk about the Ransom series and so out of the side on Planet Parilandra and that hideous strength. And I mean, of course some of your books might say the Space Trilogy on it, but as we're going to come to find, space is the wrong name. And so we're covering a

lot of ground right now. I don't know how many hundreds of pages here, and so the purpose of this is not really to do a page by page or even chapter by chapter analysis. It's really just to talk

about things that have stood out to us. So if you haven't read it, you have good reason to, although I mean warning there will be some spoilers here, but I think that this is really a neglected book or neglected series when it comes to Lewis, everybody knows him for Narnia, and for a lot of people, that's basically where it begins and where it ends. And it's not a bad place to begin an end. But there's a lot more to Lewis, a lot more you can go

further up and further in. And so we're gonna start off by just providing brief plot summaries for refreshers for those of you who maybe haven't read this recently, and then we'll just talk about what we think is cool. So for Out of the Silent Planet, it begins with the philologist Ransom, who is walking down a road. We get some homages to Dante and that he's initially not

even given a name, he's just called the Pedestrian. And he's walking down the road and he finds his way through the forest to this inn where he's given his first quest to go check on this lady's son. And so if she goes to find her son, and he ends up stumbling upon a couple scientists who are occupying a house previously owned by a woman named Alice. This is going to be Ransom's entry away into Wonderland, and so he meets up with Weston and Divine, these progressive

take over the universe scientists types. They kidnap him and bring him off to Mars, where he really gets into the heart of the story. He goes through all these different Marshall experiences until finally he's brought up before the oyarsa of Mars, this angelic like figure, and then through this conversation he really just gets transformed. He really comes to embody the martial spirit. And then of course he's sent back home to get ready for his next quest.

And as far as the significance of all of that, we'll probably get into some of that in our conversation. But like I said, we're just gonna go around the room here. Just tell us some things that stood out to you, maybe a quote that stood out to you, maybe a scene or a theme. You can get as specific or as broad as you want to. It can be really profound, or it can just be Chris, that was pretty cool moment. I'm okay you the way with that.

We'll go in reverse order now, David what do you have for us?

is that we're bent. So all of the questions and the fears that Ransom has when he is there on Malachandra, they just kind of reveal what we don't understand and the ways that we our selfish devotions, our desire to, you know, to have more because something was good, we always want more of it instead of the right amount, or we want it too early, or we want it

too long. And I thought there was really profound statements, especially in his conversation with the Horosa and with the Oarsa at the end, that just kind of make you realize how we should be seeing our place in the universe and the life that God has given us. So it's pretty thoughtful. I think people tend to think Perilandra is the more thoughtful book, but there's really some good stuff to get out of Out of the Silent Planet.

an abstraction from concrete reality. But through his journeys to the heavens, not space, but the heavens, something that's occupy, it's something as substantial. He comes to walk in the things themselves. And you know, this is somebody who is a professing Christian from the beginning, and so it's not necessarily a conversion experience, so to speak. But we very much get this further up and further in idea that

he's being brought into a greater degree of reality. He's coming to walk among the things that he used to only talk about. And so, yeah, I think that's just a great journey of being brought into the context that he already knows but doesn't yet know, Yeah, good points, Chase, what do you have for us?

even compare to what academics and scientists say. I think C. S. Lewis really kind of like stood in the face of like the modernity and like production of everything down to like such materialism with this kind of quote from Douglas Wilson about it. He said, for moderns, the universe is a bunch of nothing. In contrast to this, for Lewis, the cosmos was teeming with life, love, and color. It was his goal to bring a fundamental reversal in the minds of his readers from empty to fool, from black

to color, fool, from dead to alive. I thought that really summarize a lot of the book there.

This is kind of long, but I think that is just so essential to getting at the heart of what's going on here. And so at this point, Ransom had just been kidnapped and brought up to what we call space. But he starts to have this enlightenment this and I mean that word very intentionally, in enlightenment that the light of the sun, the light of the heavens, is filling his soul and broadening him to partake of this heavenly context,

and so it says here but ransom. As time war On became a caware of another more spiritual cause for his progressive lightning and exaltation of heart. A nightmare long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows in the wake of science, was falling off him. He had read of space at the back of his thinking for years, had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness which was supposed to separate

the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him until now now that the very name space seemed to blasphemous libel. For this imperian ocean of radiance in which they swam, he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, Since out of this ocean the worlds, in all their life, had come. He had thought it barren. He saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly, even upon the Earth with

so many eyes, and here with how many more. No, Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens, the heavens which declared the glory. The happy climbs out lie where day never shuts his eye up in the broad fields of

the sky. He quoted Milton's words to himself lovingly at this time and often, and I think that that right there just encompasses so much of what this book is doing and helping us to break free from the disenchantment of modernity, or maybe she even say the bewitchment of modernity. Right this brings us into the underland with the witch in the silver chair. That is the modernity, is the

decontextualization of human experience and the discarded image. Where Lewis talks about medieval and Renaissance cosmology and just kind of their view of life, he makes the point that a modern man, and I'm sure that many of us have probably had some experience like this, but a modern man will go outside at night and look up at the vastness of what we call space and feel a sense of just anxiety or dread. We look up at space

and we see a question mark. We said that if that's very different than the medieval man who would go out on a starry night and look up at the heavens and not find a question mark, but find an answer, find substance in which his mind can rest. He would look up and see the perfect order of the heavens as something to emulate, something that can bring order to his own life, not something that brings just the emptiness

of space. And so this this medieval view of looking at the cosmos, looking at our place in the cosmos, and it's anything but dark. It's teeming with radiance and with life and with order. There's a profound hope and a profound beauty in the medieval view of looking at the world that is simply lacking altogether through our modern eyes. And so that's what I most appreciate about out of the side of the planet that I mean, there are all kinds of profound points that he's making, but this

isn't even really a point. It's more of just an experience of a broadening context for your life. The smaller you are and the more the higher that you're able to go, well, the more hope you can have, the more aspiration that you can have. That there's nothing freeing about being told that there's no up or down, no left to right, that we're simply a rock floating in the vastness of space. And that's really the rebuke that's given to especially Weston, but also Divine. I mean, Divine

doesn't really care about anything other than money. But you know, Weston has all these these hopes of progress, but he has no direction to determine what progress even means, whereas Rainsom is going to experience what real progress actually looks like. And what it looks like is relating yourself to the eternal. All right, I just mind a lot to go too long there, Olivia and your bird? What do you have?

much just in that scene. You know. I love the conversation between Ransom and Yarsa and Ransom is afraid of Aarsa and noyarsas him why and he's explaining that, well, I can't see you, and you know you're so different from me, and Ayara says like, well, those aren't reasons to be afraid. I love the line when Yaris is explaining why Earth, why Pelchondra is the silent planet, and he says that they have, you know, they've kind of heard bits and pieces of what's been going on there.

And he says that that there are stories among us that he has taken strange counsel, he being melel Dil and dared terrible things wrestling with the bent one in Polchandra. But of this we know less than you. It is a thing we desire to look into, and that, of course echoes what Peter says in his first epistle. He's describing the Gospel and says that it is things into which angels long to look. So here we really get you the other side of that story, from the angelic perspective,

which is fascinating. Another like little interchange in that conversation comes when Olearisa is you explaining that he has uh that his servants. You know, we're watching Ransom and the others as they were in their spacecraft coming through deep heaven and ransom us, have you servants out in the heavens?

And Oorisa says where else? There is nowhere else, which really distills that you with that view of deep heaven, like the others were describing, where really heaven is what's abundantly filled with life and things, and from the Elderl's perspective, what we see as worlds are really just like pin pricks of almost nothingness in the fabric of deep heaven.

