S8E10 – Perelandra – Chapter 8: “Riddles in the Dark”

Separated from the Green Lady and Weston, Ransom travels to another island where he hears riddles in the dark…

S8E10: Chapter 8 – “Riddles in the Dark” (Download)

Show Notes

Introduction

Quote of the Week

He remembered his old suspicion that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (Chapter 8)

Chit-Chat

• This episode was recorded on November 22nd, the anniversary of Lewis’ death. Andrew took a moment to talk about his trip to Westminster Abbey with other Lewis scholars.
• Snow has arrived in Wisconsin, David announced, though it didn’t last. They all joked about their different climates they’re living in: David and Matt are waiting in trepidation for snowfall, while Andrew is enjoying his mild Florida weather.
• David is currently reading another book with a green lady: “Wicked”. So far, he’s not a fan, and finds the book rather dark. For a better story with a verdigris individual, Andrew recommended he read Tolkien’s adaptation of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”.
• Matt is reading “The Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros, describing it as “Red Rising”, meets “Ender’s Game”, meets “The Inheritance Cycle”.

Toast

• We’re all drinking Best Day Brewing’s “West Coast IPA”, a non-alcoholic beer and we’re toasting new Patreon supporter Mark Molpus.
• They talked about the hoppiness of Californian IPAs, and where to find good British beer. The secret is to ask “what’s local?”

Discussion

Chapter Summary

Ransom awakes on the Fixed Land feeling uncomfortable and hungry. He searches the island for food and drink, and discovers Weston has somehow left.

A large fish carries him to a floating island where he overhears Weston tempting the Green Lady to just think about sleeping on the Fixed Land. When the Lady defers to the King, Weston tries to convince her that it’s better that she “grow older” than her husband. 

Ransom realises something is controlling Weston. He drifts off to sleep with the feeling that all Perelandra is revelling and singing joyfully in the Lady’s victory.

• Once again, David stole some of this summary from That Hideous C. S. Lewis Substack.

01. “A Rough Morning”

Q. As seems often the case, we begin the chapter with Ransom waking up. How’s he feeling this morning?

• The best way to describe Ransom’s awakening is that he feels hungover. It’s certainly a deviation from the soft and idyllic floating islands.

He had a dry mouth, a crick in his neck, and a soreness in his limbs.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Nothing on the fixed land is quite as good as on the floating islands. The animals are duller, the food blander. The contrast is so great that Ransom wonders if he is back on Thulcandra, and his journey to Perelandra just a pleasant dream.

It was so unlike all previous wakings in the world of Venus, that for a moment he supposed himself back on Earth: and the dream (for so it seemed to him) of having lived and walked on the oceans of the Morning Star rushed through his memory with a sense of lost sweetness that was well-nigh unbearable.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• The word “dream” will make a reappearance throughout the chapter.

Q. Ransom is hungry and thirsty but his duty pushes him to look for Weston. What does he discover?

• Confused as to whether he is in the right valley, Ransom goes to get a drink, and after his refreshment, he sees clearly that the supply box has been emptied and the punt (boat) is gone.

As he lifted his face from the water with a long sigh of satisfaction, his eyes suddenly fell on a little wooden box–and then beyond it on a couple of tins. His brain was working rather slowly and it took him a few seconds to realise that he was in the right valley after all, and a few more to draw conclusions from the fact that the box was open and empty, and that some of the stores had been removed and others left behind.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• He’s bewildered how Weston could have recovered from his catatonic fit so quickly.

But was it possible that a man in Weston’s physical condition could have recovered sufficiently during the night to strike camp and to go away laden with some kind of pack? Was it possible that any man could have faced a sea like that in a collapsible punt? It was true, as he now noticed for the first time, that the storm (which had been a mere squall by Perelandrian standards) appeared to have blown itself out during the night; but there was still a quite formidable swell and it seemed out of the question that the Professor could have left the island. Much more probably he had left the valley on foot and carried the punt with him.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

Q. Ransom assumes Weston is somewhere else on the island and goes looking for him. Why?

• Ransom recognises that something has changed with Weston’s arrival in Perelandra, and decides that it is wisest to keep tabs on his enemy.

[He decides he] must keep in touch with his enemy. For if Weston had recovered, there was no doubt he meant mischief of some kind. Ransom was not at all certain that he had understood all his wild talk on the previous day; but what he did understand he disliked very much, and suspected that this vague mysticism about “spirituality” would turn out to be something even nastier than his old and comparatively simple programme of planetary imperialism.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Reluctant to face evil, or else feeling incredibly charitable, Ransom attributes some of Weston’s ramblings to his seizure-like symptoms.

It would be unfair to take seriously the things the man had said immediately before his seizure, no doubt; but there was enough without that.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Andrew does not think taking Weston seriously is unfair judgement. He talked about Edmund’s return in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, where Edmund lies about his travels in the land of the Wardrobe. Peter begins upbraiding Edmund, and is about to deliver hard truths about his lacklustre character, Susan stops him.

