That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis

Admittedly, this post is a few weeks old because I've been really busy--however, I couldn't pass this up, because this book is the final book in CS Lewis's Space Trilogy.  The first is Out of the Silent Planet, and it is followed by Perelandra.  This book is very, very different from the first two, and quite often I would pause while reading it and think about how amazing and strange the first two books were (especially the first!) and how... kind of boring this one is.  A lot of the beginning of the books are politics between organizations, and I mostly skimmed that, so that probably ruined my interpretations of a lot of events later in the book, too.  Also it takes place is 1940's England and not 1940's space.  And it starts off way differently, and Merlin is involved, and... honestly, if I had picked up this book first and read the blurb on the back without having read the first two, I would have never read this.
I've also seen this on a few "top 10 dystopic future books" lists, or lists of that flavour.  Um... But... Everyone is stopped.  And it's boring.  Even if you didn't read the first two books about how awesome space is--it's b-b-b-boring.  I mean, I got this copy for free, but man, I don't want to own it.  I wish I had a copy of the second book instead, even if I had to pay for it, and even if it was really predictable and a little cliche.    
Also, the New Yorker calls this book an elaborate satire--uh... Some parts are satiric, but this book definitely isn't a satire.  (The New Yorker is also kind of lame, so...)


So this book starts off looking over the shoulders of the newly married Studdocks, Mark and Jane.  For a very long time in the book I wasn't sure if Jane was a very to-the-point, accurate, and great picture of a realistic woman, or a picture of what CS Lewis would say was a wayward or not so great woman--turns out the second is true, but damn, if he didn't make that intention clear, I'd be damn impressed with the portrayal of Jane, because she is easy to empathize with and otherwise not an insulting picture of a woman.  Oops.
Anyways, Mark really wants to get in with some new organization who are trying to clean the world by killing all livings things so everything will be antiseptic and perfect (that's revealed much later, Mark thinks they're just some university elites for a long time)... They're led by one of the guys from the first book (Devine?  The one that didn't get possessed), and are clearly the forces of evil.  They're going to achieve all of their stuff with a reanimated head and a reanimated Merlin?  I... Okay, I don't really know.  I have no goddamn clue, really.  But they're the bad guys.  Evil Maledils?  I remember the terms but not what they refer to.  Well... The forces of evil.
Meanwhile, his wife starts having dream-visions, and is eventually caught and protected by the good guys.  She leads them right to the real Merlin.

Confused?  Sorry, I... I really can't help you.  This time it isn't my fault... This book is just...

In the introduction, CS Lewis compares this final book in the trilogy to his nonfiction work The Abolition of Man.  I actually bought it a week or two before this book, so maybe when I read that I'll be able to figure out the point of this book (oops).
In the introduction, CS Lewis also says that if one is curious about what happens next, they'll have to wait for JRR Tolkien's book--the book he promised CS Lewis he'd write that he never actually wrote.


So.  Many of my first notes regard Jane and her reaction to suddenly being married, the fear of becoming domestic, or somehow losing a part of her in this union, which I would say are, if not legitimate fears, undoubtedly very normal.  Of course, I've already explained how any positive point I could have made about that has already been proven moot, so let's just move on, shall we?

Also pretty early on they start discussing mythology and legends (Merlin and such), which is pretty boring--you wouldn't think so, but it is.  Also it seems kind of erroneous.  Jane's maternal friend, Mrs Dimble, starts talking about how, when King Arthur "invaded" (Lewis 29), there undoubtedly would have been a large sect of British people still wearing togas and speaking Latin and such.  Now, to be honest, I don't know a lot about the King Arthur legends, or when they're supposed to be set (I read Beowulf first, so how could you expect me to even care?)--but that just doesn't seem right.  The Latin carrying on and becoming changed seems plausible.  But the togas?  Purely Roman?  I can imagine their affects still being there and on the people, but... I kind of picture King Arthur as being a year 1000 kind of thing--which may be wrong in itself.  But this doesn't seem to bode for me.  (Especially when they mention the high Druid population on the other side of the coin--Romans took particular pleasure in killing Druids and torturing them, and I feel like even Christian Romans would put them to death.  So the two societies living simultaneously doesn't seem plausible in the slightest.)