And then of course Weston and Divine come in and it's a scene with Weston trying to talk to Aarsa, but he thinks that, you know, Ayarsa is really a witch doctor projecting his voice. So he looks around and he tries to figure out who's this witch doctor, who is you know, ventriloquising, and he sees this elderly heirass who is you know, falling asleep, and that scene and

that you know of detail is fantastic. And the way Weston, not really knowing that language, tries to speak to to Yarsa, he really speaks as a stereotypical you know, savage, as he would say, in trying to communicate with the Malachandrians professing to be wise, he's become a fool. But then you really see the absurdity of his viewpoint once once he gets to his speech where he says, well, you know, I don't have enough of your language to say it.

So then Ransom translates, and then you see what Western says in English parallel with Ransom's translation, and it really breaks it down from a heavenly perspective, and you begin to appreciate just how absurd Western's viewpoint is. And as a Yarisa points out, Western, he's willing to sacrifice Ransom. He doesn't care for any one man. It's just this abstract view of humanity that he sees he's striving for

and fighting for. So we already start to see the seeds of the abolition of man that you will come to fruition and that hideous strength.

a robber, but not like normal robbers. It's just like all the rhetoric gets stripped down to nothingness. And you know, we also calls him on this as well, and he says that, Okay, you keep saying that you're fighting for the progress of man, but you can't even define what man is. He says that you love the seed, but not the fulfillment. You love progress itself, but you don't have any goal that you're actually progressing toward. And if that isn't the rebuttal that modern philosophy needs, and I

don't know what is. It is so easy to talk about progress, and I deal with this all the time teaching my public university college students. Right everyone wants to call themselves a progressive. Then I say, Okay, what is it that we're progressing toward? I don't know. And so it just kind of falls apart because and this really gets to the abolish of the man which you referenced, because in a strictly empirical worldview, in a worldview that

denies transcendent realities. Well, there is no such thing as good. There's not even such a thing as the form of humanity, although there is is stuff that moves. And when you just have a cosmos of stuff that moves, but there's no question of where ought things to move, you have no way of actually dealing with those questions. That all you get is just movement for the sake of movement. As Lewis says in a satirical evolutionary hymn, progresses what

comes next, whatever that is. And so yeah, that's just a great rebuttal of Weston's empty modern progressivism. That there's no movement, is progress into a void, which of course is not progress at all. Cool, Catherine, what do you have?

a great deal of trouble throughout the story. His curiosity about the experience of being in space, I think preserves him from the animosity of Weston and Divine, and then when he runs away from them, when they actually land on Malacan, he is separated from everything that he knows for a good while, and then when he first meets maybe the best character in the book, when he first meets Hyawi, his curiosity is what rescues him from despair because he is a philologist and he suddenly realizes that

he does have something in common with this other creature. And I think Lewis has a very important point here with curiosity and being aware of looking for connections. Where Weston and Devine didn't ask any questions, they assumed a great deal about what the Oyarsa wanted, and so they were prepared to bring another person down with them. They were prepared to offer a human sacrifice when instead that's

not what the Oyarsa wanted at all whatsoever. And another thing that I love about the story as a whole is it's very classic for Lewis where everything is about inversion. Everything from the title to the expectation of what deep dark space will be. Everything is flipped on its head because you think we're going to the silent planet and we find.

He talks about the need to leave home so that you can understand what home is. You can't love I think he refers to Islington. He says, you can't love Islington or know what it is until you have left and then come back. And that makes me think of Ransom when he looks at and he sees that little marble out from the window of this spaceship, and he asks what that is, and he's struck to realize that that is earth. That he's been taken off of his

own home. But as far as that preparation, it seems like a lot of that maybe was not deliberately set up by Lewis, but it's there within the story that he's taken out of his home. He's given access to the old Solar language so that he can do things in Perlandra and so that he can emerge later on in that hideous strength and that medieval symmetry I think is really beautiful. And if you're looking for more out of just an adventure story, I would propose right that

Lewis is doing that. He's asking you as a reader to consider, how can I invert my expectations?

of any of his writing. But I remember there's a scene where at one point, okay, he's up in the heavens and he's sort of meditating on what all this means, reflecting on what it all means, and he's recognizing that he's now in a plane of reality that he once thought was empty. Now he recognizes it's more full than the world that he once knew. So then he thinks, well, okay, maybe if I go beyond the light of the sun or something of that nature, well maybe then I would

be in the real space, the real nothingness. And he thought, well, a minute, what if there's something even more real than light itself? And so, what if, you know, beyond this realm of reality I'm experiencing now in the heavens, what if there's something even more real that I simply don't yet have categories for understanding. And so he recognizes, or least he hints at the suspicion that there's an even

greater reality than the heavens. And so he is increasing the heavens context, moved further and further up, even beyond the cosmos, perhaps even to the imperion of God, which in the medieval cosmos is what's on the well going from the Earth out the far outskirts of reality. But from a more a better perspective, that actually is the center of reality, and it's Earth that's on the outskirts.

I think That's an important point that a lot of times people moderns will look back on the medieval view of the cosmos and say, oh, the Medievals put Earth at the center of things because they thought they were so important. No, it's just the opposite. They really put themselves at the bottom of things. That when you're really looking with medieval eyes, you recognize that you are on the outskirts of existence, living down here on this rock.

The real center is God. And that's something that's said explicitly in Perilandra that we're always looking for the center, but the center is Meleldel Blessed be He, and so

God is the center. And so the more that we're moving away from what we tend to think of being the center, we're actually moving toward the true center, which then helps us to center the world that we know, which goes to what you're talking about about how that allows us to actually see our home once we've left it in the right way and come back to it in the right way. And we see that play out

throughout the series. As Ransom becomes this bridge figure, he starts to recontextualize the side on planet through who he is. He starts to mediate the voice that it's meant to have coming from deep heaven. So he starts to recontextualize things, he starts to redeem things as he plays this priest like role. Cool, Jordan, I know you you jumped in a little bit late, and so go and tell us your favorite Lewis book and then something about Out the Silent Planet.

Oh introduced myself. Oh I'm Jordan. I'm a dad, husband, Lutheran pastor, chronic fiction enjoyer.

of a fun thing to play with. And I really like how Lewis just kind of puts it out there for us to sort of work through it with him. That really drew me in the second thing that kind of stuck out to me, and this really carries over into the next couple of books too. It's sort of this idea of dominion, that is, who has the proper proper authority where you kind of see this with the division between the three species there on Malacandra, that each

one has its own interests and expertise. I mean, even when Ransom wants to give al Gray the pocket watch, he turns it down and says that the fifful triggy would would have more use out of this, because then they could build more of them and give them to other folks on on the on Malacandra, I think that that idea of just the differences between the species and the way that they compliment one another is really kind of something interesting. Like I said that, I think it's

going to carry through. So I guess I don't want to say too much more about the other two books since we haven't gotten there yet, but just the the the diversity of life on Malacandra, and yet how well it all works together, how ordered it is, speaks to really the order of the whole, the whole creation in his mind.

can get away with doing that well. I really love one of my favorite scenes, just because I find it funny more than even profound, is when he first encounters the fross and he recognizes that it's speaking to him in a rational language, and he goes from being terrified to just thinking about how he's going to write some

malacantry and grammar book. So he's just meditating on his philological word nerdery here instead of immediately dealing with the fact that he's communicating or an alien species at least alien to him, is trying to communicate with them, and so he's kind of lost that context. He's going back into just filology mood. And I just found it funny and very very lowis to me, and then I had more to say, but it totally fell in my head. So speaking of space, I guess, Zackie, what do you have for us?

