S6E18 – OSP 16 – “Gods and Monsters”

Ransom encounters the kindness of Séroni and listens to their speculations regarding the key problem with humanity.

S6E18: “Gods and Monsters” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Drop-In

• Dr. Don W. King

Quote-of-the-week

“It is because every one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Episode Movie Title

Chit-Chat

• Andrew
  • Shane Hull from Commonplace Quote visited!
  • Attending Further up and further in performance in Jacksonville.
• David
  • Starting a new job at PartySlate!
  • Attending the BareFace ballet performance in Chicago!
  • Visiting Chicago once a quarter!
• Matt
  • –

Toast

• Drinks
  • David was drinking Laphroaig
  • Matt was drinking Mortlach 16 and Inchfad 13
  • Andrew was drinking Benriach
• Foreign language “cheers”
  • “Chon-Kâew!” (Thai)
• Patreon toast
  • Gary Jacabella

Philology so far…

David tested Matt on his Malacandrian vocubulary:

1. What is the name for earth and what does it mean?
   • “Thulcandra” and it means “The Silent planet”
2. What are the names for lowlands (Handramit) and highlands (Harandra)
   • Lowlands is “Handramit” and highlands is “Harandra”.
3. What are the three races we’ve heard about on Malacandra?
   • Séroni
   • Hrossa
   • Pfifltriggi
4. What do you call a group of people who kill a hnakra?
   • It is “Hnakrapunti”
5. “Arbol hru” refers to gold, but what does it literally mean?
   • It means “Sun’s blood”
6. When Ransom learned about God, what two names were used?
   • He heard about “Old One” and “Maleldil (the Younger)”
7. What does Hnau mean?
   • It is a rational creature (and includes elements of virtue somehow)

Story Recap

Ransom kidnapped from earth and taken to the planet Malacandra to be given to the Sorns He escapes his captors and lives for some time among another race, the hrossa. Together with his friends Hyoi and Hwin, Ransom kills a water monster, but Hyoi is soon shot by Ransom’s abductors. Hwin sends Ransom to Oyarsa, sending him over the highlands to meet Augray along the way. When Ransom meets Augray, he discovers that he is the creature he has long feared – a Sorn. Until…

The story so far…

Discussion

1. “A new dawn, a new day…”

Ransom wakes up feeling much better:

Ransom awoke next morning with the vague feeling that a great weight had been taken off his mind

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Although he likes Augray, he still prefers the hrossa:

…he was far from feeling the same affection for [the hrossa].

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Matt referred to Dr. Jerry Root‘s phrase that…

Reality is iconoclastic

Jerry Root

2. “Race relations”

Augray throws some shade at the hrossa:

They do not seem to know from looking at an animal what sort of lungs it has and what it can do. It is just like a hross. If you died on the harandra they would have made a poem about the gallant hmān and how the sky grew black and the cold stars shone and he journeyed on and journeyed on; and they would have put in a fine speech for you to say as you were dying . . . and all this would seem to them just as good as if they had used a little forethought and saved your life by sending you the easier way round.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Ransom wants to defend his friends:

‘I like the hrossa,’ said Ransom a little stiffly. ‘And I think the way they talk about death is the right way.’

…they do not seem to look at [death] reasonably as part of the very nature of our bodies—and therefore often avoidable at times when they would never see how to avoid it.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Although he now sees the Séroni as friends, he still hasn’t had his perception completely transformed:

Ransom could not restrain a shudder at the touch of the sorn’s hands upon his body; they were fan-shaped, seven-fingered, mere skin over bone like a bird’s leg, and quite cold.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

When discussing Matt’s tendency towards self-sufficiency, Andrew quoted the following line:

…relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done

C.S. Lewis, Letter to Mrs Lockley (September 1949)

The oxygen machine came from the pfifltriggi. It turns out that the pfifltriggi are the artisans and engineers, but most ideas seem to come from the Séroni:

‘We thought it,’ said the sorn, ‘and the pfifltriggi made it.’…

‘They like making things,’ said Augray. ‘It is true they like best the making of things that are only good to look at and of no use. But sometimes when they are tired of that they will make things for us, things we have thought, provided they are difficult enough. They have not patience to make easy things however useful they would be.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

3. “The Iron Giant and Stone Surface”

David referred to Monty Python‘s “Ministry of Silly Walks”:

Seeing the barren surface of the planet, we hear about the Malacandrian view of life, death, and eternity:

‘It is the old forests of Malacandra,’ said Augray. ‘Once there was air on the harandra and it was warm. To this day, if you could get up there and live, you would see it all covered with the bones of ancient creatures; it was once full of life and noise. It was then these forests grew, and in and out among their stalks went a people that have vanished from the world these many thousand years…

…a world is not made to last for ever, much less a race; that is not Maleldil’s way.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

Ransom being perched on Augray’s shoulder reminded Andrew of Merry and Pippin riding on Treebeard in The Lord of the Rings:

4. “Seeing séroni clearly”

Ransom sees the Séroni anew:

Even the faces, it seemed to him, he had not then seen aright. He had thought them spectral when they were only august, and his first human reaction to their lengthened severity of line and profound stillness of expression now appeared to him not so much cowardly as vulgar. So might Parmenides or Confucius look to the eyes of a Cockney schoolboy!

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

This transformation reminded Matt of the movie A Man Called Otto:

5. “School’s in session…”

Ransom is quizzed by the Séroni about Earth:

They worked systematically from the geology of Earth to its present geography, and thence in turn to flora, fauna, human history, languages, politics and arts.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

During this encounter, Ransom discovers a surprising attitude towards books on Malacandra:

…he gathered that books were few in Malacandra. ‘It is better to remember,’ said the sorns. When Ransom asked if valuable secrets might not thus be lost, they replied that Oyarsa always remembered them and would bring them to light if he thought fit.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

This reminded David of this line from the Qur’an:

If We ever abrogate a verse or cause it to be forgotten, We replace it with a better or similar one. Do you not know that Allah is Most Capable of everything?

The Qur’an (2:16)

…as well as something said by one of his favourite Early Church Father:

“The Holy Scriptures were not given to us that we should enclose them in books, but that we should engrave them upon our hearts”

St. John Chrysostom (4th Century)

…and Andrew linked this to passage in the New Testament:

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

John 14:26

Ransom decides that he will be completely honest during his interview with the Séroni:

He had decided from the outset that he would be quite frank, for he now felt that it would be not hnau, and also that it would be unavailing, to do otherwise. They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history—of war, slavery and prostitution.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

This passage has echos of Mere Christianity:

And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book II, Chapter 3)

The Sérnoi pinpoint the problem with humanity:

“It is because they have no Oyarsa… It is because everyone one of them wants to be a little Oyarsa himself”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

The co-hosts discussed the meaning of the final line of the chapter:

He thought only of the old forests of Malacandra and of what it might mean to grow up seeing always so few miles away a land of colour that could never be reached and had once been inhabited.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 16)

David quoted a psalm which Andrew noted happened to be the Lectionary that day:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From whence does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121:1-2

Andrew pointed to the longing which Lewis describes in his autobiography:

And every day there were what we called “the Green Hills”; that is, the low line of the Castlereagh Hills which we saw from the nursery windows. They were not very far off but they were, to children, quite unattainable. They taught me longing–Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the Blue Flower.

C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 10)

Wrap-Up

Question-of-the-week

What are some practices in your own life that help you not try to be a “little Oyarsa?”

Question-of-the-week

Andrew quoted Lewis’ inscription to Joy Davidman:

“There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace by better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false image of myself”

C.S. Lewis, Inscription in Joy Davidman’s copy of “The Great Divorce”

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