Perelandra: Chapter 13

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. Unless you're the sort of person who likes skipping to the last page, go read the book first.

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To prevent another Fall on Perelandra, Maleldil instructed Ransom to kill the body of Weston, who became possessed by an evil spiritual Force and attempted to introduce evil to the green Queen of Perelandra. Maleldil put all the living creatures of Perelandra into a deep sleep, and after his own night's sleep that left him refreshed and spiritually renewed, Ransom confronted the Un-Man, beginning hand-to-hand combat, presumably to the death, between them. Ransom relied on his boxing skills while the feral Un-Man preferred to claw at Ransom's skin. After a time Weston escaped and rode out to the sea on one of the giant fish that the Perelandrians use for transportation; Ransom mounted another fish and pursued him.

In this chapter, the sea chase continues, with Ransom realizing just how far his pursuit of the Un-Man has taken him from anything like solid ground. He's out in the middle of the sea with no land or floating islands in sight. He spies some mer-men and tries to eat some of the seaweed they are eating, but the seaweed affects his mind, making him feel disoriented and forgetful of his mission; he throws the rest of it away. After a day and night of his fight with, and pursuit of, Weston, he is beginning to have doubts about his mission and the goodness of Maleldil.

In time he is approached by Weston on his fish, and it indeed appears to be Weston, as if he has regained control of his body from the Force. Weston is confused and terrified: that he is trapped on Perelandra, and that Ransom might abandon him. Having been possessed by a devil, he has had a foretaste of death; that, too, terrifies him. As the darkness closes in on them, Ransom tells Weston to stop talking nonsense and to pray to repent of his sins. But he is lifted off his fish and dragged under the sea.

This chapter begins, "Darkness fell upon the waves as suddenly as if it had been poured out of a bottle." It's a nice turn of phrase, and it suggests either that Ransom is somewhere near Perelandra's equator, or that it has a short day. As I noted earlier in the book, Lewis's depiction of Venus reflects the best science of his day, apart from the fantasy elements. There was still a question about the length of the Venerean day, whether it was short or long. Lewis seems to imply that the day is something like a terrestrial day, at least insofar as Ransom seems to have no trouble adjusting to it. Of course, today we know that Venus's solar day is very long, equivalent to 116 terrestrial days.

It's unclear to Ransom (and to us) whether the mer-men are intelligent. They are like men, but also, in his perception, like animals. Perhaps someday they will be intelligent but, for now, Maleldil hasn't put the spark of rationality in them. Lewis briefly introduces mer-men in the Chronicles of Narnia, though in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the Sea People are both intelligent and civilized, and apparently fearful or hostile to the Narnians, rather than indifferent.

The seaweed Ransom eats affects his perception and memory, which is why he throws it away. Is it a psychotropic, like cannabis? Or is it more "magical"? Under its influence he sees the ocean surface as the top of the world, and the floating islands like clouds, inaccessible. In other words, the seaweed gives him the mer-men's view of the world. In Perelandra, as in Narnia, the world of mer-men has nothing to do with the world of humans.

Sitting on his fish in the middle of the Perelandrian ocean, Ransom has a crisis of faith. He realizes he is but a speck on a vast ocean the size of a planet. How could this world have been made for the King and Queen, when most of it was uninhabitable by them? The planet itself was also but a speck in the vastness of space. And where, then, was Maleldil?

This is what is known as the argument from scale: in the grand vastness of the cosmos, humanity is an insignificant atom of no importance. It's actually a very old argument that's been discussed for centuries. Lewis himself frequently cited Ptolemy's second-century astronomy text, Almagest, as proof that the ancients knew Earth was infinitesimal compared to the whole of space. But he did not understand why it only recently had become an atheistic argument against Christianity.¹ But the argument from scale had been used by notable intellectuals such as H. G. Wells, J. B. S. Haldane, and Arthur Stanley Eddington, the very people whose philosophies Lewis was critiquing in the Space Trilogy.

Blaise Pascal famously said, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread."² But Pascal saw man as occupying the middle ground between Nothing and the Infinite. We are an atom to the whole of the universe, but something very small—a dust mite, say—is that in relation to us. We believe ourselves more capable of comprehending the small things, being bigger than them; but, in fact, "in either case it takes an infinite capacity.… These extremes touch and join by going in opposite directions, and they meet in God and God alone."³ The vastness of space ought to drive us to contemplate God's greatness rather than our own irrelevance. "I do not see how we could have come to know the greatness of God," writes Lewis, "without that hint furnished by the greatness of the material universe."⁴

Lewis writes, "the whole argument from size rests on the assumption that differences of size ought to coincide with differences of value."⁵ But he concludes that this is "an affair, not of reason but of emotion—of that peculiar emotion which superiorities in size produce only after a certain point of absolute size has been reached.⁶ That is, a small man is not morally insignificant compared to a large man, so we shouldn't assume that, faced with the vastness of creation, we are of no significance, either.

Ransom, too, has a sense of this, as we could guess:

Part of him still knew that the size of a thing is its least important characteristic, that the material universe derived from the comparing and mythopœc power within him that very majesty before which he was now asked to debase himself.