And I can't help but think that maybe Lewis is referencing in this scene and the owls are asking Ransom who he is, and I think Ransom doesn't know who he is until maybe the end of this book, or

at least doesn't understand himself very well. And we see over the course of this book he faces these incredible challenges and he goes on this wild adventure and he comes through it all at the end having faced several of his struggles and weaknesses, and he is stronger and more sure of himself and becomes this nearly angelic figure himself over the course of the trilogy. So it's just really interesting to see where he starts off and how that progresses through the course of this novel.

between Earth and the heavens. Whereas in that vision western and divine, they go through this door into what for them really is space, because they don't find substance there. They're pushed back through the door back when they started.

And that's because even though they do enter into this physically, they enter into the heavens spiritually existentially, they never really do they bring the silent planet to Malachandr, whereas Ransom learns how to contextualize himself within the society of Malacandra, which itself is contextualized within the heavens. And that brings us back to Jordan's point that I was going to respond to that fell out of my head but now came back. It was pushed back to the door, I guess.

And so you know, he talked about how you've got this well ordered society, and I mean, this gives us a good point to say, it's all in Plato that right there, we're really getting the republic essentially, where we have these different aspects of civilization that have different niche roles, but they all work together as a unified whole. And so an individual well ordered is a microcosm of society,

which itself is a microcosm of the cosmos. And so we get this what we might look up as I look at as a bottom up model, but which really is a top down model with the heavens kind of rightly ordering all the way down to the individual, and then everything works its way back up. It's the sort of exit return motif which is very important for medieval theology, that everything comes from God and everything in its right

order returns back to God. And so we see that play out in the way that's society works, which of course malcating society. At the top of this ordered society, well, now you have the philosopher king of the Oyarsa, and so it's very platonic, or it's very Christian platonic, as Lewis Verry often is, the realms of fairy are wild and often dangerous, and one should never embark on a

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have an idea as to what it means. It's like

the idea is contained within the sound. But anyways, he's very haunted, and eventually he does make his way to Ransom's house despite the fact that he's just so terrified, and Ransom is at home, but he sees a note on the door and so he goes inside and this is when he comes in contact with the uyarsa Malcandra, who's there waiting for Ransom, and he recognizes that this thing is good, that this thing is bigger and really more real than he is, and he's initially terrified of that.

And we get this some great lines about kind of our perception of goodness, that we tend to think that goodness is going to be good for us, because we don't stop to think that maybe we're bent creatures and maybe the good is actually going to overpower or maybe even destroy us. But nonetheless, eventually Ransom shows up, and it becomes revealed that Ransom is being tasked by Malacandra

to go to Perilandra, which we know as Venus. He doesn't really know why he's going there, but he gets in this coffin shaped vessel and is shot off to Perilandrum where he lands or better yet, he's really received into Perilandra, as we get this Venusian influence playing out here, and he comes in contact with the Green Lady Tinadrill, who is, as Lewis says in one of his letters,

she's kind of a mix between Eve and Mary. She is a pre fallen woman, and this is the only person that Lewis comes in contact with for quite a while, but eventually we see somebody else fall down like lightning, and this of course is going to be Weston, who very quickly turns into or is revealed to be the

unman essentially the devil. And so for most of the book we get this conflict, or this contest as Weston or as the unmanned, the Devil and Ransom really compete for the soul of Tenadrill and Parentlandra really as as

a whole. And eventually Ransom recognizes that this is not going to be a debate, that he can't out rhetoric the devil, but what he can apparently do is punch him in the face, and so they get into a physical fight, and eventually in the in the the belly of Perilandra down in the earth, Ransom kills the un man comes up and then we get this grand ceremony of glorification as Tinadrill and Tor and Peralandra all enter into their glory. And so that really is the story.

There's I mean, there's a lot we could deal with here, but let's see what comes out to you. Um, I can go at random at this point, Catherine, what do you have?

I find Perilandra hard conceptually to get into. However, with that said, as we were thinking of the marshall right, the manly influence of and then the Nusian or the feminine influence of Perilandra, I was thinking about Lewis the medievalist, and the way that Ransom seems to show us the ideal of courtly love, because he's there and right, as we've alluded to, he is going to rescue the Green Lady. He's going to rescue Tenandirl from evil. But he does

not do it in order to win her hand. He's not romantically interested or is going to earn anything for this. He simply does it for love of the lady, in order to reunite her with her proper mate, with the King. I thought that was really beautiful that for both of these novels. And then again as we bridge to that hideos strength, since they're both interested in gender and looking

at kind of archetypes of those things. I thought it was beautiful that he sets up this second novel and he gives us this platonic form of love and relationship between the two of them.

serve to guard her virtue. Well, I guess I'll let everyone else talk before I pontificate further. Olivia, what do you have for us?

into it. He's like able to incarnate good in a way that most authors can't. And we see that in Perlandra, where just the whole world is unfallen and good and

brimming with vitality. And then let Alone, of course your tour into na drawl, and as we see in thee Rss as well, and then in contrast, he sets up that that paradise so well that then when Weston comes, there's that scene where Ransom wakes up and he finds the dismembered frogs and he sees the one frog that's been you mutilated, and then more and more frogs, and

he finds Western mutilating another frog. And in our world, I think we're just so innundated with suffering and with horrors that to see them in Perilandra and that you unblemished world, we really appreciate the tragedy of just the one fallen Sparrow, let alone everything else, but just to see that one mutilated frog but filled Ransom with such horror. He felt like he was going to be sick, and

you feel that as the reader. But with that contrast between that perfect goodness and the suffering and the horror, even in just that one small act. Just as an aside, I don't think Lewis ever goes into defail about like what shade of green the Green Lady is, but I kind of imagine her as looking a little bit like Statue of Liberty, which of course is copper, and copper is the metal associated with Venus. So that's why head canon.

that just exudes love and beauty. I mean throughout the text, even to the very way that he's received into the planet and so back in out of the side of the planet, and when he lands on Malacandra, he's landing on a very hard, solid surface and disorienting, and you know, he gets sick, and in fact, he's even described as feeling like a pregnant and so it's his idea that as he encounters the hyper masculine, he feels feminine in relation to it in a very almost like sickening kind

of way. So it's all just disorienting and he's thrown off, whereas in Peralandra he doesn't really land on the planet. He's received into it and then the vessel just sort of dissolves around him, and so it's very different experience.

He doesn't as much land as he has received. And then there's so much emphasis on pleasure in the right context, to the point where he's initially thrown off because it feels like to experience that kind of pleasure should be sinful, but it's not, because he's encountering unfallen pleasure, pleasure in its right context, where it's not just self referential, but it's actually pulling him out of himself even more. And then obviously there's something special about the innocence of tor

or of Tinadrill. Well, I guess tour as well but you know, Tim trel is obviously who we're encountering a lot more that it really does highlight the fact that lu is also really good at demonstrating the demonic as

well the evil. And I love the depictions that we get of the unman which really, as Olivia you mentioned, we see seeds of that in Western at the end of Out of the Side of the Planet, that this is part of the same trajectory where he's into progress for the sake of progress, where he has this great pride, but there's really no substance there. He is the actual space,

right not the heavens. He is the space. The emptiness one of my favorite parts this is just always, I don't know, I find it kind of funny've also insightful, where the Unmanned is giving all of these stories to Tenandrill, trying to lead her to see herself as some kind of heroic, feminine tragedy of swords, and so he's trying to call her to step outside of herself, to progress into the void, to be this pioneer. And he's going through all these stories and when one doesn't really land,

he just drops it and goes to another one. And so it seems kind of random's kind of chaotic, and at first Ransom isn't really clear exactly what's going on here, how all these stories are connected. But then Lewis says, Alassid dawned upon him when all these stories were about. Each one of these women had stood forth alone and braved a terrible risk for her child, her lover, or her people, excuse me. Each one had misunderstood, reviled, and persecuted,

but each also magnificently vindicated by the event. The precise details were often not very easy to follow. Rainsom had more than a suspicion that many of these noble pioneers had been what an ordinary terrestrial speech we call witches, a perverse. So he's getting all these disconnected stories of

progress and heroism. But he says, I get this impression that really what we're dealing with when you stip away the rhetoric and get to these substance or lack thereof of what's being presented, it's just which is some perverts.

