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Out
of the Silent Planet:
A Journey to the Medieval Past
Randy Hude
In what is commonly
known as the "Space Trilogy," C.S. Lewis uses outer
space and science fiction convention as backdrop to
tales of discovery, not just for a specific character
but for humanity as a whole. The first novel in the
trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, is no different in
this aim, but also can be viewed as a description of
Lewis's own journey into the medieval past. After delighting
in the Medieval Model (i.e., the Chain of Being, the
Great Dance, etc.) with its hierarchical form, he looked
at his own time as a changed man, viewing the world
in a much different light than most of his contemporaries.
One of the pervasive themes
of the novel is that of duty, pushing one's own desires
to the background while performing some task that, though
possibly unpleasant, is necessary. This idea has largely
been ignored in modernity for various reasons, which
will not be discussed here in depth. I think many, though,
would deem such a term as either 'unnecessary' or 'inconsequential.'
This is a pity, for sure, eschewing the definition of
so-called indefinable words (words dealing with virtue,
or value). Seen from this angle, the narrative of Out
of the Silent Planet can be viewed as a description
not only of Ransom's adventures but also of Lewis's
own search for the sense of order, duty, and obedience
which pervaded the medieval past.
It is important to recall
that Ransom's adventure begins with a small promise:
while ending that day's walking (he is on a walking
tour of the countryside), he promises a strange old
lady that he shall retrieve her son at the next house
and send him on home. With this promise, which he constantly
reconsiders, Ransom is prompted forward by devotion
to his word. The door behind him has closed and he is
set on a path that shall change him; there is no way
out. Ransom does not wish to perform this task of getting
this woman's son to go home, but "he had been bound
by his unfortunate promise" (OSP 11). This is the first
representation of duty in the book, and it's worth noting
that it is accepted only reluctantly. Thomas Howard
points out in C.S. Lewis: Man of Letters that the sense
of duty need not be entirely self-less: "It is not all
sheer, gritty duty and nobility. It also 'occurs' to
him that, by calling on the professor [owner of the
next house], he just might find the hospitality he seeks
for the night" (86). This seems to suggest that the
first steps towards greater duty are not completely
pure or noble in nature, but since they are but the
first steps, they must be slight enough to allow progression.
Ransom is on his way to discovering other notions of
duty that will not prove quite as simple as this first.
From here, Ransom gets tangled
up in the plans of an old classmate, Devine, and a noted
physicist, Weston. In short time he finds himself on
his way to Malacandra (Mars), held captive as a sort
of ransom (hence the name) in the schemes of his two
kidnappers. The entire way there he frets about the
aliens he will meet (since he does not yet realise that
Devine and Weston intend to use him as a sacrifice to
the aliens), assuming along with much science fiction
(and Weston and Devine) that any foreign creatures will
be vicious and savage.
Ransom eventually comes to
realise that this is not the case at all, quite the
contrary. In fact, as he learns about the hnau of Malacandra
and the eldila of the Heavens, he comes back to medieval
cosmology: the Heavens, all that is beyond the Moon,
are ordered and permanent (The Discarded Image 3-5).
This realisation starts to bring him a sense of delight,
that is, once he looks at these strange creatures and
this strange planet with the correct perspective; "it
all depended on the point of view" (OSP 58).
Point of view has to do with
our perceptions of the world around us. Largely, what
Ransom most appreciates about the Malacandra view of
things has much in common with certain medieval concepts.
One of the elements of Malacandra that ties it to Medieval
Europe is the landscape itself. As described in an essay
by Chad Walsh: "the very colors that engage his [Ransom's]
eyes...have a subdued quality, as though anything flamboyant
would be out of place" (64). This description is the
way that some people view order, as monotonous, lifeless,
and boring. To C.S. Lewis, though, it was the opposite.
One of Lewis's former pupils John Lawlor relates this
story: "when an American interviewer ventured sympathy
for a somewhat monotonous existence [Lewis] replied,
unaffectedly, 'I like monotony'" (25).
The creatures of Malacandra
reflect the order of the planet and the monotony, which
would not be foreign to Lewis or certain medievals.
For instance, the eldila are reminiscent of an old belief
"that the air is inhabited by a great many beings, some
good and some bad, who will live there till the world
ends" (Discarded Image 2). Another resemblance is in
the Malacandran vision of the universe and their world.
