Hey, I haven't posted in a while because for the past like six months I've been working on Stephen King's Dark Tower series. It took about five extra months because the file on my Kindle for the fourth book was corrupted so I had to find a hard copy, and then I dropped my Kindle while I was on the sixth book and I had to wait until I was back home to finish up the series.
Anyways, I didn't take any specific notes on the books... Well, I had some on my Kindle, but of course that means next to nothing now... But I have to recommend the series. If you've been looking for a fantasy epic, this is perfect, even if you're not a big fan of Stephen King. It's a lot different from many of his other books, and as always, there are a lot of Easter eggs for those who are a fan of his other books (but it still makes sense without having read every single other thing. In some cases, it would have been a little easier without having read certain things, and in some cases some stuff would seem random if you hadn't [like the cameo made by Dinky Earnshaw from "Everything's Eventual"]. And in some cases it is just neutral and whatever). Also, Desperation gets some play, which is always exciting for me.
As for Abolition of Man, it's one of CS Lewis's lesser-known works, though if you look at the post for That Hideous Strength, or read it, CS Lewis says that they are kind of theoretical or philosophical twins. Well, I've put that book out of my mind completely, so maybe that's why The Abolition of Man wasn't doing it for me. And I just noticed when signing into this account for the first time since December, someone commented on that post with a link to his own thoughts on the book--I skimmed it, it mentioned The Abolition of Man, I should probably read it prior to writing this, too late, I'm going to read it over the weekend instead.
Anywayyys. This book was kind of boring. He applies a lot of deconstructionism to real life, which... Well, deconstructionism in the literary theory sense doesn't really lend itself to real life applications, although I personally enjoy deconstructionist looks at fiction and whatnot. He starts off with deconstructing sections from textbooks he has read, which is all well and good, though he looks at it really subjectively which in this case really gets in the way of his reading. But then he tries to bring over his ideas to apply to real life, and it's bulky and awkward. It's kind of like how I felt when I was wrestling with various Camus works: well, that's an interesting theory, buuuut you only have to be alive to know that things aren't quite like that. CS Lewis seems to fall down a slippery slope, deducing that if textbooks present information that is theoretically wrong like X, society will slowly fall apart and this and that. Though some of his observations ring true, it's not going to be because of a textbook that life gets harder and perhaps less observant of humanity. He clearly doesn't remember grade school, because no-one read their textbooks/purged them immediately upon hitting the summer vacation. The fact that he doesn't remember says something too, eh?
Though unlike Camus there are things that apply to modern life. I also am not sure how CS Lewis thought he was going to try to take apart society without using, you know, sociology. It may seem like it's splitting hairs for me to say deconstructing and a sociological look at something are different and have different situations which they should be applied to--but they do, although they can work in tangent. It was just... really weird. Everything he set up was so awkward and unbalanced for me that I honestly couldn't even focus on the point he was trying to make there.
Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, the cover itself: the bio does not list Narnia in his best-known work. Come on, man.
One particularly weird thing I noticed that also made it hard for me to focus on his argument or figure out his point was his references to Hinduism. Granted, there are a lot of religions that believe that you can achieve enlightenment or become one with the universe or God(s) or whatnot, but in the second Space Trilogy book, CS Lewis says that "What Pantheists falsely hoped of Heaven bad men really received in Hell. They were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring. The question whether Satan, or one whom Satan has digested, is acting on any given occasion, has in the long run no clear significance. In the meantime, the great thing was not to be tricked again" (173). Obviously such an idea is not viewed positively. So when he (seems to) reference it positively here I was a tad bit thrown. He also relies heavily on concepts of "Tao" to get his points across, but I don't think his understanding of Tao is that great. Certainly the book suffers from his half-self-defined version of the concept as well.
His idea of Tao is also a little confusing because of his emphasis on it: he imagines it as state of mind, which to some extent, unless if I'm mistaken, Taoism is, or plays a major role in it. But again, he has expressed great disdain in other works for non-Christian religions, which this is considered. But it seems that he believes Taoism was the goal of how humanity ought to act/be, and every other religion and philosophy (oh?) is an attempt to line up with it. But... Hm. Well, you understand why I'm having trouble taking this from CS Lewis as opposed to, say, when Jack Kerouac expresses similar beliefs in The Dharma Bums or Desolation Angels, right?
Again, later, he goes on to describe how the sacrifice of oneself for the community would be nonsensical in the terms that the textbook has made which will somehow have a ripple effect on the entirety of society (by the way, what the textbook said was that when a man said something was sublime, it means that "I have sublime feelings" [Lewis 15]. Okay). This apparently 'debunks' sentimental/traditional values... The mindset "claims to be cutting away the parasitic growth of emotion, religious sanction, and inherited taboos, in order that 'real' or 'basic' values may emerge" (Lewis 41-42). One stupid idea in a textbook is not going to cause this. Perhaps it seemed a lot more likely that this would happen in 1947, when this book was first published (1984 wasn't published yet, but Animal Farm would have been fresh in the mind, and Brave New World had been around for over 15 years by that time), but the idea for that time still seems pretty unrealistic. Then again, Britain was also beaten a lot worse in WWII than America physically, so maybe such a negative outlook was expected. Again, the same germ which produced 1984, producing this.