And if that does not strike home with the way that we the way the modern culture you know, puts forth ideas through media, through politicians, that pretty much all of the heroes that are propped up when you really get down to it, I mean, we're dealing with heroes that are in avoid, and heroes that are in an avoid can't really be heroic. They don't have any substance to stand on, They don't have any substance to give you. All they can do is suck you into their domain

at best. And well, that's not heroic, that's not sacrificial, that's not beautiful, it's not good. There's no way it could be. They don't have a context for that. And so I think that Lewis is doing a great job here of just demonstrating the emptiness of modern progressive rhetoric. All right, Jordan, what do you have from Perilandra?

And before that, there's this this whole conversation how he needs to go meet meet with this this this new person that's come into Perilandra, how she should really stay away, and she says that she must go and meet him because she is the lady and mother of Perilandra, and that it would not do for Ransom to to do that, that it really is her duty as as the one who has dominion over Perilandra. I really thought that was that was kind of interesting. So that's kind of that

part carrying through. And then also, I guess sort of almost a perversion of that, you know, kind of going off of what you were talking about, Andrew, was when the young man was talking about the stories about men and how how they were, you know, sluggish octs, like they were prepared to try nothing, risk nothing, make no exertion, that they're they're kind of knuckle draggers, I guess you could say. And Ransom, who in the book it's said that he doesn't really have any pride in his own sex,

found himself almost believing it for a minute. And the interesting thing to me with that was that, you know, that's a constant drumbeat that we hear an awful lot from media and entertainment today that men are sort of stupid and their wives, you know, are essentially having to raise another child along with the children that that she shares with this man. And so there's sort of an inversion there of the of the of the dominion deal there.

really wonderful story. I do love the point that Jordan was making about how the lady of Perlandra would be so inhospitable for her to not greet her guests, and how she is so fearless and she's so brave. She's a wonderful female character in Lewis, and she foreshadows all of these great characters we get in that hideous strength who are women also? So it all ties in very nicely.

to answer them. They like drawing you into an interminable argument, and I feel like that foreshadows the interminable argument that he gets into on Perilandra, and he kind of forgets his own advice when he gets there. And I feel like larger themes in this book are that he's painting a picture again of a world. What would it be like to truly be content? What does true contentment look like? And the whole nature of Perilandra in the beginning is

you have to just take everything as it comes. Here's the fruit that has been brought to you. It's totally dark at night, you wake up in almost literally a whole new world because the island, the flotilla of plants that you are riding the waves on, well maybe it has brought you next to another one that you can explore, or maybe you're nowhere near. They have to trust God

and take what he brings to them. And when he starts talking about you know, well he has that one fruit that is just so amazing that he wants another one. But then he realizes it was so amazing that it would cheapen it like trying to listen to the same symphony twice in a day. That he needed to move on. And then he discovered that there were some berries he was eating, and every once in a while one of them would have a red sinner that just tasted amazing.

And he said, you know, on Earth, we would have figured out how to just breed those red ones in charge extra money just for that. But I believe he's talking to the lady and trying to explain how you want things. I can't remember if it was the unmanner, if it was ransom, But she says, the picture of the fruit you have not found is still for a moment before you, And if you wished, if it were

possible to wish, you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you'd expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good. You could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other. And I just I don't know. I never really thought about contentment in

that way and the way that you know. We'll quote Galatians and say I can do all things through Christ, who gives me strength, and will take that to mean I can win the big game, or I can get this job. I can be the most successful person in the area. But in context, it means I can take whatever God puts in my path. I can live whatever life God has given me and be content with it.

Because Paul was talking about I've been in prison, i have had things, I've gone hungry, and I can do all of these things because I am relying on the strength of Christ and so and it kind of comes to a head as Ransom knows that, Hey, the reason I'm being sent I don't know what it is. But he kind of convinces himself that it can't it can't be this. You know, I'm just going to say, hey, I gave it my best try and I didn't succeed. And then he realizes that that that's not that's not right,

that he can be the instrument. But then we get the wonderful thing towards the end where he's saying, be comforted. It is no doing of yours. You're not great, though you could have prevented a thing so great that deep Heaven sees it with amazement. Be comforted, small one. In your smallness. He lays no merit on you. Receive him. Be glad, have no fear, lest your shoulders be bearing this world Look, it is beneath your head and it

carries you. And I just think that's beautiful, a beautiful example of how we are meant to live as Christians. You know, we do not do god favors, and the Ephesians two ten says, you know, we are His creation, created in Christ Jesus, to do good works that He has placed in our path so that we will walk in them, which is what the lady is doing all over Perilander. She's just walking wherever. That's why they have the rule at the beginning, at least not to stay

on the solid ground. You're going to be carried where God wants you to be. And I just think it's a fascinating way to get these ideas across.

so they're going from this very limited context. And of course, for Lewis, I mean Hell is the most limited context that you can have in the medieval worldview. I mean this is at the center of the earth. Hell is, and in Hell for Lewis go to the Great Divorce. What you have is radical isolation. You have as small of a context as you could possibly get. You know, even the homes in Hell are nothing more than the projection of the mind. They're not real. So everything is

confined down to the individual. You get hyper isolation. Whereas as you move further up into deep heaven, you let go of yourself. You learn not to consume, not to take, but you learn to just receive, and in receiving, your context broadens out, even as far as the context of God, to the proportion that we're able to receive and be glad receive the way that is sent to you receive the pleasure as it comes, recognizing that it is not

your own. We see I think a lot of Boetheus playing out here when we look at our relationship to fortune. You know, Boethius really makes his point. Boethius himself being somebody who's lived his life as far as at least any external perspective goes according to virtue, according to reason. He seemed to be a pretty good guy. But now he finds himself in prison, with everything taken away and awaiting his execution, as it will come to turn out.

And so he's meditating on his relationship to fortune. You know, if I did everything right, why was everything taken away from me? And what he comes to recognize is that fortune is what it is, Lady. Fortune is blind for a reason, and so from our perspective, we can't count on anything in this moving world except for the stability that stands at the back. And so what we can't do is to rely on moving fortune. What we can do, however,

is anchor ourselves in the only stable thing. And as Lewis says in The Great Divorce, heaven is what stands when everything else is shaken, and so that is the place where we can anchor ourselves. And when we anchor ourselves there, then we're ready to receive whatever fortune comes our way. And as Bowethia says, for the good man, all fortune actually ends up being good fortune. You know, maybe you know, maybe you win the lottery and money falls into your hand. As long as you hold out

an open hand, well that's a good thing. Well maybe someone robs your house and you lose everything that you have, Well that's just going to further stabilize you in the good if you are in fact a good man, and say what we tend to see as good fortune bad fortune. You know, you spin the wheel, you hit the million dollar mark, or you go bankrupt. Either way, it's good fortune for the good man. And I think that we see a lot of that theme play out in Perilandra, or even see some of that in Out of the

