Talk:Out of the Silent Planet/Archive 1

Questions and suggestions
I like the detailed synopsis. However, I have some questions, and I don't have the book at present. Didn't the eldil summon Ransom to Oyarsa before the hñeraki hunt, and didn't Hyoi blame his death on failing to obey the summons immediately? Is hñeraki singular or (as I remember it) plural? Does Ransom decide at the end to oppose Weston, or is that an inference from Perelandra?

Since the eldila are mentioned in all three books, I think the material on them here should be moved to Space Trilogy. &mdash;JerryFriedman 23:30, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I forgot one. It would be nice to put in when Ransom realized that Malacandra was Mars. Was that in conversation with Augray? &mdash;JerryFriedman 16:43, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

No; Ransom suspects quite early on that Malacandra may be Mars, or the Moon. He realises it's Mars when he's looking at the carvings on the monoliths which show Malacandra in Mars's place in the solar system, just before his encounter with the pfifltrig --86.53.37.230 16:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Please avoid critical essays
I've just done a big revert, deleting the anonmyously added text I've copied below. I assume this is the same editor who's been adding his/her insights on other Lewis books, so please see my comments at Talk:That Hideous Strength. In this case, the deleted text is about one-third critical opinion that violates WP:NPOV, one-third unnecessarily detailed synopsis, and one-third explanation of the broader setting of the trilogy that belongs in Space Trilogy if anywhere. Sorry to be a party pooper. &#8592;Hob 04:52, 8 January 2006 (UTC)


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Interestingly, the eldila are also the classical Graeco-Roman gods, a point which is made quite explicit in the later books of the series, and the Oyarsa of Mars is quite literally the being which the Romans called the god Mars. Lewis, like most intellectual Europeans of his time (and the centuries before) was throughly familar with Classical Greek and Latin writings and regarded them as essential foundations of civilization. He reconciled the old polytheistic religion with his deeply Christian worldview by the expedient of assuming that these were never gods, and never claimed to be ones, that they always served the one true God, and that it was only the mistake of the pre-Christian Greeks and Romans to worship them as such. (The early Christians, who lived when this religion was a living force, would probsbly not be pleased with Lewis' idea...)

The same mixture is evident also in Lewis' "Narnia" series, where the inhabitants of the magic land flock to the banner of the lion Aslan who is a manifestation of Jesus, which does not at all stop them from feeling nostalgia to "The time when Bacchus visited Narnia and the streams ran with wine instead of water".

Lewis' friend Tolkien, too, depicts in his "Silmarillion" a pantheon of beings, the Valar, which resemble the Graeco-Roman gods, but are not true gods but rahter the servants of the real supreme God (called Eru or Iluvatar).

....

The dialogue of Oyarsa with Weston, Ransom acting as interpreter, is clearly intended to express Lewis's deep criticism of the modern materialisic Western culture (choosing the name "Weston" for this character might have been far from an accidental choice) and especially its superior attitude to "primitive" cultures.

For example, Weston states in English: "(...)Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilzation - with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system which is fast annihilating space and time. Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower."

Ransom tries to render all this as faithfully as possible into the Malacandrian tongue and what he comes up with is: "(...) He says that among you hnau [intelligent creatures] of one kindred all live together and the hrossa have spears like those we used a very long time ago and your huts are small and round and your boats are small and light and like our old ones, and you have only one ruler. He says it is different with us. He says we know much. There is a thing happens in our world when the body of a living creature feels pains and becomes weak, and he says we sometimes know how to stop it. He says we have many bent people and we kill them or shut them in huts and we have people for settling quarrels between the bent hanu about their huts and mates and things. He says we have many ways for the hanu of one land to kill those of another and some are trained to do it. He says we build very big and strong huts of stone and other things - like the pfifltriggi. And he says we exchange many things among ourselves and can carry heavy weights very quickly a long way. Because of all this, he says it would not be the act of a bent hnau if our people killed all your people".

