Perelandra Ch 9-17 Revisited
Here goes--I mean Amen
And at that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not help remembering, men were at war, and white-faced subalterns and freckled corporals who had but lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps, or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awakening, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions; and far away in time…Eve herself stood looking upon the forbidden fruit and the Heaven of Heavens waited for her decision (121).
Welcome, my friends. Congratulations on another journey completed.
Again, we have finished where we started. But in this second novel, instead of finishing where we started on earth, we finish where we all started, we finish in the original starting place, we finish where everyone was supposed to begin.
After beginning in the wandering wood, Dante enters the gates of Hell, journeys through dark horrors to the cold center, emerges with a small stream out the opposite side of the world to a view of the stars, and then must journey up the entire mount of Purgatory, until he finally finishes in the original wood of the Garden of Eden. So too with the journey of Perelandra.
Structure
With that journey in mind, look at how the shape of a chiastic structure imitates this journey through the center.
Skim the bullet pointed structure below, remembering that chapter 1 will be in conversation with chapter 17, chapter 2 in conversation with chapter 16, and so on and so forth, each chapter having a reflecting chapter on the other side of center. These opposing layers are reflections in both senses of the word, just as a mirror’s image is both a direct imitation and an exact opposite.
Ch 1 - on earth, narrator alone journeying to Ransom’s house
Ch 2 - on earth, narrator w/Ransom learning of journey & return
Ch 3 - on Perelandra, alone in ocean, then island
Ch 4 - on Perelandra, alone, sees Lady on other island
Ch 5 - on Perelandra, w/ Lady on island
Ch 6 - on Perelandra, w/ Lady on island & Fixed Land, Weston arrives
Ch 7 - on Perelandra, w/Weston on Fixed Land
Ch 8 - on Perelandra, alone on Fixed Land, on Island overhears 1st Temptation to disobey
Ch 9 - on Perelandra, w/Weston & Lady on Island, dead frogs, 2nd Temptation to “self-sacrifice”
Ch 10 - on Perelandra, w/Weston & Lady on Island, 3rd Temptation to “possess” and plan
Ch 11 - on Perelandra, w/God on Island
Ch 12 - on Perelandra physically fighting Weston on Island
Ch 13 - on Perelandra alone on sea, tempted by nihilism, w/Weston, descent into water
Ch 14 - within Perelandra alone & traveling through underground cave, final defeat of Weston
Ch 15 - within Perelandra alone traveling through center, then resting by pool, then traveling to Mountain Valley/Eden
Ch 16 - on Perelandra w/Oyarsa of Malacandra & Perelandra
Ch 17 - on Perelandra w/Mars & Venus and King and Queen
In the center of this novel is chapter 9, flanked by two additional temptation chapters (chapters 8 and 10). Thus at the core of this story is a tri-part temptation to disobey, to rise above obedience, to be self-sacrificing. The devil tempts woman to take on a role in a drama, to become self-aware enough to become self-sacrificially unselfish, to “stand alongside oneself,” outside of oneself, looking at a mirror, and liking the reflection, the “dramatic conception of the self” (118), more than the real facts of one’s obedient creation within God. The temptation is to become like the devil:
[While watching Weston] Ransom has the sense of watching an imitation of living motions which had been very well studied and was technically correct: but somehow it lacked the master touch. And he was chilled with an inarticulate, night-nursery horror of the thing that he had to deal with—the man-aged corpse, the bogey, the Un-man (105).
Dog-ear this thought. I want to see how this temptation presents itself in That Hideous Strength.
Additionally fascinating is that as I am choosing the words to describe Weston’s temptation, I find that they are words very similar to those used to describe good, memetic art:
Art is imitation, the making of a picture of some feature of the world; art thus images, or re-presents, for our delighted contemplation, one or more formal aspects of its source or origin.
(
, Beauty and Imitation, 13).
Lewis inserts a memetic art definition into the final chapter when he has Ransom describe the King, thus:
Nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyme, an exquisite reverberation of the uncreated music prolonged in a created medium (177).
Last month, as regards Iago, we noted that one of the core attributes of the devil is that he takes truth, and twists it. Thus, what is 90% good, when twisted the last 10%, becomes 100% evil.
Thus Art, which creates a gap between the person and reality in order to give a man a distant enough vantage point to view the world, and thus to understand it and live within it better, is a good thing.
But the gap which Weston is seeking to create in the Lady between herself and her actions, between who she is and the role he is tempting her to play, is a hole into which one may lose one’s soul.
“Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien’s character Galadriel, The Fellowship of the Ring
Last month, we described this another way: twisted virtue. Thus, in Othello, Desdemona’s feminine concern for the other becomes the very fodder building up devilish Iago’s case against her honesty.
We see a similar technique being used here. Weston is drawing on all that is best in femininity, and warping it. A woman is willing to sacrifice her own good for the good of others. This is good.
But no woman is ever asked to sacrifice her own eternal and moral good for the good of others. When it comes to the salvation of our soul, we must be selfish.1 Ends do not justify the means. We are called to sacrifice much, everything, in fact. But our soul? Are we called to do wrong, to lose our own soul, for the good of others? Never.
“There is an ignorance of evil that comes from being young: there is a darker ignorance that comes from doing it, as men by sleeping lose the knowledge of sleep (179).
Here’s the answer to this problem we’ve been discussing alongside Bishop Robert Barron from last week’s Read Along Guide. God wishes us to mature. How does He do so, without also being the cause of our sinning?
It’s a balance on a knife’s edge to create a gap-spanning bridge.
New Gaps - Stretching Bigger
There is too much to cover. It’s all present in this latter half of the book: myth, Christ-figure, gaps, words, light, Anti-Man, men without heads…
I hope that you were noting it all in the margins, because we have no time to do the second half of this book justice. I am going to omit talking about nearly everything since one begins to feel foolish when one is writing secondary material in greater amounts than the original work. Dang Lewis for his ability to pack so much into so little!
Therefore, in this final section I am simply going to place before you the thoughts that I have carried within me since my first reading of Perelandra, passages that “shore me against my ruin,” as Hannah and T.S. Eliot say.
These passages have created new spaces in my mind, new good gaps, stretching me into greater capacity:
Forbidden Fruit: This passage gave me an entirely new way of understanding the purpose of the arbitrariness of God’s original prohibition:
I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are His will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless He bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason? (101)
The Numinous: I am a 90’s baby. I was raised with illustrations of Jesus, which were drawn by a generation focused on the humble, approachable love of God. This has benefits. But it also means I benefit from hearing Isaiah remind me:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.Isaiah 55:8-9
The entire final two chapters of this novel remind me that I am not the biggest thought there is. That I have real limitations. That I am quite small. Baxter helps me understand these moments as opportunities to expand my conception of God:
All ancient religions treat the holy as an “irrational over-plus of meaning” that extends beyond goodness, what he termed the “numinous”…for Otto the numinous is that reality whose majesty is so far beyond our ordinary experience that it is difficult for us to classify it simply as good or bad; it is both alluring and dangerous, beautiful and terrifying.
(
, A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy, 123)
As the Oyarsa of Malacandra says:
“There are no holding places in your mind for an answer to that” (173).
Just the realization that there are things I have no capacity to understand, expands my brain.
Perspective Dependent on Gap:
Gaps are a necessary function of time-bound, earth-bound, language-bound, senses-bound soul-body humans:
“I don’t understand,” said Ransom. “Were all those other things—the wheels and the eyes—more real than this or less?”
“There is no meaning in your question,” said Mars. “You can see a stone, if it is a fit distance from you and if you and it are moving at speeds not too different. But if one throws the stone at your eye, what then is the appearance?”
“I should feel pain and perhaps see splintered light,” said Ransom (173).
Words as Gap Fillers:
Art simultaneously creates space and fills space to expand it. Words are art.
According to medieval theory, Eden was the place wherein language was born and fitted perfectly to the reality it was meant to signify, before the rift emerged between words and things. Eden is where Adam, the so-called name giver, was inspired to use words to name creation around him (see Gen. 2:19-20). In a certain sense, Adam is the father of poetry.
(
, A Beginner’s Guide to Dante’s Divine Comedy, 119)
What, You Too!?:
Just as chapter 1, I found chapter 11 to be a spot-on description of certain prayer experiences. Lewis perfectly portrays the movement from, “what could I do?” to “No way, that’s a ridiculous idea,” to “That is exactly what I am being asked to do.”
Theology of the Body:
The reminder that the devil is a fallen spirit. And thus just because something is spiritual, does not mean it is good. Therefore, that as soul-bodies, we are called to put our faith into action. That St. James meant what he said, and that often our calling is to daily, physical actions, not over-rationalizing argumentative logic spirals.
But Ransom soon perceived that it [Weston] regarded intelligence simply and solely as a weapon, which it had no more wish to employ in its off-duty hours than a soldier has to do bayonet practice when he is on leave. Thought was for it a device necessary to certain ends, but thought itself did not interest it (110).