And if he just intended this text book to be the introduction to this idea, what an awkward way to do it! This would be a better example to put in its own paragraph or chapter, not to make it like the vein that runs through it, because it totally throws the paper and makes it lopsided and awkward.
Anywayyyys, the martyrdom thing. Basically he just says, should people like this succeed, you could never expect sacrifices for other men or community--shame wouldn't move them, nor love, nor whatever. In fact, nothing could move them either way. Okay. But if people are this flat, you could presumably just say, "Go get yourself killed". Of course, my idea takes into account that there will be people controlling brain dead masses. Which, should this come to fruition, would have to be the case, unless if everybody evolves backwards into cave men.
He also brings up, in the middle of nowhere, as an ill-fitting example, that of sexual satisfaction. This is another topic that kind of brings me pause when he brings up, because I don't think CS Lewis was all that experienced with, well, sex. So he says that "For of course sexual desire, being instinctive, is to be gratified whenever it does not conflict with with the preservation of the species" (Lewis 45). This doesn't get mentioned again till about a dozen pages later, in a different context. So what is CS Lewis talking about here? Against overpopulation? Protection of the parents'/mother's health? That seems a little modern for this, but since CS Lewis changes the subject right afterwards, we'll never know.
Oh yeah, on page 47, CS Lewis uses the phrase "infinite regress"--which is akin to putting a stamp on the cover over the book that says "I AM DECONSTRUCTING". I recognized what was going on prior to that, but upon seeing that I just kind of rolled my eyes. Deconstructionist ideals can be applied to the human psyche and real life, but this is the first time I've ever seen something taken apart by it (I'm thinking about it now, and you could argue that Camus's theories behind his works make him a deconstructionist, but it's so easy to destroy his works with deconstructionism that it doesn't even matter man), and boy is it awkward. The fact that he never brings in any other deconstructionist buzzwords or even just this earlier on gives me a feeling that he was sort of piddling around, kind of unsure about the theory he wanted to use. Then again, he didn't have the benefit of a handy-dandy book by Lois Tyson... So yeah, I'm probably being kind of harsh...
"If man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his dehumanized Conditioners" (Lewis 84).
"A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery" (Lewis 84-85). : / But your use of dogmatic makes this statement problematic...
At the end of this book there are sections of quotes which go to support his Tao theory and the laws he believes all cultures or many (especially Classical cultures, it must be noted) uphold. Personally, I think these would have been more useful, you know, in the actual paper used to support and strengthen it, but the quotes are still interesting:
"'Terrify not men or God will terrify thee'" (Lewis 97; Ancient Egyptian, Precepts of Ptahhetep).
"'"To live according to nature is the supreme good"'" (Lewis 107; Roman, Cicero).
"'The second of these achievements is no less glorious than the first; for while the first did good on one occasion, the second will continue to benefit the state forever'" (Lewis 108; Roman, Cicero).
Also problematic is that in this section, he includes a quote from the end of Beowulf--because this piece was edited by Christians in an effort to lay ideals onto Anglo-Saxons a little more easily, it is very unbalanced. Where Beowulf is manly and vicious and violent and an Anglo-Saxon idol, at his death in the end of the piece he is named as being "'the mildest and gentlest of the kings of the world'" (Lewis 116; for some reason CS Lewis does not site the poem itself properly, but it's there, I promise). This makes the editing in the original piece obvious, because it just doesn't gel with who Beowulf proves himself to be. He ripped Grendel's arm off! When he first comes to the castle he sure as heck doesn't uphold Christian modesty or anything like that. As I said, the editing that the scribe made back in the early ADs is painfully obvious at the end of the piece. So using this one specific quote makes Lewis look uneducated or as though he was purposely ignoring the whole rest of the book. Which of course never looks good.
So... as far as CS Lewis's books go... This is definitely my least favourite. It's either poorly written or very dated (or both). He doesn't use his theory well, but in his defense, deconstructionism is a pain in the butt. Still, he could have done a little more than throwing in one deconstructionist buzz phrase. The construction of the whole piece is a little off and awkward too, it's not organized that well. Then again, I also hated and had trouble with That Hideous Strength, and according to CS Lewis himself, the books were philosophical twins. Oops... Should I have read that article that guy sent me before I wrote this? Undoubtedly. But I'm going to go do that now...
Works Cited: Lewis, CS. The Abolition of Man. The Macmillan Company: New York, 1947.
Lewis, CS. Perelandra. Collier Books: New York, 1962.
Showing posts with label That Hideous Strength. Show all posts
Showing posts with label That Hideous Strength. Show all posts
Friday, May 31, 2013
Friday, August 3, 2012
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.
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.
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