Side of the Planet. In his discussion with the the the herosa about pleasure about how it's not something that you hold onto, it's something that spreads out over eternity when we are receiving it in the right way. And so yeah, I think that we see a lot of very important themes for Louis playing out there. And I think that David, you probat lad that out more succinctly

and clearly than I did. And so I'm probably just jabbering on like the young man right now, but yeah, so very well said, uh, Chase, what do you have for Perilandra?

see to the final issue. He had not succeeded, but he had done his best. No one could do more. He must not be worried about the final result. Leildo would see to that, and Meleelde would bring him back to Earth efforts, very real, unsuccessful efforts. Probably Meleldale's real intention was that he should publish to the human race the truth he had learned on the planet Penis. As for the fate of Venus, that could not really rest upon his shoulders. It was in God's hands. One must

be content to leave it there. One must have faith. It snapped like a violentistrey, and then it goes on a little bit later. It says it was true that if he left it undone Alotle to himself will do some greater thing instead. In that sense, he stood for Malal, but no more than Eve would have stood for him by simply not the capital. And I think it just speaks so much of like how we should be in

our own life in relation to God. We you know, we're all faced with adversity or tough situations, and we question why we're put put where we're put, but we need to be able to like recognize that God put that opportunity for action in front of us. I think this goes especially with like sharing the gospel I've had trouble for where you know you're thinking, man, why isn't somebody that like actually can fully explain everything that needs to be explained to this person when I know little

to nothing. But they're put in your path, and it's wrong to think that you're not prepared because they could. You're not the one doing it, you know, ultimately, And this goes even further with you know, some situations are not going to take just works. Like Ransom is not a that violent guy. He doesn't want to fight the young man. He wants to like just be able to persuade her that that what the unman is saying is wrong.

It's evil, but it's not working, and it's finally going to just take physical action and it does sometimes cause that and that's something that hopefully we don't have to face our lifetime, but who knows, and we just have to be ready to fight evil to protect good.

concrete realities. And I think that's what Lewis is giving us through myth hear. I mean, I do agree that even in the primary world, yeah, of course there is a place for violence, but I don't think that's really what Lewis is telling us. I think that what Lewis is telling us is that concrete realities need to be met with concrete realities. And in fact, back before they go off to Venus, when Lewis is talking to Ransom and he's a little thrown off by this whole ordeal, as

you would expect that he would be. Ransom quote scripture, and you know, he talks about how we need to you know, cast down powers in heavenly places, and he says, well, maybe that's a little bit more literal than we once thought. And so that's really what this story is. It's about

fighting the demonic with concrete realities. And there's really only one time where Ransom really wins a debate with the young man, and that's when Ransom is specifically falling into or talking about the incarnation, which is obviously the most concrete thing that we can talk about, and so that's really the only point where he wins. And specifically, the young man is talking about introducing death and Ransom says, well, what about when meleel Dell experienced death? You know, how

did that go for you? Essentially, And that's really the one point that Ransom gets on him. But other than that, yeah, the young man just constantly out rhetorics him. And that's because in the domain of abstractions. Dealing with abstractions, well, the devil is probably gonna win at that. That's the realm of sophistry. And it makes me think of screw Tape, which, as we talked about in the class, at least at one point Lewis's mind was part of the Ransom canon.

But I think it's the first letter of the Screwtape letters. When Screwtape says to I always want to say warm tongue Wormwood. He says to Wormwood, don't try to convince your patient that materialism is true. Just convince them that it's stunning and brave, all right, convince them that it's courageous and it's progressive and it's forward thinking. And so when we're just dealing in the realm of rhetoric, well, the devil has the upper hand there because we're dealing

with abstractions. And that's just like it's it's winds. It's easy to redirect. But it's concrete reality that is ultimately going to win over the void. It's the word that is going to bring form out of darkness, out of chaos. And so you need substance to defeat empty vacuity, the space which just as we get this inversion between you know, what's at the center of the cosmos? Is it what we call space? Is is it the Earth?

and then we'll move on. But one thing that we see here is that Lewis is giving us something of his own philosophy of earth like theology started to draw the line sometimes of mythology. You know, obviously Lewis placed he saw a lot of value in pagan mythology that at least in where it did things correctly. It's expressing real human desires, even real human knowledge of the divine.

And there's this great line where after Ransom has encountered the true Mars and the true Venus, he said, or Lewis says, our mythology is based on a solider reality than we dream, but is also at an almost infinite distance from that base. And when they told him this, Rainsomott last understood why mythology was what it was, gleams of celestial strength and beauty falling on a jungle of

filth and imbecility. I think that right there is such a great line, and at least in my reckoning, it's a good way to understand pagan mythology, that there is a lot of good there, as you should expect, simply because we're dealing with people made in God's image who inescapably have knowledge of that reality, right, that's Romans one, And so we see truth coming out here, but it's

caught up in a jungle of filth and imbecility. And so what we're able to do here is to see that real light, clear the jungle and bring it back into its proper source. And in so doing, I think that we can see something of real value. That's what the Medievals essentially did with a lot of Roman mythology. I mean the fact that even to this day we

still refer to the planets by Roman names. And there's the reason why that carried through time that's because I think that, you know, looking at classical mythology, we can see things that are real and things that are true that simply need to be brought into the right context. And so I just I like, what LUs A doing there? All right, Jordan, what did you want to say there?

her her shade, looks like a human being. That the incarnation made a definite change to the whole universe, and that that sort of builds on some that happens early on in the story that when Weston first arrives, before he invites tash Or the evil spirit, to take over his body, Weston talks about his interest now in spreading spirituality, which is a little bit of a change or maybe just a development of what had happened in Out of the Silent Planet, and then he goes on to talk

about how God is a spirit and that's why we believe in him, and how he's also as that spirit the guiding purpose of man. And he has this quote that I think is really kind of interesting. He says, pure spirit the final vortex of self thinking, self originating activity. So it's this, it's this sort of self absorbed thing, admittedly a self absorbed thing. But the counter to that, of course, is that God is not just a spirit, that he has taken on human flesh, that he has

become a man. And this is the scandal of the particularity of the incarnation. That Christians don't just worship God because he's a spirit. We worship God because he has become man to redeem men. Weston's whole argument is sort of a kind of Manicheanism or a sort of gnosticism that just kind of floats in this ethereal spiritual realm that doesn't really want to stick to anything in particular because it wants to make whatever claim it wants to make.

But God has actually taken on human flesh and that fundamentally changes absolutely everything, not just in the story but also in our realm as well.

keeps saying I don't think so. And this is very often what happens when you see sometimes very profound shifts in theology, but it gets couched in orthodox language. And so I think that Lewis is doing a lot of

things very simultaneously here in exposing the modern Spirit. If you're enjoying this conversation and you would like to go further up and further in with the fiction and philosophy of C. S. Lewis, then know that you can have access to all the materials from the course, including thirty seven course exclusive videos that cover almost all of Lewis's fiction, including the Ransom series, Screwtape Letters Till We Have Faces, the Great Divorce, and all of the Chronicles of Narnia.

