18: Ransom and I approached Oyarsa feeling a little trembly, as how could we not? There was a very Old Testament vibe about the whole thing. Hearing your name called in the night, like Samuel. Angels scaling Jacob's ladder. And of course, the angelic catchphrase: "Do not be afraid." Naturally it all makes Ransom, brave soul though he's becoming, crave a steaming cup of tea!
So now we're learning that Malacandra's former leader became "bent", that he's Satan, and that Heaven and the heavens are one and the same, the original celestial battleground. (Star Wars has nothing on this.)
I wonder if the name "Oyarsa" is possibly derived from ursa, or bear. It'd fit in nicely with the constellation Ursa Major, besides Oyarsa's assertion that he asked the sorn to treat the humans as "cubs".
Cross-cultural humor apparently exists on Malacandra--in fact, it's implied to be the planet's main source of comedy.
19. I'm getting that The Magician's Nephew vibe again; this chapter is seriously reminiscent of that scene where the animals in Narnia get ahold of Uncle Andrew and decide to plant him as a tree, except that instead of clown-like antics we get shakes of the head. Weston and Devine go in, like Ransom, assuming that their subjects are stupid, but unlike Ransom they have no hope of letting go of it. Reminds me of The Great Divorce; a few of Hell's denizens were materialistic philosophers who continued to disbelieve in the afterlife even as they inhabited it!
Another element similar to Divorce is the idea of the otherworldly hymn. Divorce had a stunning section in which a heavenly chorus sang the praises of a saved soul; here there's an alien funeral dirge, and it is beautiful.
20. This chapter is all about translation, and reading it made me guess that deception and showiness simply has no place in the Malacandrian tongue. Weston uses flowery language that seems to be more for himself than for Oyarsa, but when Ransom translates it its grimmer meaning comes out in full force. I think he tries to be unbiased--he's a sincere fellow who really wants to help Devine and Weston--but there's simply no other way of putting it; Weston thinks murder is a sign of progress. Scary thing to read about in any time, but especially today, with abortion being spoken of as an integral part of women's rights.
Malacandra's most notable tenet is, I think, a lack of self-deception. Self-deception is a major theme--maybe the major theme--of Lewis' work, and an entire planet without it is a paradise despite the constant threat of death.
21. But Ransom realizes he can't stay in Eden--he belongs to Earth, so they bundle him off and send him on his way. First, though, Oyarsa gives him a guarantee that Weston and Devine won't kill him.
At the moment my sister Mary's playing Eve in a musical called Children of Eden, and she's been complaining about the script's take on Cain and Abel; apparently they change the story so that Cain kills Abel by accident, and his subsequent banishment seems like an overreaction on the part of an unforgiving God. The "Mark of Cain" is referenced for the rest of the script as a kind of curse that Cain's innocent descendants don't deserve.
What the scriptwriter seems to forget--accidentally or deliberately--is that the Mark of Cain was a protection, not a malediction. It was better than what Cain deserved, not worse. And in this chapter, it's bestowed on Ransom in the most loving way you can imagine.
What follows is the tensest period of the entire book, and it almost brought me to tears. It's not a battle, just extended cabin fever, which is infinitely more nightmarish. But it all leads up to what I think is one of the best journey-ending lines since "'Thank goodness', said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco jar."
I've only got a little bit left to read, but still, the journey's clearly not over. Like Whose Body?, this book is an extended opening chapter. Ransom wishes he'd seen more of Malacandra, and besides, Oyarsa dropped an Aslan-like hint that they might meet again!
22. Well, that put a powerful spin on things. Lewis played a similar game with his note at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters, but here it's all the more powerful because it comes last and takes the reader by surprise, with the chill of eternal consequences should we all become bent.
23. Wow--the postscript is the gutsiest and most human thing about this book. One of the writers of the Sherlock series had great things to say about Arthur Conan Doyle's audacity in having Holmes criticize Watson's writing (and therefore the novels he himself was in). Here Lewis does Doyle one better--he has the real "Ransom" write to Lewis, with barely-restrained snappiness, saying he understands and everything, but Lewis doesn't know the half of it!
There are just so many paradoxes here, where Lewis makes the entire book look even better by making it look worse. Ransom wants to know more about Malacandra, but he himself doesn't feel he fully understands the little that he does know. There are worlds within worlds, wheels within wheels. How creative and classic C.S. Lewis is this?
And--what's this--something about time travel?
Where's my copy of Perelanda?
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