Perelandra
Encyclopedia
Perelandra is the second book in the Space Trilogy
of C. S. Lewis
, set in the Field of Arbol. It was first published in 1943.
Elwin Ransom
, some years after his return from Mars
at the end of Out of the Silent Planet
, receiving a new mission from Oyarsa, the angel
ic ruler of Mars. After summoning a (fictionalized) version of C.S. Lewis to his country home, Ransom explains to Lewis that he (Ransom) is to travel to Perelandra (Venus
), where is located a new Garden of Eden
and a new Adam and Eve
, to oppose the diabolically-inspired human physicist Professor Weston
, who has been sent to corrupt the Eve figure. He is transported in a boxlike vessel seemingly made of ice, which contains only himself. He gets Lewis to blindfold him so he is not blinded by the travel due to the sunlight. He does not wear any clothes on the journey as Oyarsa tells him clothes are unnecessary on Venus.
Ransom arrives in Venus after a journey in which he is surrounded by bright colours; the box dissolves leaving Ransom on what appears to be an oceanic
paradise. One day is about 23 Earth hours, in contrast to the (roughly) 24 and 25-hour days of Earth and Mars. The sky is golden and very bright but opaque. The sun cannot be seen; hence the night is pitch black with no stars visible.
Strange, mythical creatures resembling small dragons roam the planetary sweet-water ocean, which is dotted with floating rafts of vegetation. These rafts resemble islands, to the extent of having plant and animal life upon them; however, having no geologic foundations, they are in a constant state of motion. A single mountain, called the Fixed Land, exists on the planet.
Ransom meets Tinidril, the Queen of the planet; a cheerful being who soon accepts him as a friend. Unlike the inhabitants of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet
, she resembles a human in physical appearance with the exception of her skin color, green; this is said to be the preferred form assumed by civilized animals as a result of the manifestation
of Maleldil
, the second person of God
, in human form. She and the King of the planet, who is largely unseen until the end, are the only human inhabitants and are the Eve and Adam of their world. They live on the floating raft
s Ransom has seen and are forbidden to sleep on the "Fixed Land".
The rafts or floating islands are indeed Paradise, not only in the sense that they provide a pleasant and care-free life (until the arrival of Weston) but also in the sense that Ransom is for weeks and months naked in the presence of a beautiful naked woman without once lusting after her or being tempted to seduce her.
The plot thickens when Professor Weston arrives in a spaceship and lands in a part of the ocean quite close to the Fixed Land. He at first announces that he is a reformed man, but appears to still be in search of power. He pledges allegiance to what he calls the "Life-Force", and subsequently shows signs of demonic possession
. Weston finds the Queen and tries to tempt her into defying Maleldil's orders by spending a night on the Fixed Land. Ransom, perceiving this, believes that he must act as a counter-tempter.
Well versed in the Bible
and Christian theology
, Ransom realises that if the pristine Queen, who has never heard of Evil
, succumbs to Weston's arguments, the Fall of Man
will be re-enacted on Perelandra. He struggles through day after day of lengthy arguments illustrating various approaches to temptation, but the demonic Weston shows super-human brilliance in debate (though when "off-duty" he displays moronic, asinine behaviour and small-minded viciousness) and moreover appears to never need sleep.
With the demonic Weston on the verge of winning, the desperate Ransom hears in the night what he gradually realises is a Divine voice, commanding him to physically attack the Tempter. Ransom is reluctant, and debates with the divine (inner) voice for the entire duration of the night. A curious twist is introduced here; whereas the name "Ransom" is said to be derived from the title "Ranolf's Son", it can also refer to a reward given in exchange for a treasured life. Recalling this, and recalling that his God would (and has) sacrificed Himself in a similar situation, Ransom decides to confront the Tempter outright.
Ransom attacks his opponent bare-handed, using only physical force. The Tempter, unable to withstand this despite his superior abilities of rhetoric, flees, whereupon Ransom chases him over the ocean, Weston fleeing and Ransom chasing on the backs of giant and friendly fish
. During a fleeting truce, the 'real' Weston momentarily re-inhabits his body, and displays his experience of Hell
, wherein the damned soul is not consigned to the pain of flames, but is absorbed into the Devil
, losing all independent existence.