They believe that "everything links up with everything
else...not in flat equality, but in a hierarchical ladder"
(Ibid. 12). This is the only way that order is to be
had, the Malacandrans know. An elder sorn (another of
the three types of rational creatures upon Malacandra)
states it thus:
there must be rule, yet how can creatures rule
themselves? Beasts must be ruled by hnau and hnau
by eldila and eldila by Maledil. These creatures
have no eldila. They are like one trying to lift
himself by his own hair --- or one trying to see
over a whole country when he is on a level with
it --- like a female trying to beget young on
herself. (102)
Here we have
the same sort of intricate vision of the universe that
was part of the old Model, which had as a prime motive
getting "everything in without a clash...by becoming
intricate, by mediating its unity through a great, and
finely ordered, multiplicity" (Discarded Image 11).
Being able to conceive of things as such takes a mind
which is geared towards seeing wholes, not minuscule
parts, as with a microscope (or telescope, even).
The nature of this view, this
conception, is poetic. Howard makes the claim that it
could be no other way, that even the scientist must
look to poetry to express delight in order and a system
which he discovers in the laboratory (76). Furthermore,
he makes the claim that "there is perhaps no truer way
to speak of the phenomena" (Ibid.). I think Lewis would
agree with this claim, that certain concepts demand
definition by certain vocations; e.g., leave it to science
to define atomic structure; to theologians and philosophers
to define virtue; and leave it to poets to describe
feelings (Cf. Discarded Image 20-1). This arrangement
is seen in Malacandra as the different hnau perform
different tasks, each doing their duty well. The hrossa
handle poetry and song, the pfifltriggi making and building,
and the seroni are the thinkers or 'scientists.' Each
type of creature has an appreciation of the others'
skills and abilities, but no hierarchy between them,
just a functioning trinity of tasks.
Ransom, who would be acquainted
with mostly ill-formed hierarchies and communities on
Thulcandra (Earth, i.e., the Silent Planet), obviously
has a negative conception of them in general. 'All cannot
be well,' he must think, since it is beyond us to think
of hierarchy as a good thing. His preconceived view
is expressed clearly when he attempts to get at which
hnau actually rule Malacandra; he is thwarted since
the hrossa cannot understand his rationale (OSP 69-70).
As he goes along he sees that hierarchy can be good,
and that the chief problem upon our planet is, in the
words of the sorn Augray, "every one of them wants to
be a little Oyarsa himself" (Ibid. 102). This notion
has a well-phrased corollary in John Donne's "An Anatomy
of the World: the First Anniversary":
Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,
For every man alone thinks he hath got To be a
phoenix, and that there can be None of that kind,
of which he is, but he.
For the physicist
Weston this is well and good; the only hierarchies are
those that come from evolutionary theory: that which
outlasts all else is champion. Weston says as much when
arguing with the Oyarsa: "Life is greater than any system
of morality...it is not by tribal taboos and copy-book
maxims that she has pursued her relentless march from
the amœba to man and from man to civilization" (136).
By Life, I assume, Weston has in mind the life of the
scientist in particular as the type of human best representative
of progress.
This view is a narrow one
indeed and could not be much further from both the Malacandran
conception and the medieval. The medievals, Lewis notes,
had a certain
love of the labyrinthine; the tendency to offer
to the mind or the eye something that cannot be
taken at a glance, something that at first looks
planless though all is planned. Everything leads
to everything else, but by very intricate paths.
(Discarded Image 194)
That this links
up with the Malacandran notion is made plain in the
description of the pfifltrigg's stone carving with its
map of the solar system and history upon it (114). Neither
this view nor Weston's idea rejects the notion of a
plan; they differ in how it is perceived and what is
done with it.
For the Malacandrans the plan
is from Maledil, i.e. God, as perceived through the
eldila. On Thulcandra there are no eldila evident, and
our only way to receive an idea of a plan is by divine
revelation and prayer. But in the Medieval Model we
find daemons, or middle spirits, "and through them alone
we mortals have any intercourse with the gods" (Discarded
Image 41). The idea is pagan in origin but was fitted
into the Model because it was still believed. These
daemons acted like the eldila and so led us on the right
path, or could, anyhow (Cf. Plato, Apology, 27e, 31c).