On page 39, Feverstone--Devine (oh, I just got it, like "Divine", but he turns out to be a false prophet)--mentions Weston's murder to Mark to try to explain how evil NICE's (the evil organization is in fact named NICE) enemies are.  Again, Weston was possessed by the evil entity and had to be killed, but Mark buys it hook, line, and sinker, and of course Devine wouldn't see their business as evil.
Oh--and Mark says that anything that will preserve the human race is for him.  If you'll recall, this blind goal is what made Devine and Weston's twisted nature so clear in the first book:  "'You do not love any one of your race... You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are'" (Out of the Silent Planet 137).  As long as mankind can live on, maybe become better, but as long as sex still works, that's what counts.  (Oyarsa says that, in case if you were wondering).
Also, Devine calls from the liquidation/sterilization of "unfit races" (Lewis 49)--one, buying into eugenics, and two, emulating Hitler in a book set during the very last year of WWII--which Mark doesn't seem to pick up on at all.  He describes a very Aldous Huxley-like view of the future, with pre-natal education, and one which completely shapes the victim and eats at free will... Mark calls it stupendous instead of being horrified.
Oh, and killing every living thing on earth doesn't bother him either.

Anyways.  The two are kind of disconnected.  The major satirical element of this book which overall is not a satire is Captain Hardcastle--well, that's not her title, but if you grew up reading Roald Dahl, it's all but instinct to include Captain with Hardcastle.  Anyways, she's supposed to be, as I see it, the opposite of Jane, or the worst case scenario of Jane, or something.  She's a masculine woman, disgustingly so--she won't wear a corset, she chews tobacco, drinks hard alcohol (whiskey), and smokes huge cigars, talks like a man... Her nickname is "Fairy"--I'm not up on on forties slang, but today I'm sure you know, that's slang for a gay man.  And, uh, smoking cigars?  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but there is no way in hell CS Lewis wasn't trying to illustrate some kind of penis envy along with making Hardcastle gross and manly in the worst ways.  Mark is also very grossed out by her and at one point the idea of having sex with her comes up and he starts feeling nauseous.  The Fairy asks if maybe Jane is angry with her husband, or perhaps a little jealous because he spends so much time at NICE, with her, and Mark suffers "uncontrollable disgust" (Lewis 184).  Oh!  And she leads her own police squad made up of girls--very stereotypical teenage girls, might I add.  My opinion?  Feminism is great, equality is awesome, but unsexing yourself and becoming so intensely manly is not becoming in the slightest.

Okay.  Well, again, Jane is supposed to be pictured as a kind of wayward and headstrong girl and maybe not a good Christian woman or whatever, but then I'm one too, because I empathize with her a lot.  While Mark is meeting the Fairy, Jane is having her dreams analyzed by the forces of good--something Jane, given her nature, doesn't completely believe.  "She was not indeed sure that it was nonsense; but she had already resolved to treat it as if it were.  She would not get 'mixed up in it', would not get drawn in.  One had to live one's own life.  To avoid entanglements and interferences had long been one of her first principles. Even when she discovered that she was going to marry Mark if he asked her, she though, 'But I must still keep up my own life', had arisen at once and had never for more than a few minutes at a stretch been absent from her mind.  Some resentment against love itself, and therefore against Mark, for thus invading her life, remained" (Lewis 70-71).  It's a little improper, but again, I think it's easy to see where she's coming from.  (And if not, at least consider what year this book is set in.)

Captain Hardcastle/the Fairy makes a point about how it's much easier to fool an educated man with opinions in the paper, whereas a working class man will just assume it's all lies.  This I can see, though again, it doesn't have 100% accuracy--yeah, you're going to agree with an opinion you read, and you can be tricked into it and influenced very easily.  (It happens to EVERYONE!) I wouldn't say the split between classes makes you more or less susceptible, but England has traditionally had a clearer divide in terms of classes, so maybe that fed some of what CS Lewis had to say about that... Maybe...

Skip to page 145, which is when I realized that CS Lewis wasn't making a stronger female character.  She has met the "Director", that is, the leader of the good guys--his name is different, but it's just good old Ransom.  His name was changed for legal reasons that are clumsily explained (so he could claim some inheritance?  Changing the names was a term of it?), and that's clearly CS Lewis trying to not be obvious about who it is and leave you guessing, but honestly, I realized who it was immediately.  He appears much more youthful in this book; in the other books I kind of imagined him as stodgier and older, for whatever reason.
One of the side effects of his journey is that animals recognize his touch of the divine and naturally come to him.  I mention this mostly because he has a pet black bear named Mr Bultitude, which is disgustingly adorable.  I also mention that many of the times you see him, he is accompanied by a few jackdaws.  What's a jackdaw, you may ask?  Well, in The Magician's Nephew, a Jackdaw makes (or is) the first joke (in Narnia).  I've come to the conclusion that Jackdaws must represent something important to CS Lewis to have been specifically mentioned, and not once but twice.  (Let's not forget that Ransom is a Christ figure himself, after "death", and obviously Aslan is Aslan.)  Hope?  Humour?  Whatever it is, they must have meant something special to him.