While Ransom is distracted by his horror and his feelings of pity and compassion for Weston, the demon takes control of the body, surprises Ransom, and tries to drown him. The chase continues into a subterranean cavern, where Ransom seemingly kills Weston and, believing his quest to be over, searches for a route to the surface. Weston's body, horribly injured but still animated by the Devil, follows him. When they meet for the last time in another cavern, Ransom smashes Weston's head with a stone and consigns the body to volcanic flames.
Returning to the planet's surface after a long travail through the caverns of Perelandra, Ransom recuperates from his injuries, all of which heal fully except for a bite on his heel which he sustained at some point in the battle; this bite continues bleeding for the rest of his time on earth.
Ransom meets the King and Queen together with the Oyéresu of Mars and Venus, all of whom celebrate the prevention of a second biblical "Fall" and begin to create their utopia
. The story climaxes with Ransom's vision of the essential truth of life in the Solar System
, and possibly of the nature of God
: strongly paralleling the journeys of Dante
in the Divine Comedy.
His mission accomplished, he returns, rather reluctantly, to Earth in another box while blindfolded to continue the fight against the forces of evil on their own territory.
, and deals with many of the same issues: the value of hierarchy, the dullness of Satan
, and the nature of unfallen sexuality, for instance. To an extent, it can be viewed as a commentary on Milton's
poem, but a commentary which is intelligible to a reader ignorant of the original.
Lewis's description of Perelandra's environment and rotation period is, of course, inconsistent with the actual conditions on Venus, but astronomical observation at the time of writing of the novel had not yet positively determined this to be the case. A Venus largely or wholly covered by a worldwide ocean was a common theme in science fiction works of the time—a logical, though eventually proven erroneous, inference from the planet's thick cloud cover that it had constant rainfall and ubiquitous oceans.
The third volume of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength
, is set on Earth
and, perhaps inevitably, has rather a different tone from the prior two volumes; Ransom is a key character but is "off-stage" for much of the action.
Space Trilogy
The Space Trilogy, Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy is a trilogy of science fiction novels by C. S. Lewis, famous for his later series The Chronicles of Narnia. A philologist named Elwin Ransom is the hero of the first two novels and an important character in the third.The books in the trilogy...
of C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
, set in the Field of Arbol. It was first published in 1943.
Plot summary
The story starts with the philologistPhilology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
Elwin Ransom
Elwin Ransom
Elwin Ransom is the prominent character from C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy series. He is the main character in the books Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, which are told almost entirely from his point of view...
, some years after his return from Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
at the end of Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The...
, receiving a new mission from Oyarsa, the angel
Angel
Angels are mythical beings often depicted as messengers of God in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles along with the Quran. The English word angel is derived from the Greek ἄγγελος, a translation of in the Hebrew Bible ; a similar term, ملائكة , is used in the Qur'an...
ic ruler of Mars. After summoning a (fictionalized) version of C.S. Lewis to his country home, Ransom explains to Lewis that he (Ransom) is to travel to Perelandra (Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
), where is located a new Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
and a new Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
, to oppose the diabolically-inspired human physicist Professor Weston
Professor Weston
Professor Weston is arguably one of C. S. Lewis's greatest satanic characters. An eminent physicist on earth, he first appears in Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, which is the first in Lewis’s Space Trilogy...
, who has been sent to corrupt the Eve figure. He is transported in a boxlike vessel seemingly made of ice, which contains only himself. He gets Lewis to blindfold him so he is not blinded by the travel due to the sunlight. He does not wear any clothes on the journey as Oyarsa tells him clothes are unnecessary on Venus.