Of the two "bent" humans appearing in the book, Devine's depravity is simply greed while Weston's is more complex. Weston has "bent" self-preservation and the well-being of others into an ideal of preserving humanity&mdash;though he admits he has no idea what form humanity will take in the future, or even if the future of humanity is another, non-human species. To Weston, this does not matter. The preservation of humanity is the important thing; and if necessary he will destroy every inhabitant of Mars in favor of his species. He will also sacrifice Ransom&mdash;it is the ideal, not people, that matters.


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Oyarsa doesn't humiliate Weston and Devine
Previous version of page said Oyarsa humiliates the two by dissecting their beliefs. But neither one is conscious of being humiliated. Devine basically goes crazy with gold-lust and colonialism; he humiliates himself. Weston is silenced by Oyarsa's argument, but in the end comes back fighting (verbally), however hopelessly; Oyarsa meets him on equal ground of debate, and wins, but doesn't humiliate him. Cphoenix 05:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Not the "Second" Chance
This is a comment about. Earlier in the century scientists believed that the solar system developed over eons from the outside in; thus science fiction traditionally presented Mars as old and dying, Venus as young and primitive, and Earth in the middle. Lewis is following that convention. Oyarsa says he and his people were already established on Mars at the time of the Fall. The unfallen life on Mars/Malacandra is not a "Second Chance". On the contrary, it is the original state that was lost by humans on the "fallen" Earth. Venus/Perelandra is the Second Chance. Living in the valleys is a second chance for survival for the Malacandrians, of course, but not in the grand theological sense.

Furthermore, I don't think Lewis had detailed ranks of angels in mind. For purposes of the story there are Mal-eldil (God) in charge of the universe, Oyarses in charge of planets, and various eldila that served them. CharlesTheBold 12:01, 1 February 2007 (UTC) CharlesTheBold

Independent Review presented as an External Link for Further Reading?
I once hosted an essay I wrote for an undergraduate English course on Charlotte Gilman's Herland as an external link at the end of its Wikipedia article, and a Wikipedia editor removed it a few times and fussed at me, telling me I was violating some Wikipedia rule(s) about presenting work that was not peer-reviewed and not authoritatively published -- thus, that it was not of the quality Wikipedia demands, and it was "original research" or work or whatever, which is against Wikipedia's rules (I forget the name).

Yet someone else has a link to his review of this book, just as my link for Gilman was my review of her book. Shouldn't it be removed on the same grounds? It is not clear from an initial glance at this fellow's webpage that he is some critical scholar, or why his review is hosted here.

-- Newagelink (talk) 04:57, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Puzzling last sentence
I'm not sure what the last sentence is trying to convey.

"Perhaps his creation of new worlds, like H.G. Wells, is particularly interesting knowing that it was only in 1923 that Edwin Hubble discovered "other" galaxies outside of our planetary system."

Mars has been known since ancient times. The ancient Greek writer Lucian invented the "life on other planets" fantasy idea. The existence of other planetary systems was proposed by Cardinal Nicholas Von Cusa during the Renaissance, and confirmed by Sir William Herschel in the late 1700s, and it was Herschel who defined a galaxy as a vast collection of star systems held together by gravity. The discovery of other galaxies beyond the Milky Way has no influence on Lewis' story, which is set in our own Solar System; one could even argue that Lewis might not have been aware of the discovery. CharlesTheBold (talk) 15:10, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Thulcandrans or Thulcandrians
I had changed this to Thulcandrians, but have had second thoughts, the planet is called Thulcandra, what would be the plural for it inhabitants? DMSBel (talk) 23:53, 20 October 2011 (UTC) Think I have found an answer - in the 2nd book Perelandra, Lewis refers to the inhabitants of Malacandra as Malacandrians, using that spelling. It would probably therefore be the same for Thulcandra, ie. Thulcandrians. As I had changed Malacandrians to Malacandrans, I'll change it back, and use Thulcandrian also. Apologies for any confusion. DMSBel (talk) 17:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)