Oh!  And yeah, he tells Jane that she'd be happier in her marriage if she were just a little more obedient.  Probably true, but it still makes him sound like something of a jerk--"'[You] have lost love because you never attempted obedience'" (Lewis 145).  We can agree that that makes him sound like a jerk, right?  Also he says equality is not the "deepest thing" (Lewis 145)... Keep in mind, though, CS Lewis wasn't married until very late in his life, and probably was never really involved romantically with anyone (other than JRR Tolkien, of course)--CS Lewis even (kind of) makes amends for himself a few pages later--Mrs Dimble, I believe, says something along the lines of take what he says with a grain of salt, he's never been married and is kind of old-fashioned.  So at least CS Lewis kind of admits that he's not entirely sure of what he's talking about, or only sure of it in a theoretical sense.  Also... This is a side note, but he calls humility an erotic necessity... I... Not sure where he's going with that one.

After Ransom explains this all to her, he calls some mice of his in to eat up the crumbs they have dropped from their teatime snack.  He does this to demonstrate how very different creatures can in fact live in harmony--but I believe it could also be a reference to a section in The Book of Common Prayer--"We do not presume to come to this thy Table (O merciful Lord) trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We be not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his Blood, in these holy Mysteries, that we may continually dwell in him, and he in us, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood. Amen" (Source).  This prayer exists in Anglican/Protestant religion, so CS Lewis was definitely aware of it.

Hmm... Plot, plot... At around this point, Jane is captured by Captain Hardcastle, but saved by the good guys.  She will not see her husband (and vice versa) for the rest of the book.  Their camps have been permanently separated now.

The next page I marked is just Jane getting used to life in her new home.  The men do all the work one day, the women the next, and so on.  It makes an interesting point about how men are specific--say, the sugar goes in the green bowl that is on top of x cupboard, and a women will say put that in the the thing.  I only mark it because that may seem like another silly mistake by CS Lewis, but nope, my mom does this all the time, and yeah, I do too.
Mark, meanwhile, is taken to see the Head of NICE--literally a reanimated head.  I just thought that was kind of silly (and really gross).

"If you must see ghosts, it is better not to disbelieve in them" (Lewis 203).

There's a cook named MacPhee with the good guys.  He is a tough guy, willing to do whatever Ransom needs, but Ransom says it's useless--because he doesn't believe in the cause.  He adds that he is "'...perfectly ready... in and for this emergency, to allow the existence of these eldils of yours and of a being called Maledil whom they regard as their king'" (Lewis 222).  Obviously he can say he'll believe, and maybe if the times are desperate enough he will believe (put me in any horror movie and I'll get religious real quick too)--but he won't truly have faith.  And the Blair Witch will kill him.  Maybe he shouldn't have mocked those cairns, but nooo, had to go ahead and move them...

Ah!  So, Mark isn't a bad guy.  NICE frames him for murder and threatens to have him arrested when he tries to leave them and find Jane.  He is often deluded by visions of grandeur, but it's not bad, he's just... Well, very pliable.  But he decides immortality is silly.  He obsesses over death, rather than paying attention to the fact that he'd have an afterlife.  He's more worried about his body not being in working order, and he doesn't care about his soul.  THIS IS A BAD SIGN IN A CS LEWIS BOOK!  He is clearly being marked as an immoral, or at least painfully foolish person.
Yeah, next mark is that he believes he is right--fighting for and with Jane from behind enemy lines, a martyr... Mark is being marked, haha.  He also decides to do the right thing--or what he believes is the right thing--but then becomes depressed when he realizes how hard it will be and takes a nap instead.  CS Lewis is planting red flags and also throwing rocks at us all at once.

Next note: the good guys get Merlin, the bad guys awaken some guy who isn't Merlin but a fake.  Who is he?  What happens to him at the end of the book?  Uh.... I guess he dies?  I don't know who he is though.  I for real have no clue.  From Wikipedia, I think that Merlin trades clothes with a tramp and NICE sees the clothes and assumes it's Merlin... But could a tramp really fool them that well?  I mean, late in the book he appears to hypnotize Mark, or maybe Mark is just exhausted...?  Oh well.  Anyways, sometimes they refer to Merlin as Merlin, and sometimes Merlinus.  Why?

Oh also Ransom is a Pendragon!!!  Clumsy plot devices for everyone!!!

Oh and they namedrop Middle Earth.  I know it's an archaic term for Earth (being in between heaven and hell, see?), but I also know that JRR Tolkien was CS Lewis's boyfriend, soooo...

Jane complains about more marital problems, how men never listen to everything women have to say, whatever.  Maggs, another woman, quotes Mrs Dimble: "'"Did it ever come into your mind to ask whether anyone could listen to all we say?"'" (Lewis 300).  BAM.  This is fair, I think.  It made me laugh, at least.  Also, Kurt Vonnegut: "Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to.  What do they want to talk about?  They want to talk about everything" (A Man Without a Country 47).