Ransom arrives in Venus after a journey in which he is surrounded by bright colours; the box dissolves leaving Ransom on what appears to be an oceanic
Ocean planet
An ocean planet is a hypothetical type of planet whose surface is completely covered with an ocean of water.Planetary objects that form in the outer solar system begin as a comet-like mixture of roughly half water and half rock by mass...
paradise. One day is about 23 Earth hours, in contrast to the (roughly) 24 and 25-hour days of Earth and Mars. The sky is golden and very bright but opaque. The sun cannot be seen; hence the night is pitch black with no stars visible.
Strange, mythical creatures resembling small dragons roam the planetary sweet-water ocean, which is dotted with floating rafts of vegetation. These rafts resemble islands, to the extent of having plant and animal life upon them; however, having no geologic foundations, they are in a constant state of motion. A single mountain, called the Fixed Land, exists on the planet.
Ransom meets Tinidril, the Queen of the planet; a cheerful being who soon accepts him as a friend. Unlike the inhabitants of Mars in Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet
Out of the Silent Planet is the first novel of a science fiction trilogy written by C. S. Lewis, sometimes referred to as the Space Trilogy, Ransom Trilogy or Cosmic Trilogy. The other volumes are Perelandra and That Hideous Strength, and a fragment of a sequel was published posthumously as The...
, she resembles a human in physical appearance with the exception of her skin color, green; this is said to be the preferred form assumed by civilized animals as a result of the manifestation
Incarnation (Christianity)
The Incarnation in traditional Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity, also known as God the Son or the Logos , "became flesh" by being conceived in the womb of a woman, the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos .The Incarnation is a fundamental theological...
of Maleldil
God the Son
God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus of Nazareth as God the Son, united in essence but distinct in person with regard to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit...
, the second person of God
God in Christianity
In Christianity, God is the eternal being that created and preserves the universe. God is believed by most Christians to be immanent , while others believe the plan of redemption show he will be immanent later...
, in human form. She and the King of the planet, who is largely unseen until the end, are the only human inhabitants and are the Eve and Adam of their world. They live on the floating raft
Raft
A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is the most basic of boat design, characterized by the absence of a hull...
s Ransom has seen and are forbidden to sleep on the "Fixed Land".
The rafts or floating islands are indeed Paradise, not only in the sense that they provide a pleasant and care-free life (until the arrival of Weston) but also in the sense that Ransom is for weeks and months naked in the presence of a beautiful naked woman without once lusting after her or being tempted to seduce her.
The plot thickens when Professor Weston arrives in a spaceship and lands in a part of the ocean quite close to the Fixed Land. He at first announces that he is a reformed man, but appears to still be in search of power. He pledges allegiance to what he calls the "Life-Force", and subsequently shows signs of demonic possession
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
. Weston finds the Queen and tries to tempt her into defying Maleldil's orders by spending a night on the Fixed Land. Ransom, perceiving this, believes that he must act as a counter-tempter.
Well versed in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Christian theology
Christian theology
- Divisions of Christian theology :There are many methods of categorizing different approaches to Christian theology. For a historical analysis, see the main article on the History of Christian theology.- Sub-disciplines :...
, Ransom realises that if the pristine Queen, who has never heard of Evil
Evil
Evil is the violation of, or intent to violate, some moral code. Evil is usually seen as the dualistic opposite of good. Definitions of evil vary along with analysis of its root motive causes, however general actions commonly considered evil include: conscious and deliberate wrongdoing,...
, succumbs to Weston's arguments, the Fall of Man
The Fall of Man
In Christian doctrine, the Fall of Man, or simply the Fall, refers to the transition of the first humans from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience to God. In Genesis chapter 2, Adam and Eve live at first with God in a paradise, but the serpent tempts them into...
will be re-enacted on Perelandra. He struggles through day after day of lengthy arguments illustrating various approaches to temptation, but the demonic Weston shows super-human brilliance in debate (though when "off-duty" he displays moronic, asinine behaviour and small-minded viciousness) and moreover appears to never need sleep.
