The Space Trilogy

PotW, I do understand that death on Malacandra (Mars) isn't like death here on earth. Normally you know from the get go when you are going to die and it is kind of like Star Trek in that you are beamed to the higher heaven, apparently to receive a new body.

Well, the next book I am going into soon is The Great Divorce. Is there a thread on that book?
 
Has anyone in this thread made a comparison of "Out of the Silent Planet" to Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian fantasy novels? As in Mr. Lewis' case, Burroughs made Mars inhabitable, but gave a nod to the environment not being QUITE as favorable physically as Earth's. Burroughs imagined that the inhabitants of Mars (which they called Barsoom) had high technology to regenerate their atmosphere--AND the silliness to put all the equipment for this in only one location, so that if anything went wrong there they had no backup.
 
I just started reading Mr. Burroughs Mars series and noticed that as well. I also noticed that with both writers, the inhabitants of Mars called their native planet by a different name ( Malacandra in Out of the Silent Planet" and "Barsoom" in John Carter of Mars).
 
Though Burroughs' Martian mood has none of Mr. Lewis' Christian insight, it counts for something that at least Burroughs advocates a code of chivalry in which the strong are expected to be merciful to the weak. In one book, even a professional ASSASSIN had a strict rule that he would kill NO ONE except men who he was sure deserved to die; and even then, as the narrative says, "All his killings were the outcome of fair fights in which the victim had every opportunity to defend himself and to slay his assailant."
 
In THS Mrs. Dimble asks Jane is she likes being kissed. This is Lewis' way of discribing how women get each other to open up to each other. To the ladies on this forum, has one of your girlfriends ever asked you this question instead of "whats bothering you?".
 
Inkspot, I thought for sure you were going to understand Lewis here. That Mrs Dimble knew there was trouble between Mark and Jane. Mrs. Dimble who has been married so long knew an unhappy wife just by looking, and that unhappy wives miss being kissed the way they want to be kissed.:rolleyes: Yes, I admire Lewis' insight of women, but he at times comes up with the weirdest ideas.
 
I have a question about That Hideous Strength. About the state of the characters Withers and Frost. Do you think they are still in possession of thier souls or are they unmen like Weston was in Perelandra? The Head was obviously an unman, but one in not sure about Withers and Frost. :)
 
I am for sure Frost still had a chance to reform, even after he started that fire that was going to kill him. Lewis makes clear that even as he observes what's happening, some part of him knows he ought to call on God for salvation, but he has committed himself so wholly to the macrobes, he forces himself not to listen to that one Truth which could save him. It seems clear to me that he was still in possession of his own soul.

Withers is a tougher case -- because Lewis never gives us much insight as to what's going on inside him except that the macrobes (I'm callin them that for lack of a beter term) have opened him up wider and wider, whereas in Frost they narrowed him down smaller and smaller, to a fine hard point ... Withers is so expanded, so stretched thing between humanity and supernature, it's hard to figure. But I would like to think he, too, had a choice.

Timmy, you understood Mrs. Dimble far better than I did! Maybe it's because I never yet have hated to be kissed .... :)
 
I am finally reading these books after they've been sitting collecting dust on my shelf for ages. I finished Out of the Silent Planet- which was great and am now reading Perelandra. I have to say, it feels a little slow at the moment but my cousin insists that this is a momentary blip (probably caused by a deficiency in my character) and that it is brilliant. Anyway, aside from this blip, I can't get out of my mind the part where the narrator is trying to get to Ransom's cottage and he finds it so difficult- his mind keeps coming up with great reasons to stay away.
Ransom understands these thoughts as being the work of the forces of darkness, which has made me think about that passage from Ephesians- 'I wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world...'
I wonder- how many of our discouraging thoughts and bad decisions come not entirely from within but also from without? and how can we learn to distinguish them from sensible hesitations/options?
 
Welcome back, Sam. You should replace your avi -- since you've been here, I think maybe it got lost. On my screen there's just a bracket with the words "Sam's Avatar."

Anyway, I am so glad you are reading the Space Trilogy. They are among my favorite books! (It occurs to me I didn't put them on my favorite book list over in the other thread, I'll have to go fix that ...)

But you are so right about the trouble the narrator has going to Ransom's cottage. That Scripture is perfectly apropos. I cannot think of a real experience where I felt that much resistance to doing what I had set out to do ... but maybe that's just due to my never having done anything as worthwhile as what the narrator was up to!
 
I hope all is well with you Inky with your confrontation. I was being a little sarcastic about understanding Lewis in his kiss question by Mrs. Dimble. But I do like Mrs. Dimble.

The more I go through THS I do feel that Withers and Frost are Un-men like Weston. There may be some awareness in them but they are in the end unable to control their actions. In Perelandra it is hard to know where is Westons soul, because Lewis only lets us see things from Ransom's point of view. In Weston we know that there came a point when he called on the macrobes to take control and we get the impression that Withers and Frost had done that too, and the wanted mark to do it to.

I do like having THS in Audiobook CD. It makes it so much easier to get though the slow beginning. Yes, I know reading is better for the mind.:rolleyes:
 
Thanks for remembering me, Timmy. :) The confrontation went better than I had imagined. I suppose you always think of something in advance as worse than it really will be. Lewis talked about that, I think in Screwtape: that there's a point where you can say to yourself, "By this time tomorrow, I will have" done whatever scary thing you have to do, and then all that's left is to do it ... "You die and die, and then you are beyond death" like a bottleneck of all the pressure, and they you're tossed out on the other side.
 
TimmyofOz said:
In Weston we know that there came a point when he called on the macrobes to take control and we get the impression that Withers and Frost had done that too, and they wanted Mark to do it too.
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Yes, I recall that it was said of one of those villains, "He had willed with all his heart that there should be no reality and no truth," while the other has the attitude, "There were not, there must not be, any such things as men"--an echo of The Abolition of Man.
 
Copperfox said:
Yes, I recall that it was said of one of those villains, "He had willed with all his heart that there should be no reality and no truth," while the other has the attitude, "There were not, there must not be, any such things as men"--an echo of The Abolition of Man.
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But we know Frost had an awareness that even at the last moment before his death he could have changed his allegiance -- he just wouldn't let himself do so. Did he have control or not? I think he did.
 
Inky, the point isn't that were they still saveable. Jesus can cast out any number of demons. My point is that are they as far as un-man in Perelandra. Maybe we need a forum on demon-possession. Is demon possession only like what we see in The Exorist or Legion in the Bible, or can a so called rational man be possessed like we see in Lewis' books?
 
Malachi Martin's research strongly suggests that NO ONE ever becomes demon-possessed without having given some kind of consent to it. The consent does not require full awareness of the demon's literal presence, but entails accepting the false ideas and wrong attitudes which the demon promotes.

Martin believed that a few people became "perfectly possessed," and would never be saved--NOT because God was UNABLE to save them even then, but because the victims themselves had gone SO far in stubbornly refusing His grace that He finally wrote them off, their perishing being by their own fault.
 
Again my point was when we think of a possesion we think of a crazy person like Legion, not a rational person. So I am asking if a rational person could be possessed and to have access to a demonic mind. Could some of these bad government leader be demon possessed. Yes, we know the Anti-christ will be possessed by Satan himself. But on the norm could a person be possessed like those in Lewis' books and function in a rational behavior. Doesn't possession generally cause the person to degrade into insanity?
 
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