The book kind of continues in theological debates and NICE politics for a long time.  I'm sure important things happen between pages 70-300, but... Well, he spends too much time on the uninteresting stuff.  Theological debates are interesting, especially when CS Lewis makes them, but these are so superfluous.  I don't think I'd like the book even without them (the cool thing about the first two Spacer Trilogy books was that they were in space!), but at least it would be more to the point.  Anyways, in the other two, religious debate is pretty seamlessly in there--okay, yes, the second book became a little cliched and obvious, but I don't recall it ever being so painfully boring and dragged out.  Why mention this now?  On page 303, the book suddenly becomes interesting, when the book inexplicably starts being told from the view of Mr Bultitude, Ransom's pet bear.  I'm sure he's supposed to represent a good soul or a perfect soul in its animalistic simplicity, but whatever, Mr Bultitude is adorable and I cannot handle it.

Okay.  I don't have any notes at all until the end of the book.  The climactic scene takes place in a dining hall.  NICE, thinking they have Merlin, hold a big celebration in congratulations for... getting him...?  Well, the real Merlin is there too.  He summons animals to attack and kill the leading members of NICE, and a lot of the guests... Listen, I'm not saying that it was really the Animorphs, but they were attacked by a tiger, an elephant, a bear, a gorilla, a wolf, and a snake (Ax has a snake morph!).  So.  Just saying.
And then Merlin puts the same curse as God put on the tower of Babel on the enemies who were left--that is, that they all would speak different languages so they couldn't understand each other (though in this book they appear to actually be speaking just gibberish).

Oh, and on page 370, "poor" is spelled "pore".  Gross.
Anyways, the falling action gets weird, as this quickly becomes the only CS Lewis to feature bears having sex, and elephants having sex. In celebration of the bad guys being wiped out (remember, they wanted to wipe all life from the earth and make it completely sterile), all the animals in the area suddenly get really... excited.  Mr Bultitude gets laid, the jackdaw flies out the window to pursue a mate... Ransom actually tells Mr Bultitude to "'Take her, Bultitude.  But not in the house'" (Lewis 375).  They open the window and find the elephant from before, now making a lady elephant his lady, and when one man goes to close the curtains so no-one has to see elephants doing the nasty, one of the women says: "'No... There will be nothing unfit for anyone to see.  Draw them wider'" (Lewis 377).  What the hell, CS Lewis.  Yeah, maybe we shouldn't view it as indecent, but no-one wants to see that!  The lady goes on to say that they are dancing--yeah, the horizontal monster mash.  WHY ARE THESE THINGS HAPPENING??  Why, CS Lewis, whyyyy?

Anyways, Mark survives.  The book ends with both Jane and Mark thinking about how they will react to one another and what their lives will be like--Mark realizes that he does truly love Jane, the end of the book gives a feeling that Jane loves him (or at least is very affectionate towards him) and it ends before they meet.  The ending actually isn't that bad.  I mean, the actual end as in the last few sentences, not all the animal sex parts.  That's still weird.  But the last few sentences wrap up the book (at least Mark and Jane's drama) nicely.



.........So.  I guess I've made my opinion on the book pretty clear many times throughout this.  It's only a step above A Horse and His Boy, in terms of CS Lewis books--that is, it's nearly my least favourite.  (Then again, I read A Horse and His Boy at least once, too.)  It's just not great, it's bumbling, it's full of awkward attempts to save its own skin on the part of the author (hey, did you know that Ransom is a Pendragon?)... It's boring and confusing, which is a deadly combination.  There's a reason why people really don't know this particular book series--it ends pretty badly and okay, yeah, it's not Chronicles of Narnia.  I have a copy of Abolition of Man somewhere, and I know I should probably read it next so everything will be fresh, but I've already read two other books to write about, that are much better (well, one is anyways).  So... Yeah, I guess that's it.  OH!  And when writing for a character in a different language, find someone who actually speaks the language to help you.  There's one Italian character in this book who speaks in broken English and he always says "ecco" instead of "here"--ecco means something like, "Here it is", like if you were trying to find your hat, your friend would say "Ecco!" if he got to it first.  It doesn't mean here like "I am here".  I don't know why it annoyed me so much, I have no right to be annoyed by it (straight Cs/Ds for three years in high school Italian, awww yeah!), but it's really the only thing I remember from Italian class, so goddammit CS Lewis, get your act together.

(Also can we note that at the bottom of my Perelandra post, I say "I really hope I find the third book soon.  Although this series isn't stellar, it's pretty good."  Dammit, CS Lewis.)


MLA Citation information: Lewis, CS. Out of the Silent Planet. Scribner: New York, 2003.
Lewis, CS.  That Hideous Strength.  Scribner: New York, 2003.