The idea of creatures that perform this task has been
lost in modern times, and we are more comfortable to
call it our 'conscience,' something within us. The entire
meaning of the daemon (or as it is sometimes known,
genius) has been lost, along with the idea of attendant
spirits that are part of a hierarchy and a whole. Suddenly
the notion of a plan has gone away, and it becomes almost
necessary for humans to think themselves their own Oyarsa.
But 'almost' is an important
qualifier here because there are still people like Lewis
who will remind us about the history of the world that
has been rejected (or discarded). One of the ways he
does this is through stories like Out of the Silent
Planet that reexamine old truths, and question whether
they are actually worth discarding. This process represents
an older conception of literature: "Literature exists
to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour,
to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honorable,
and delightful things are superior to it" (Discarded
Image 214). The act of artistic creation is intended
to serve a purpose in the Model, and this is how it
is on Malacandra as well (as with the aforementioned
carving). Howard comes up with a question on this front:
"Is the universe to be imagined under an imagery of
distance and mechanics, or of dance and solemnity and
joy?" (81). This is what it all boils down to, competing
Models; it seems the former is winning out nowadays.
"Dinosaurs" like C.S. Lewis
are becoming fewer and further between as each year
rolls onward. Still, the Model does remain, discarded
but not defeated. The idea that C.S. Lewis had in mind
was not to recommend we readopt the Primum Mobile but
to develop a newer Model that we can accept. Edward
Zogby explains it in terms I think Lewis would have
liked: "Although...each age needs, and develops according
to its need, a Model which provides a controlling principle
of order, we, while we wait for the emergence of the
Model...must continue to use what we have" (23). It
seems like Creation is positively overflowing, and this
makes it necessary to construct a Model, to put some
sort of boundaries on it all which reflects the spiritual
and material sides of things.
The notion that the earth,
of which one person fills some negligible portion, is
simply a tiny planet in the infinite universe used to
fulfill the task of mortifying human pride and ambition
(Cf. Discarded Image 26). Now, it seems, the notion
either takes all meaning out of existence or is itself
cause for pride (that we could quantitatively figure
this out). Either way the point is missed: the infinite,
omniscient Deity loves us enough to give us an orderly
world and life which is ours to recognize or not. Those
like Weston will never be able to see it for the simple
reason that they will not. The entire idea they find
displeasing and anathema since it requires a check on
one's personal desires and pride, which is what duty
is. Ransom came around eventually to the truth of this
and submitted: "I am here now and ready to know your
will with me" (OSP 122). Since he is a character in
literature, as conceived by C.S. Lewis, he is meant
to teach. Not only this, but he enlightens us about
Lewis's own life and the scholar's extraordinary reaction
to Medieval literature and the world view it represented.
Accepting this view makes sense out of the final sentence
of the novel, written by Ransom to Lewis the narrator:
"The way to the planets lies through the past; if there
is to be any more space-travelling, it will have to
be time-travelling as well" (160). We can see Lewis
as Ransom nearly ever step of the way, moving towards
acceptance of duty, and his discovery of the liberating
qualities of obedience and order.
Works
Cited
Donne, John. "An Anatomy
of the World: the First Anniversary." John Donne's
Poetry. Ed. A.L. Clements. New York: Norton, 1966.
Howard, Thomas. C.S.
Lewis: Man of Letters. San Francisco: Ignatius,
1987.
Lawlor, John. C.S. Lewis:
Memories and Reflections. Dallas: Spence, 1998.
Lewis, C.S. The Discarded
Image. Cambridge: Camridge UP,1995.
Out of the Silent Planet.
New York: Scribner, 1996.
Walsh, Chad. "The Reeducation
of the Fearful Pilgrim." The Longing for a Form:
Essays on the Fiction of C.S. Lewis. Ed. Peter J.
Schakel. Kent, Ohio: Kent State UP, 1977, pp. 64-72.
Zogby, Edward. "Triadic
Patterns in Lewis's Life and Thought." The Longing
for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C.S. Lewis.
Ed. Peter J. Schakel. Kent, Ohio: Kent State UP, 1977,
pp. 20-39
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