You can go over to Andrew Snyder dot Patia dot com to find the course as well as other course listings, and from now until the end of September twenty twenty four, you can use the code ransom for half off the cost of this course. And once you've made the purchase, the materials are yours to keep indefinitely. And so this was originally a crand full twelve week course. But the good news is that doing this on your own, you can go at whatever pace works for you, and so

that is Andrew Snyder dot Patia dot com. Or you can click the link in the show notes and use that code ransom for half off the cost. But now back to the show. All right, and Olivia, you said you wanted to say something else about Peralandra.

later an indeterminate noise reached their ears. Then the Green Lady says, something has fallen out of deep heaven, and that is, you know, another biblical Easter egg, of course, to where Jesus says, I think it's a luke ten that you know. I was watching a satan fall from heaven like lightning, which is itself a reference to I forget if it's in the palms or the prophets, I forget. And just now reading that again, I noticed that it was on the left that he fell, which of course

is biblically significant. Jordan reminded me of one other thing too, and it split my mind. No, I think about it again. So, like the Green Lady, I talked about how the world is, the whole cosmos is fundamentally changed since the inclination, and it just shook me earlier today as I was kind of refreshing myself and out of the silent planet. In that world we have different now, different moral beings that

aren't human. Why they do not seem to have been tempted in the same way as the Green Lady or Adam and Eve maybe that's just not in the story that we're given, but I just found that interesting.

maybe Malcandra had already gone through its probationary phase and so we're just not given the same kind of patient there. Right, maybe they've already entered into the glory of befitting of them being a lower world than the newer Venus on the side of the incarnation. Yeah, and so one.

just find it so strange. I don't know if this is some commentarial and time that was written, but that Lewis says that of the first I don't remember, it's like sixty or something reviewers, so only two or three caught that he was giving us a Christian story, which just strikes me as odd. And so as much as we tend to think that people today are biblically illiterate, I guess it's not a super recent movement. And I just find that interesting that Lewis seems to be pretty

explicit about this. But all right, so let's go ahead and move into that Hideous strength. Let me throw it out there. Anyone want to give a summary.

last ones. They've seen others die, and they will ultimately die as well, and that's the state of man that we have to grapple with and accept for all. And that also seems to tie in with the medieval theme, with that portly imagery, right a night must willingly face death, So it's playing on the two levels right of man, everyone in man in particular, and then with Venus then of course that novel is about rebirth, is about the

promise of a new life. So we know that we face death, but because of the incarnation, as we've now just talked about, we have the promise of eternal life and there will be something beyond that. So there's promise there for the purposes of our class. I loved that we stopped and we read screwtape letters in between Parlandra and that Hideous Strength, because it seemed like such a great connection to show us the way that Earth is

tempted by or is covered by the bent oarsa. So when we're trying to consider what our existence is like as human beings. We have to remember that we will die, but there is the promise of new life. So if I can quickly some of that hideous strength, I think this novel is a fantastic pairing to the other two. But it is so strange because it doesn't start with a journey out into space. So that hideous strength covers a marriage. It covers a couple named Mark and Jane,

and it follows them on two different paths. Where Mark is a fairly ambitious academic. He has ideas for a great career. He's going to make something of himself. He gets tumped it into a demonic situation at a house called Belbury, whereas his wife Jane is brought into a more angelic or a beatific vision of life at a house called St.

the way that Mark was deceived. He is able to come out of that and come back towards the beatific Vision, and Jane is able to really fully embrace her own self and her calling and join the beatific vision. Together we are able to I don't know if we are freeing the world from the spell of the Bent or Yarsa, but we are doing a little bit for our own little center of the world, for our own little place

in low grace the medieval term for Arthur's court. And maybe that's all that we can do, is try to be a little piece of Christendom wherever.

a lot more sprawling. You know, in the other books, you're really following one person and his various engagements in his journey, whereas now it's just sort of all over the place, even though centering around Market and Jane. But that's also exactly what we should expect for his story in the Silent Planet. This is a story that is disordered.

Paralandra in Malacandrum. And so I've even seen some people say that you can read this book on his own, separate from the series, and I guess you can, but you're not going to understand what Lewis is actually doing here on the most significant level. It'll come across as just some kind of like supernatural crime thriller or something

which is not what it is. And so it's very much tied to Malacantra, it's tied to Parlandrum, and so what we get here is disorder that continues to get increasingly disordered until the end, where now we're brought back into order, where Mars and Venus become properly related, where

Mark and Jane reunite in this Paralandrian influence. And so, you know, a let's just say that the sprawling, kind of different nature of this book is exactly what should expect for a book on Earth, given the mythos that Lewis is giving us. All Right, so let's go around the room here and tell me just something that stands out to you from this book.

that evil. There's this conversation that he has with very Hardcastle where she says that they really need to get on with their work, they need to have a drink. There's it seems like there's a lot more drinking that the sort of anesthetizes his descent. He doesn't really maybe necessarily notice what's going on. And then I'm going to read a little bit of a long quote here, so bear with me. This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do, which he himself, before he did

it clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice. Certainly there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath,

or visible rubicons to be crossed. But for him it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet individually very bad men. A few moments later, he was trotting upstairs with the fairy that the the descent into evil really is a broad path, that the way to destruction is broad, and it's a gentle path

without sign posts. You just don't see it coming before. It's just too late. And I think that's ultimately the warning that Lewis is giving across this series. I think this is the point that he's been aiming at all along, by sort of equipping Ransom for this battle and then sort of equipping us then for our struggle with the powers of darkness in our own world too.

way literally to the head. But then of course, at the top tier of the nice we get people like Whither and Frost giving us images of Dante's version of Hell, which is frozen over. And so he thinks that he's moving, you know, further up and further in he thinks he's moving to the seat of power where things are really happening. He wants to be in that seat of that hideous strength, as Ransom calls it, hence the title of the book. But he finds out that he's not actually moving up

at all. He's moving further and further down. To one sense, is the center right in the center of Earth as hell in the medieval cosmos, and that is the inner ring that he actually ends up discovering. And you know, like you said, there's a lot of drinking involved, a lot of full delusion involved, and there's this this constant pressure on him to bring Jane into the mix, because I mean, she can, she has this vision and whatnot, and I don't know if we need to get into

that for this conversation or not. If someone wants to, we can, but they want Jane there, and he's resistant to that, not even so much for the most part, out of a desire to protect her, although some of that is there in greater or lesser degrees, but for the most part, he's afraid to bring her there because that's going to her presence, is going to demonstrate the fact that this is all a delusion, a wilful delusion.

It's not real. He knows he can't explain what's happening to her because there's no explanation for it, and so he's very much engaging in a wilful delusion in order to be there. All right, David, what do you have for us?

to manipulate him into doing evil things. And Jane, on the other hand, is kind of being pulled up against her will, her will into a genuine community of people who love each other in spite of her desire to be seen as this independent, modern woman who doesn't fit all the traditional roles that she feels like are being forced upon her, and she's constantly frustrated when her femininity reveals itself in spite of her attempts to suppress it.

I think so, I don't know, when I first read this book years ago, all that was completely lost on me. And I feel like, because we've all been talking about these aspects of the story, and not the kind of crazy, absurd fantasy and sci fi event that all of this

takes place inside of. In the story, it's really just kind of the framework for this relationship between this man and woman who they don't understand who they are as husband and wife in the beginning, and as they are separated from each other, they begin to understand who the other one is and who they really are, so that all of that can work out. And I find that fascinating. So, yeah, I haven't talked about a bear. Nobody's talked about the bear.