The Anglican newspaper, the Guardian (no relation to The Guardian), published "Dogma and the Universe" in two parts in March 1943, less than a month before Perelandra was published. I think it's possible that Lewis was developing both works at the same time, using the arguments of the one as plot points in the other.

In the first chapter, the fictional narrator-Lewis was beset by some sort of unease or fear that tempted him to turn back on his walk to Ransom's cottage. It may have been due to the influence of some malevolent spirits. Who is to say that Ransom's doubts, as he floats on the back of a fish in the endless Venerian ocean, are not similarly influenced now by the same bent eldila?

Weston, too, is terrified of the abyss. As a materialist scientist he had had no use for an afterlife. As a pantheistic believer in emergent evolution, he had an optimistic view of death in which one's consciousness was absorbed into the Cosmic Force. But now he knows his Force is a real evil spirit, who had pushed his own consciousness aside it used his body. He has seen the real horror of death: a prison in which the souls of the dead are packed, retaining a bare minimum of consciousness to feel their own decay, miserable, isolated from God and from all hope. He is horrified.

The thought of death puts Weston in a state of terror: terrified of the darkness, of the waves, of the thought of being abandoned by Ransom or marooned on Perelandra, even though right now he is perfectly safe from danger. Meanwhile, on Earth, Ransom tells him, hundreds of boys face death this very moment in the war. Weston sees death as a horror to be avoided; Ransom sees it as an inevitability to be prepared for. Weston needs perspective, and repentance.

Is this the real Weston? Lewis doesn't specifically say, and Ransom seems to have his doubts. Perhaps it's another trick of the Un-Man. Maybe it's the genuine personality of Weston, permitted to resurface by the evil Force to give Ransom a false sense of security. Either way, Weston drags Ransom into the water, and the battle between them continues in chapter 14.

Footnotes

1. C. S. Lewis, "Dogma and the Universe," in God in the Dock (1970, repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 39.

2. Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1995), no. 201 (Brunschvicg 206).

3. Pascal, Pensées, no. 199 (Brunschvicg 72).

4. Lewis, "Dogma and the Universe", 42.

5. Lewis, "Dogma and the Universe," 40.

6. Lewis, "Dogma and the Universe," 41.

Perelandra: Chapter 12

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Perelandra now. I promise I won't be offended.

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Elwin Ransom, Cambridge philologist, has been brought to the planet Perelandra (Venus) by Maleldil, the supreme spiritual ruler of the solar system. Here, he met the Venusian "Eve," a green lady, and his enemy, the physicist Weston. Weston became possessed by a demonic entity, and although his own personality apparently ceased to be, the entity inhabiting his body persistently tried to tempt the Green Lady to break Maleldil's one law, which forbade dwelling on Perelandra's lone fixed island.

Ransom soon determined that his own reason for being on Perelandra was to cofront the Un-Man, the thing inside Weston, and prevent Perelandra's Fall. However, he had neither the persuasive power nor the sheer persistence of the Un-Man, who did not require sleep. Maleldil revealed to him that his only recourse is to kill Weston's body. It was no accident that he was called Ransom: he was the one responsible to stop sin from entering Perelandra.

When Ransom awakens, after bathing and eating, he searches for the Un-Man. He finds him in the act of maiming a bird, and starts the fight by punching Weston's body in the jaw. Though they are evenly matched, man to man, their fighting styles are different: Ransom is a superior boxer, while the Un-Man claws and tears. In his mind, the fight's outcome boils down to whether he could pummel Weston's body to death before losing too much blood.

Perelandra: Chapter 11

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. You may well have a lot of reading ahead of you.

Ransom, brought by the Oyarsa of Malacandra to the planet Perelandra, encountered his enemy, the physicist Weston, there. Only Weston was no longer himself, having become possessed by the "Force" he reveres—really Satan or one of his fallen angels—and become what Ransom termed the "Un-Man." Weston was there to tempt and corrupt the Green Lady, the unfallen Eve of Perelandra. He did this by relentlessly trying to appeal to her sense of vanity and to persuade her that the one law on Perelandra, against dwelling on its fixed island, was made to be broken. Ransom attempted to dissuade her from heeding Weston. Fortunately, the Lady seemed resistant to the Un-Man's persuasive skills.

After days of this, Ransom sits against a tree and questions divine justice. He has made no headway against the Un-Man. If the Enemy was there in person, where is the representative of Maleldil to counter him? The answer that comes back to him in the dark is that, of course, he is Maleldil's man: an idea that he almost dismisses as blasphemy. But he realizes that Maleldil has been with him all along. His own arrival on Perelandra was as miraculous as Weston's. The fate of Perelandra is left in God's hands—and he and the Green Lady are those hands.

Perelandra: Chapter 10

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. I recommend you support your local bookseller or public library, and read the book first.

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Philologist Elwin Ransom, brought to the planet Perelandra (Venus) by Oyarsa, the spiritual ruler of Malacandra (Mars), encountered his old enemy Weston who had abducted him to Malacandra, while exploring Perelandra's sole fixed island with the Green Lady, the planet's only woman. Weston's personality is gone: Ransom believed he had become an Un-Man, an animated corpse possessed by the malevolent spirit Weston had called the Force, but which Ransom believed to be one of Satan's allies, if not Satan himself.