With the demonic Weston on the verge of winning, the desperate Ransom hears in the night what he gradually realises is a Divine voice, commanding him to physically attack the Tempter. Ransom is reluctant, and debates with the divine (inner) voice for the entire duration of the night. A curious twist is introduced here; whereas the name "Ransom" is said to be derived from the title "Ranolf's Son", it can also refer to a reward given in exchange for a treasured life. Recalling this, and recalling that his God would (and has) sacrificed Himself in a similar situation, Ransom decides to confront the Tempter outright.
Ransom attacks his opponent bare-handed, using only physical force. The Tempter, unable to withstand this despite his superior abilities of rhetoric, flees, whereupon Ransom chases him over the ocean, Weston fleeing and Ransom chasing on the backs of giant and friendly fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
. During a fleeting truce, the 'real' Weston momentarily re-inhabits his body, and displays his experience of Hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
, wherein the damned soul is not consigned to the pain of flames, but is absorbed into the Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
, losing all independent existence.
While Ransom is distracted by his horror and his feelings of pity and compassion for Weston, the demon takes control of the body, surprises Ransom, and tries to drown him. The chase continues into a subterranean cavern, where Ransom seemingly kills Weston and, believing his quest to be over, searches for a route to the surface. Weston's body, horribly injured but still animated by the Devil, follows him. When they meet for the last time in another cavern, Ransom smashes Weston's head with a stone and consigns the body to volcanic flames.
Returning to the planet's surface after a long travail through the caverns of Perelandra, Ransom recuperates from his injuries, all of which heal fully except for a bite on his heel which he sustained at some point in the battle; this bite continues bleeding for the rest of his time on earth.
Ransom meets the King and Queen together with the Oyéresu of Mars and Venus, all of whom celebrate the prevention of a second biblical "Fall" and begin to create their utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
. The story climaxes with Ransom's vision of the essential truth of life in the Solar System
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
, and possibly of the nature of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
: strongly paralleling the journeys of Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
in the Divine Comedy.
His mission accomplished, he returns, rather reluctantly, to Earth in another box while blindfolded to continue the fight against the forces of evil on their own territory.
Discussion
Perelandra was published in 1943, one year after A Preface to Paradise LostParadise Lost
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
, and deals with many of the same issues: the value of hierarchy, the dullness of Satan
Satan
Satan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
, and the nature of unfallen sexuality, for instance. To an extent, it can be viewed as a commentary on Milton's
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
poem, but a commentary which is intelligible to a reader ignorant of the original.
Lewis's description of Perelandra's environment and rotation period is, of course, inconsistent with the actual conditions on Venus, but astronomical observation at the time of writing of the novel had not yet positively determined this to be the case. A Venus largely or wholly covered by a worldwide ocean was a common theme in science fiction works of the time—a logical, though eventually proven erroneous, inference from the planet's thick cloud cover that it had constant rainfall and ubiquitous oceans.
The third volume of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength
That Hideous Strength
That Hideous Strength is a 1945 novel by C. S. Lewis, the final book in Lewis's theological science fiction Space Trilogy. The events of this novel follow those of Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra and once again feature the philologist Elwin Ransom...
, is set on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
and, perhaps inevitably, has rather a different tone from the prior two volumes; Ransom is a key character but is "off-stage" for much of the action.
Publication history
- 1943, UK, The Bodley Head, N/A, Pub date ? December 1943, hardback (first edition)
- 1996, USA, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-684-83365-4, pub date ? October 1996, hardback
- 2003, USA, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-7432-3491-7, pub date 7 April 2003, paperback
- An unabridged reading by Alex Jennings was broadcast on BBC Radio 7's The Seventh DimensionThe 7th DimensionSeventh Dimension is the BBC's regular radio slot for science fiction, fantasy and horror. It is broadcast on the digital radio station BBC Radio 4 Extra at 6 p.m. , seven days a week and then repeated each day at midnight with host Nick Briggs. Most of the programs are full cast dramatizations and...
in 18 parts, originally in 2003 and repeated in 2008.
Further reading
- Downing, David C., Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy. University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87023-997-X
External links
- Quotations & Allusions in Perelandra
- Perelandra the Opera Donald Swann's opera, based on Lewis' book