Nobody's talked about Merlin really and all that part of the story is great, but I feel like the relationship aspects of it are really the heart of what's in the story.

we have to know both. And the scene that always sticks in my mind here, the thing that I think is the most vivid, is right after Jane had that first interview with Ransom, and she's left Saint Anne, She's going back to the village. She doesn't know what is waiting her for her at the end of it, but she's had that conversation with him, and it is so transformative that she doesn't notice how much she has changed,

but other people do. And there's that line about how her beauty now comes through in the much stronger and more pure way, and she's able to be beautiful for the sake of pleasing others or being pleasing to the world around her. Right, she doesn't see it, and she's now in a place where she doesn't have to feel vain about it, she doesn't feel sub conscious about it, and she sort of sees the way that her beauty is then properly ordered and it is there to give

joy and happiness to others. And yeah, if that's one thing that you can take out of reading this story, that's a pretty major thing.

different really masculine influences, and she's just overwhelmed. And you know, for a time she can't even speak, and you know eventually she does, and then toward the end of that conversation, she starts to feel this overwhelming sense of largeness and she starts to just become undone, and she kind of glances at Ransom, like, you know, throw me a lifeline here, save me. I'm about to be undone, and he pretty much says, yeah, i'd be best for you to leave

right now. And so then she leaves and gets on this train and has the reflections that you mentioned, and that train ride reflection on what she's experienced very much echoes Ransom's experience when he first enters the heavens, which I read earlier from out of the Silent Planet, where he is just receiving these penetrating, cosmic, heavenly rays of light and they are just filling him with a sense of substance. He's starting to learn what he is for

kind of where everything is directed. And Jane now has a very very similar experience. I think that Lewis is intentionally paralleling these experiences because now she has experienced the light of the heavens through Ransom, this priest king who is meditating or not meditating, he's mediating the glory, the substance of the heavens through his person. She is now receiving that through contact with him, and so now she has a very similar experience just by the fact that

she is on Earth. And that speaks, I think, to Ransom's role here in serving as a bridge playing a part in the redemption of Earth, at least the part that he has to play in that. And so yeah, I think that train sequence is just this great scene where she's starting to experience beauty, her own beauty as well as the beauty that is beyond her, which is

what contextualizes her beauty. And so she just wants to go listen to music and read good books and she just swept up in the beauty of beauty as she becomes better aligned with the Parallandrian ideal that she is going to be aligned with. Olivia, what do you have for us?

a lot of parallels there. I find it interesting that the book really follows kind of the same trajectory as Weston, where Weston he starts off as this materialist, but then in Perlandra has that character development where he becomes you know, he's into this like depraved form of spirituality, which echoes you know, a lot in this book because you know, at first the characters that we see and like the initial entering are very materialist, but then as we get

into like the actual entering, and then we start to

see you know, the Macroves and the demonic. But despite the parallels with Weston there, it's Divine who is one of the who shows up in this book, which I find interesting and at first, like the first couple of times reading this book, I felt like there was kind of a, I don't know, a dis jointedness in Divine's character between Out of the Silent Planet and this book, because in the first book he's portrayed is just being this he's just self absorber, reading he wants the gold,

you know, very different from Weston, who, as eli Ursa says, is you know, he is seeking something outside of himself. It's not a good thing, but he's looking outside of himself or its west, whereas divine is just you know, looking into himself. But un for the reflectionery, I think that does track because even the most self absorbed people can be, you know, that stepping stone for evil to

advance further. And I'm more than that. Even just you know, the average joe doing that thing is the pathway that you evil takes to advance. I feel like I had more on that topic that's elluded me. One interesting sort of side plot, like a peripheral thread in the book is the allusions to the moon, which we've talked about in our previous chats. In the course how you wish Lewis Head you really developed that further, maybe a short

story or something. But even what we do get in the book is really interesting and it's really kind of tangential to the main plot, but you catch echoes of what's going on in the story. So he plays on the medieval idea that with the close side of the moon, you're the side that we see was corrupted when the fall of man and has fallen into decay. Well, the fire side, you know, is sort of untouched bison, and is you know, in the glory is the rest of

the heavens. You may get that scene with Philistrato where he opens the curtains lets the moon light in, and he talks about how clean the near side of the moon is and how the fireside, which is your fertile it has dirt and life and death on it, and he wants to sort of clean up those dirty patches on the fire side of the moon. And Ransom gives a really interesting description of it, which I'll read here. When he's talking to Merlin. One of the questions Merlin

asks is who was called who is called Solva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages? Ransom replied, Solva? Is she who more turtles call the moon? She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to deep heaven. Happy would he be? Who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side?

On this side, the womb is barren, and the marriage is cold. There, dwell and accursed people full of pride and lust. There, when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the others, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts. For real flesh will not please them. They are so dainty delicti in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place. Don't think I

even have to comment comment too much on that. You can see see parallels to what's going on, to the story and the broader social commentary that Lewis is making. There's a lot to impact just in that quote. One final thing that I'll say, so, I've sometimes seen a quote taken out of context from the end of the book. I don't have it open in front of me at the moment, but it's something to the effect of Jane

no longer had dreams, she had children instead. And I've seen that taken completely out of context, you know, and itself sounds like I mean something very different, and people use this, you know, and accusations of misogyny against Lewis. But no, the context of the quote is she's no longer having, you know, psychic nightmares. It's a good thing that she's not having these dreams.

So that's a good correction point. Yeah. And so obviously you covered a lot of ground there, and I don't feel need to comment on all of it, but I do find it interesting the way that we see the progression here from these early college meetings about budgets that are then directly connected through this line down to Hell, that what seems very mundane actually has pretty sinister roots

in it. And this makes me think of in The Great Divorce, where we see that, or where we're told that heaven and Hell tend to work their way backwards. And so the progressive element of Edgstow is very much an agent of Hell as much as weather and Frostar. In other words, there are no morally ambiguous situations here that Lewis is providing us. Everything is connected to the

heavenly or to the hellish. And then even the moon is kind of this ambiguous reality, and that it has one face toward the heavens and one face toward the earth, which why is the light side and a dark side?

It is this transition point. It is kind of ambiguous, and I think this is why back in Perilandra, when they're describing the apocalypse that's waiting Earth leading up to its real beginning, we're told that the moon is going to be shattered and that its rocks are going to fall into the seas, which, by the way, is exactly

what happens in the last battle. The moon is shattered and the rocks fall into the seas, and so we see that direct connection there, And I think it's the idea that all moral ambiguity is going to be utterly destroyed when the light meets with the darkness. And so this kind of meandering, chaotic, ambiguous nature that we see in so much of that hideous strength eventually is going to be revealed as not being ambiguous at all, and

fact that it never was. Now, as far as Divine goes, I think that he really does serve as the faux masculine for Mark in particular, Mark who at the beginning of the story and for most of the story, is not properly related to the true masculine spirit. He doesn't know how to assert himself. He just keeps receiving whatever is given to him. And this is one reason why he's drawn to Feverstone to divine and even that name Feverstone has this idea of okay, you have fever. It's

fast moving, it's acting, it's heated. But also Stone, it asserts itself. And so it is a kind of faux Malachandrey in a faux martial spirit that is meant to entice Mark to a false version of what he is called to be. And so he's just enamored by Faverstone, by the fast cars, by his laughter, by his aggressive attitude. And I think that in the story that's really the role that he plays. He is the false Malachandrean influence.

And I do see some continuity with his character here and out of the Silent Planet, and that in both cases he's just this self absorbed guy who's out for material goods. And even in that hideous strength, you know, he'll spout some of the progressive, nice talking points, but he's not really a philosopher, right, He's not in it for anything beyond himself, which is why he has no problem at the end, just hopping in the car and

speeding off. And then you know, the other reason he's okay with that car getting smashed up is well, it wasn't his, So he's still just this self absorbed materialistic guy who has this faux masculinity about him. Yeah, I'll leave it there. When you keep moving, Chase, what do you have for us?