Ransom later found the Un-Man by following a trail of tortured animals. He was trying to tempt the Green Lady, into violating the one law decreed by Maleldil, the ruler of the universe: not to live or spend the night on the island. After Ransom dissuaded the Lady from listening to the Weston-thing, that was Weston, it engaged in psychological torture on him, calling his name for no reason to keep him awake all night.

Perelandra: Chapter 9

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. I recommend reading the book first. It's short, I promise.

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Ransom and the Green Lady of Perelandra were exploring the Fixed Land, the one solid island on the planet, when they encountered Weston, who had abducted Ransom to Mars in Out of the Silent Planet. Weston tried to persuade Ransom of his newfound belief in emergent evolution, directed by an impersonal, spiritual "Force." In doing so, he allowed himself to become possessed by this Force.

Ransom followed Weston off the Fixed Land back to the mats of floating vegetation that comprise most of the "land" on Venus. There, in the dark, he overheard Weston trying to persuade the Green Lady that the ban on staying on the Fixed Land, imposed by Maleldil, was not as severe as she assumed. It was permissible for her to imagine living there, as it would make her wiser.

When Ransom awakens, he walks along the "shore" of his island, where he encounters one of Perelandra's native animals. However, something or someone has torn the colourful frog-like thing apart. With difficulty, Ransom puts the still-living animal out of its misery. He then continues his walk, following a trail of mutilated frogs, until he comes across Weston in the act of gutting one before he escapes again.

Perelandra: Chapter 8

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Perelandra now. I promise I won't be offended.

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Ransom and the Green Lady were exploring the Fixed Land, Perelandra's only solid landmass, when they observed a spherical object fall into the sea. On the beach, Ransom was surprised to find his nemesis Weston, who had abducted him to Mars (in Out of the Silent Planet); likewise, Weston was surprised to see Ransom. Maleldil, the spiritual ruler of the Solar System, has forbidden the Green Lady and her male counterpart, the King, from spending the night on the Fixed Land. Therefore, Weston allowed her to leave, but he kept Ransom on the beach at gunpoint.

Weston told Ransom that his philosophy had changed since they were on Mars. There, he had been a materialist and a colonialist, believing that it was humanity's destiny to expand to the stars. Anything that stood in their way, including the rational inhabitants of Mars, was expendable. Since then, his beliefs had evolved to embrace emergent evolution directed by an impersonal, amoral spiritual essence he called the Force. In spite of Ransom's warning that all spirits are not good, Weston called this Force into himself, apparently allowing himself to be taken over by it, before lapsing into a coma. Left alone on the Fixed Land, Ransom slept on the beach.

Perelandra: Chapter 7

So, as I was saying…

You might be a flat-earther if...

I see a lot of flat-earth stuff on Facebook. I don't know how if any of it is sincere, or if most or all of it is just engagement farming or flamebait. I just know I can't look away. The amount of utter ignorance apparently on display astounds me.

It's been well understood for millennia that the earth was spherical. Simple observation proved that: ships leaving port didn't just appear to get smaller as they sailed away; they disappeared from the bottom up as though going over a hill. The shadow cast on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always a circle; only a sphere casts a circular shadow from all angles.

In the third century BC, Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth using a couple of sticks and high-school geometry. Some of his assumptions were off (for example, the exact distance and bearing from Alexandria and Syene), but his methodology was sound. Columbus wasn't trying to prove the world was round; that was understood. The dispute was over its size, and whether Asia wa reachable by sailing west from Europe. (Obviously, it wasn't. It was fortunate for Columbus that North America was in the way. He thought the globe was much smaller.) Enlightenment intellectuals in the 18th and 19th centuries concocted the myth that the ancients believed the world to be flat, in order to portray religion as anti-reason. In reality, educated people knew the earth was a sphere. That people today will seriously entertain the notion that we live on a planar surface just goes to show how un-educated we have become.

And now ... this (Sept. 24/25)

Did anyone get raptured yesterday? Anyone?

According to Joshua Mhlakela, a South African pastor, the Rapture was supposed to take place yesterday. Mhlakela claims he had a visit from Jesus, who personally revealed that he would come for his church on September 23 or 24, aligning with this year's Rosh Hashana. The Rapture prediction got traction on social media, mainly TikTok.

Mhlakela claimed to be "a billion percent sure" of his prediction. Perhaps he should have exercised just a little more skepticism.

At least he just outright lied and claimed Jesus told him. So we can be thankful we didn't have to wade through something like the late Harold Camping's impenetrable math proofs to find out he was full of bull.

No Perelandra chapter this week

I mean, you may have noticed.

Basically, between some personal matters and the news cycle of the last week or so, I've found myself either too busy or too preoccupied with other things to get beyond reading chapter 7 of Perelandra. So with next Sunday now closer than the last, I've decided just to leave it until this weekend rather than effectively double up. It's a significant chapter, anyway, and the extra time will be beneficial. It's worth doing right.