S6E4 – OSP 2 – “Cocktail”

The Pints With Jack crew have a tipple and talk about Ransom’s long-awaited drink in Chapter 2 of Out of the Silent Planet.

S6E4: “Cocktail” (Download)

Clips

Show Notes

Introduction

Drop-In

• Dr. Holly Ordway

Quote-of-the-week

A don in the middle of long vacation is almost a non-existent creature, as you ought to remember. College neither knows nor cares where he is, and certainly no one else does.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

Episode Movie Title

Chit-Chat

• David
  • Lots of snow in Wisconsin!
• Matt
  • Nothing exciting happening in his life at the moment!
  • Looking forward to “Santa Hunting” at Christmas.
• Andrew
  • Santa was being driven around town by the Fire Department!

Toast

• Drinks
  • David was drinking carbonated water.
  • Andrew was drinking Fettercairn ‘1824’ 12 Year Old
  • Matt was drinking Macallan 12
• Foreign language “cheers”
  • “Salud!” (Spanish)
  • “Salud, dinero y amor, y el tiempo para gozarles”
• Patreon toast
  • David Madden

Story Recap

In the story we met our protagonist, a Cambridge Philologist named Elwin Ransom. Late in the day on his solo walking holiday, he is looking for lodgings. He meets a lady who asks him to stop at a nearby house where her son works and to request that he be sent home. At the house, Ransom interrupts a scuffle between the lady’s son and two men. After discovering that he attended school and university with one of these individuals, they assure him of their good intentions and he is invited into the house for refreshments.

The story so far…

Opening thoughts…

Don’t be hasty!

Treebeard, J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)

• The YouTuber whom David mentioned is Eleanor Morton. David said it was a reference to Ransom, but it’s actually to Professor Kirk:

Discussion

1. “Inside the house”

The room into which he had been shown revealed a strange mixture of luxury and squalor. The windows were shuttered and curtainless, the floor was uncarpeted and strewn with packing-cases, shavings, newspapers and boots, and the wall-paper showed the stains left by the pictures and furniture of the previous occupants. On the other hand, the only two arm-chairs were of the costliest type, and in the litter which covered the tables, cigars, oyster-shells and empty champagne-bottles jostled with tins of condensed milk and opened sardine-tins, with cheap crockery, broken bread, and teacups a quarter full of tea and cigarette-ends.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

2. “Memories”

He felt for him that sort of distaste we feel for someone whom we have admired in boyhood for a very brief period and then outgrown… that kind of humour which consists in a perpetual parody of the sentimental or idealistic clichés of one’s elders. For a few weeks his references to the Dear Old Place and to Playing the Game, to the White Man’s Burden and a Straight Bat, had swept everyone, Ransom included, off their feet… begun to find Devine a bore… flashy… ready-made… the mystery of Devine’s election to the Leicester fellowship, and the further mystery of his increasing wealth… ‘A damn clever chap, Devine, in his own way,’ … ‘It’s a mystery to me how that man has got where he is.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

• Philology Corner
  • “Insubstantial” means lacking strength and solidity.
  • “Unsubstantial” means having little or no solidity, reality, or factual basis.

Pogo was a wit, Pogo was a dressy man, Pogo was a man about town, Pogo was even a lad.

C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 4)

But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy: it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it,

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter 6)

• Essays from The Weight of Glory:
  • Membership
  • The Inner Ring

3. “Waiting for a drink…”

…placed the tray on the floor beside Ransom’s chair, and addressed himself to opening the bottle. Ransom, who was very thirsty indeed by now, observed that his host was one of those irritating people who forget to use their hands when they begin talking.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

• The place names mentioned by Ransom seem to be fictional, but we are told that the house is in the Midlands.

On a walking-tour you are absolutely detached. You stop where you like and go on when you like. As long as it lasts you need consider no one and consult no one but yourself.’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

• David spoke about walking The Camino.

• This is a (Soda) Syphon:

A don in the middle of long vacation is almost a non-existent creature, as you ought to remember. College neither knows nor cares where he is, and certainly no one else does.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

• The reference to “aged and honest parent” might be a reference to Great Expectations.

‘God!’ exclaimed Devine, his corkscrew still idle. ‘Do you do it for money, or is it sheer masochism?’

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

• Philology Corner
  • “Tipping your hand” means to reveal one’s intentions inadvertently.
  • “Tipping your hat” is a gesture of politeness or acknowledgement.

4. “Weston and Devine”

“…if you knew Weston you’d realize that it’s much less trouble to go where he wants than to argue the matter. What you call a strong colleague.”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

“…all straight stuff—the march of progress and the good of humanity and all that, but it has an industrial side”

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

Teach him to call it “real life” and don’t let him ask what he means by “real”.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Letter #1)

• Andrew has heard this song sung by Francis Collins:

Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.

Evolutionary Hymn

5. “Drugged!”

• The Lost Lewis Tapes

Ransom could never be sure whether what followed had any bearing on the events recorded in this book or whether it was merely an irresponsible dream. 

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

6. “I dreamed a dream…”

• David’s interpretation of the dream:
  • Bright garden is the earth
  • Darkness is the unknown… maybe “space”?
  • The men transgress the glass-covered wall showing that they’re going to transgress a barrier
  • Strange creatures. Might we meet some strange creatures in a few chapters?
  • Weston and Devine are ejected, while Ransom is stuck on the wall. Is this saying he’ll become a man between two worlds?
  • Ransom has an aching leg. Is this foreshadowing of a future wound?
  • Whereas Devine and Weston say nothing in the dream, Ransom uses language to ask a question. Will language be important in the adventure?

7. “Overheard conversation and escape attempt”

• Eugenics is the purposeful “cleansing” and steralisation of “undesireables”.

Concluding Thoughts

Still, he’s only an individual, and probably a quite useless one.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 2)

Wrap-Up

Question-of-the-week

Do you think Ransom’s dream is significant and, if so, what do you think it means?

Question-of-the-week

Find us online

• Please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
• We would be grateful if new listeners would rate and review us on their preferred podcast platform.