And that's what we see with Mark is wanting to be a part of this, and meanwhile he's missing out on the actual good in a ring for this fake one that's flashy and and it just kind of like speaks to the pride of of like younger men and that every man goes through like thinking they know a lot and then not listening to older men who have been through it, who have you know, like mister Dimple was trying to talk to him, but you know, everyone has faults and they can't quite match up, and and

so you know they're they're pushed apart and it just drives him back. But thankfully he gets gets kind of

hits rock bottom. And also just the scene with the with the crucifix and and just his conversion there at the end is so great seeing him just like know that it's wrong and having like a puddicle un moment of of like, you know, I even if it's you know, not like it's not true or it's it's not real, or it's just a historical thing, like I'm not going to do it because you know, like probably I'm was saying, like I would want to live like an There is no Garian. So that was that was cool.

of the real. And then as a final part of this experiment, he's told to trample on and deface this crucifix the symmes of the crucified Christ. And this is a major turning point for him. He'd already started to get the suspicion that, okay, maybe he's revolted by all these images because there actually is something like the normal. Well, now that really comes to a point when he's faced to with with defacing this crucifix, and he kind of has this idea of what did Christ ever do to me?

Why am I doing this? And then he just he continues to meditate on it, and he starts to recognize that, Okay, the crucifixion of Christ is what happens when the strait meets the bent, and he says that it was the bellbury of christ Day that led to the crucifixion, and he doesn't want to be any part of that. And so this point, he doesn't have any clear doctrine to

stand on. He doesn't know what's objectively true, but he knows that given the option between the crucified Christ and the crucifiers, He's going to choose the Christ right, He's going to choose what he calls the normal. He's going to choose the real, the strait, even if there is no straight as you said, it's a very puddle glum

type of moment. And Lewis talks about in myth became fact that given somebody who believes that Christianity is objectively true, factually true, but doesn't actually move them, and then you have somebody who believes the myth of Christianity but they're not necessarily firm on the factuality of it. He said, the person who chooses the myth is probably better off because at least that's going to animate them. Now, to be clear, the fact matters, and that's Lewis is not

degrading that. But his point is that fact alone isn't going to move you. You need to embrace the moving reality of who Christ is and what Christ stands for, what Christ is done. And it's that story that's going to contextualize your life. And so he very much has that sense of the story is starting to make sense to him, though he doesn't yet have the fact in mind, and that's not necessarily a bad place to start, all right, Jackie, go ahead.

But here, in that hideous strength, Ransom is at the center of the opposition of the good side, I guess to be a little more clear, and he is holding them all together, and he is communicating with the higher powers, and he is then dispersing their orders to his team. I don't know for a better word, but we get that Jane observes that his shoulders could have held up the whole house when she sees him, and she recognizes his strength instantly. But he's also in a facilitator role.

Really in this book. He's not involved in any of the actual action when it comes to opposing the powers of darkness, but he is organizing all of the efforts to uphold goodness. So I thought that was really interesting to see how his arc completes itself. You know, he's been wounded in this epic battle on Perilandra and so he can't take place in the epic battle here on Earth. I thought that that was kind of fun.

to really do anything. Their job was to receive and to be glad, not to be those who are going to achieve merit, but those who are going to simply receive what essentially what God is doing. God is going

to bring the victory here. In fact, there's this great scene where Mertlin is talking to Ransom about what's going to happen, and Ransom says, you know, basically, the gods are going to descend and they're going to take care of this, and Merlin says, well, hold up, there's got to be a better way that we can manage this. You know, what about the King wins, and Rasom says, well,

he doesn't really have any actual authority. So then, you know, Merlin says, okay, well let's just overthrow them, right, I mean, you're sitting in the seat of Arthur here, let's just go take over. And Rasom says, we're like four people and a bear. They keep going back and forth, and Merlin just keeps appealing to all of these worldly powers. Okay, you know, what about some Christian prince, Well, there aren't anymore. Okay, what about the emperor? There is no emperor. Well what

about you know somebody from the east. Well, the West has already exported s filled throughout the world, and so there's really nowhere else to go. And it very much is giving us this. There is no other stream type of conversation, right to go to the beginning of the Silver Chair, where it's all or nothing. We have to cast ourselves before the power and the goodness and the all sufficiency of God or we have nothing. That's it.

There is no other stream, and so it really just continue this trajectory that we've seen throughout the series that our job is not necessarily to be to the hero or I guess what we should say, is the heroic thing for us to do is to receive, receive that the wave that Malodle is sending us. That's all we are called to do, or as Ransom, systemicfee. Sometimes we need to build an alter in one place for the

fire to descend on another. And so that's our job, simply to be faithful through our faithfulness, through our receiving. I mean, that's how we actually gain substance, not something we can create on our own, as opposed to what you see in the nice where the head is literally

this disembodied head, literally a man without a chest. Right, it's all intellect, it's all rationality with no actual grounding, which, as as Testererston says, that's how you get insanity, where you could have somebody who is very logical but still insane. They're not grounded in reality as opposed to the reality that we get through relationship with deep Heaven. All right, Well, anything else that anyone wants to say about that hideous strength.

especially on the winning side. And that part we were talking about later where Mark is asked to step on essentially like the the fumie from the Japanese Tokugawa Shoguna, to root out the Christians, that's when he has that realization that no, it's it's not what's a value of

being on the winning side? If it is not the right side, it would be better, you know, even if supposing the strait was utterly powerless, always and everywhere, certain to be mocked, tortured and finally killed by the crooked what then why not go down with the ship? And I love how he ends that because his fear vanishes that has protected him from doing foolish things all his life. And he says, it's all bloody nonsense and I'm damned

if I do any such thing. And I feel like that was a big his big turning point in realizing that winning isn't everything. Being on the right side and dying for the right side is much more valuable than winning.

cannot do harm to a good man. It's the same basic idea. Even if you kill me, well, that is nothing to my relationship with goodness. And so that is where we stand. That is where we live and die in the most important sense. As Augustine says, you know, let me see your face. Even if I die, lest I die, all that matters is that relationship with with God, with with the Ultimate, with Goodness itself. Heaven is what

remains when everything else is shaken. Anybody else want to I don't want to cut anyone off, but I know we've been going for a while. Anyone else want to say anything else about this book or anything Ransom related.

we'll go ahead and wrap it. I definitely appreciate everyone showing up again, and maybe sometime in the future we can do something else Lewis related. I would love to do that, but for now, we'll go ahead and sign off. So thanks a bunch, Thank you, sing all again. I hope, yep, definitely we'll do something again sometime.

go to recommendation for a first read. It's very approachable without being condescending, and his commentary is very helpful and it's very user friendly. Now, once you finish that, I would then recommend that you turn to Tolkien's, which is a prose translation, and for that reason alone it likely should not be your first move with what is a poem, but his language, Tolkien's language is so heavy and strong and semi archaic that I believe it does an excellent

job of portraying the mood of the story. Also, his commentary is far more dense than Shippy's, and so you have to wordly wade through it. You have to work through it a bit more, especially if you don't know Anglo Saxon. A lot of times talkiing will go off on some word nerdary there, and I don't know Anglo Saxon myself, at least not yet. I hope to change

it at some point in the relatively near future. But even if you don't follow all of his linguistic analysis, there's still a great deal of gold to be found in those minds, more so than I found elsewhere, And so start with Shippy and then go to Tolkien. Now, as always, if you appreciate what I do, I humbly welcome your support on Patreon. Your level of involvement over there is entirely up to you, as we have some patrons who are very involved and some who are just

silent supporters. And know that I appreciate both sides of that spectrum and everywhere in between very greatly, as I

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one patrons as well and friends. I really do want to emphasize how much I appreciate you and how much I appreciate that this list is getting longer on a regular basis. There are definitely some exciting things in the future, and some of those things are closer than others. For example, we're about to begin our first Mythic Mind book club on the Poetic Eda, which is one of our primary

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