Book Review: Perelandra
Jul. 20th, 2023 07:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerMy feeling with Perelandra is that C. S. Lewis didn’t have quite enough story to fill a whole book. He starts out strong: the descriptions of Venus are imaginative and delightful. I loved the floating islands, the delicious fruits, the bubble trees (the bubbles burst as you walk under them in the most refreshing shower, an image worthy of Narnia), and the Lady, the naked green Eve figure of Venus, with whom Ransom has some fascinatingly strange conversations.
(Ransom is also naked for the entire book, including when he’s climbing craggy rock faces.)
This is all very nice, but somewhat vague and meandering, so I sat up and took notice when a spaceship crash-landed. And it’s Weston, our old antagonist from Out of the Silent Planet! “Ah, here is the snake,” I thought, and settled in for the plot to start rip-snorting.
Unfortunately, there’s just not that much plot to get through, so Lewis has to pad it out with a bunch of philosophical meandering. Now Lewis has other books that are basically all philosophical meandering, like The Screwtape Letters, which I love! But in The Screwtape Letters Lewis is contemplating ethical behavior between human beings, a topic on which he is sharp and insightful, and here he’s contemplating The Nature of God and the Universe, on which he is fuzzy and repetitious.
Anyway, it turns out that Weston is actually possessed by a demon, and Weston/the demon try to tempt the Lady into disobeying the commands of Maleldil (God). Chapter after chapter passes in this way, and Ransom starts thinking “this can’t go on,” which I strongly suspect was a message to the author as much as anybody else.
Eventually, Lewis wises up that this message is meant for him, and Ransom decides he needs to kill not!Weston! Which takes three chapters! They spend half a chapter wrestling hand to hand, and then not!Weston flees across the sea on the back of a Venusian dolphin-like creature, and Ransom chases him, and they end up washed into a cave where Ransom at last gets his hands on a rock and smashes not!Weston’s head!
I personally felt that there was perhaps something a bit Cain-and-Abelish about this - Ransom has introduced murder to Venus? However, this is NOT what Lewis is going for, and when Ransom meets the Lady again (at long last reunited with her King, who has been bopping around somewhere else on Venus), they hail him more or less as Space Jesus, which Ransom finds so mortifying that they have to reassure him that he’s not actually that important! Sure, we will sing your praises for thousands of years, but, like, don’t worry about it.
Ransom was based on Tolkien, and I strongly suspect that Ransom’s in-book reaction is based directly on Tolkien twisting on his bar stool with mortification as Lewis read this aloud to the Inklings. “Jack, you can’t make me Space Jesus!” Unfortunately, Lewis already had, and it was far too deeply embedded in the book to remove.
Also, no more space otters. Not only are there no more space otters in this book, but apparently there will be no more space otters ever again, as Maleldil’s plans have moved beyond space otters to humanoid creatures. Maleldil, no! Keep making space otters! I see no reason to leave them behind!
(Ransom is also naked for the entire book, including when he’s climbing craggy rock faces.)
This is all very nice, but somewhat vague and meandering, so I sat up and took notice when a spaceship crash-landed. And it’s Weston, our old antagonist from Out of the Silent Planet! “Ah, here is the snake,” I thought, and settled in for the plot to start rip-snorting.
Unfortunately, there’s just not that much plot to get through, so Lewis has to pad it out with a bunch of philosophical meandering. Now Lewis has other books that are basically all philosophical meandering, like The Screwtape Letters, which I love! But in The Screwtape Letters Lewis is contemplating ethical behavior between human beings, a topic on which he is sharp and insightful, and here he’s contemplating The Nature of God and the Universe, on which he is fuzzy and repetitious.
Anyway, it turns out that Weston is actually possessed by a demon, and Weston/the demon try to tempt the Lady into disobeying the commands of Maleldil (God). Chapter after chapter passes in this way, and Ransom starts thinking “this can’t go on,” which I strongly suspect was a message to the author as much as anybody else.
Eventually, Lewis wises up that this message is meant for him, and Ransom decides he needs to kill not!Weston! Which takes three chapters! They spend half a chapter wrestling hand to hand, and then not!Weston flees across the sea on the back of a Venusian dolphin-like creature, and Ransom chases him, and they end up washed into a cave where Ransom at last gets his hands on a rock and smashes not!Weston’s head!
I personally felt that there was perhaps something a bit Cain-and-Abelish about this - Ransom has introduced murder to Venus? However, this is NOT what Lewis is going for, and when Ransom meets the Lady again (at long last reunited with her King, who has been bopping around somewhere else on Venus), they hail him more or less as Space Jesus, which Ransom finds so mortifying that they have to reassure him that he’s not actually that important! Sure, we will sing your praises for thousands of years, but, like, don’t worry about it.
Ransom was based on Tolkien, and I strongly suspect that Ransom’s in-book reaction is based directly on Tolkien twisting on his bar stool with mortification as Lewis read this aloud to the Inklings. “Jack, you can’t make me Space Jesus!” Unfortunately, Lewis already had, and it was far too deeply embedded in the book to remove.
Also, no more space otters. Not only are there no more space otters in this book, but apparently there will be no more space otters ever again, as Maleldil’s plans have moved beyond space otters to humanoid creatures. Maleldil, no! Keep making space otters! I see no reason to leave them behind!