Iago was a master manipulator because his reason deeply understood human nature, and how to twist words to twist perspective. But Iago was anti-climatically purposeless. He did not love his insights. The devil has already lost, though he still revels in drawing others into the word-warping logic spiral with him. Therefore, often held before me is this moment when Ransom is called to physically wrestle the devil. Or, in my world, wrestle a diaper onto a baby, and make dinner.
Peter or Pilot:
I can never be an innocent bystander. Always, and forever, I sit in the judgement seat before the good God, looking down upon Him, and He asks me if I will act for Him. Mercy be upon me.
So that was the real issue. If he now failed, this world also would hereafter be redeemed. If he were not the ransom, Another would be. Yet nothing was ever repeated. Not a second crucifixion…some act of even more appalling love…He had long known that great issues hung on his choice; but as he now realised the true width of the frightful freedom that was being put into his hands—a width to which all merely spatial infinity seemed narrow—he felt like a man brought out under naked heaven, on the edge of a precipice, into the teeth of a wind that came howling from the Pole. He had pictured himself, till now, standing before the Lord, like Peter. But it was worse. He sat before Him like Pilate. It lay in him to save or to spill (126).
Favorite Moment:
Nothing compares to this moment. An action that is of the body and the soul, a prayer and a stone’s throw, of deep significance and ridiculous fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants messiness.
“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes—I mean Amen,” said Ransom, and hurled the stone as hard as he could into the Un-man’s face (155).
All the things we didn’t get to talk about and questions…
Alright folks, here we are, at the end, and we haven’t even properly begun. Here’s some hanging chads and questions for you:
Dante
Can someone trace in finer detail the Dante’s Inferno and Plato’s cave imagery going on in the center of the world, a “hall of mirrors, where Ransom sees the man on a chariot drawn by beetles?
Lots of streams going through the earth, out of the earth, and up to the Edenic Garden (in the form of the “ripple-trees”). Where’s Styx, where’s Lethe, where is Eunoe? Talk about them.2
The singing beast which is nursed by a “dumb dam.” Make connections to myth/fairy tale/etc. Is this purely a Lewis creation, or does it connect to some other story?
Christ-figure
There’s plenty of time-markers given during the temptation, Weston wrestling, journey across the ocean, and descent into the underground cave to trace out some buried-for-3-days, and Harrowing of Hell connections. Do it!
Abandonment/Atheism - Connections to Christ’s, “My God, My God, why have you Abandoned me?” cry, and Ransom’s conversation with Weston about the “crust” which we all sink below after death and how Science & Anti-Man themes are wrapped up in the nihilism perspective in chapter 13. (Bonus notice for That Hideous Strength: Weston says, “They take your head off…” on page 145)
Ransom being called the bridge spanning the gap in chapter 17, especially pg 178.
Isn’t it fun that Lewis fictionally overcomes his fear of insects in chapter 14 (pg 155)! :D
Why the epigraph for Weston? Burying the Dead is a work of mercy. Is this physical act a final way Ransom rejects the Anti-Man/over-spiritualized devil? Help me out here.
I barely touched on gender. Talk about masculine and feminine, Man and Woman, Husband and Wife, Father and Mother, etc. Especially in light of the original temptation being to break Man and Woman apart from each other and God. Lots of fodder for thought in chapter 17. Definitely themes to carry into That Hideous Strength.
Share a favorite passage, because of its:
descriptive beauty
mind-expanding nature
“what, you too!?” exactitude
Which planet or story did you prefer? Malacandra or Perelandra?
What happened to Devine? Why’s Weston the only one who comes? Is there something about Science that leads to demonic possession sooner than Business/Money? That doesn’t seem like the right path to follow... Bets on whether we will meet Devine again in That Hideous Strength or if he’s out of the picture all together?
What is this that we feel?…I don’t know…one day I will give it a name. This is not a day for making names…It is like a fruit with a very thick shell…The joy of our meeting when we meet again in the Great Dance is the sweet of it. But the rind is thick—more years thick than I can count…It is now his time to go (189).
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
In Case You Missed It:
On the Podcast:
Read Along Guides for the the Space Trilogy:
What We’re Reading Now/Next:
February
Out of the Silent Planet AND Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
March
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
April
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
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I first heard this said in a homily by a wonderful Benedictine priest. His paraphrased quote was: “There is only one thing you should be selfish about: and that is the salvation of your own soul.”
Great write up! Love these chapters of Perelandra.