02. “Searching the Island”

Q. Ransom then searches the island – what does he find?

• He finds food – something like bilberries on the upper slopes and nuts in the wooded valley.

Some fruit like bilberries could be gathered in handfuls on the upper slopes, and the wooded valleys abounded in a kind of oval nut. The kernel had a toughly soft consistency, rather like cork or kidneys, and the flavour, though somewhat austere and prosaic after the fruit of the floating islands, was not unsatisfactory.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• He runs into more piebalds, finding them stupider than the animals on the floating islands. It seems as though everything on the fixed land is not quite as good as it is on the floating land.
• Ransom sees at least 23 of the islands drifting nearby. He hopes the King is on one, and has found his bride, the Green Lady. There’s a large task facing him, and Ransom does not want the responsibility, particularly because he feels at a disadvantage.

Without thinking it out very clearly, he had come to rest almost all his hopes on the King.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Finding no trace of Weston, Ransom concludes that he must have left the island. He is nervous for what Weston might do.

The best to hope for was that he would simply ignore the master and mistress of Perelandra as mere savages or “natives.”

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Though he doesn’t have a plan or a desire to engage Weston, he still retains an openness, as seen in the first book, “Out of the Silent Planet”.

03. “Water Ride”

Ransom is tired. Walking on the Fixed Land has made his feet hot, so he goes for a wade in the sea. He encounters one of the large fish, like the ones who had ferried him to the Fixed Land. Ransom wonders whether it could have been sent for him. He climbs onboard and it immediately takes him out to sea. They pass various islands, but the fish continues swimming for over an hour. Night then falls.

Q. What does Ransom see at this point?

• Bioluminescent creatures below the water. There’s that word “heraldic” again; we’re beginning to see that there is a martial element to Venus.

A whole world of phosphorescent creatures seemed to be at play not far from the surface–coiling eels and darting things in complete armour, and then heraldically fantastic shapes to which the sea-horse of our own waters would be commonplace. They were all round him–twenty or thirty of them often in sight at once.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• But then Ransom sees something else: mer-people. He questions whether or not he’s dreaming.

…mixed with all this riot of sea-centaurs and sea-dragons he saw yet stranger forms… veritable mermen or mermaids… The resemblance to humanity was indeed greater, not less, than he had first supposed… They were more like human faces asleep, or faces in which humanity slept while some other life, neither bestial nor diabolic, but merely elvish, out of our orbit, was irrelevantly awake.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

Q. What does the presence of these mermaids and mermen cause Ransom to wonder?

• He wonders if the myths of Thulcandra might be fact on Perelandra. He also wonders about the King and Queen’s evolutionary history. The “myth” that Ransom might be alluding to is the city of Atlantis.

He remembered his old suspicion that what was myth in one world might always be fact in some other. He wondered also whether the King and Queen of Perelandra, though doubtless the first human pair of this planet, might on the physical side have a marine ancestry. And if so, what then of the man-like things before men in our own world? Must they in truth have been the wistful brutalities whose pictures we see in popular books on evolution? Or were the old myths truer than the modern myths? Had there in truth been a time when satyrs danced in the Italian woods?

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Matt talked about the journey of the Hallow app’s founder, Alex Jones, and how he and his team had to learn surrender to God’s will.
• Andrew talked about the Arthurian nature of the book, and the knightly quest that Ransom has been tasked with.
• Matt discussed the themes of scientism, which were prevalent in Lewis’ day. Many who adopted this line of thinking thought that evolution would stop Christianity in its tracks. Lewis weaving it into his stories is intentionally trying to discredit this notion.

Q. Ransom pushes these thoughts aside when he catches a growing fragrance… what is it?

He knew well what it was. He would know it henceforward out of the whole universe–the night-breath of a floating island in the star Venus.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• This line clearly echos Susan from “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, when she hears the name of Aslan.

Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.

C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

• Lewis is trying to encapsulate longing, otherwise known as Sehnsuct.

It was strange to be filled with homesickness for places where his sojourn had been so brief and which were, by any objective standard, so alien to all our race. Or were they? The cord of longing which drew him to the invisible isle seemed to him at that moment to have been fastened long, long before his coming to Perelandra, long before the earliest times that memory could recover in his childhood, before his birth, before the birth of man himself, before the origins of time. It was sharp, sweet, wild, and holy, all in one, and in any world where men’s nerves have ceased to obey their central desires would doubtless have been aphrodisiac too, but not in Perelandra.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• An “aphrodisiac” is a drug that makes one a slave to Aphrodite.
• Sensuality is an invitation to joy. This is seen in “Surprised by Joy”, when Lewis’ brother Warnie brings him petals from the garden of their prior house; he experiences remembered joy.

Ransom discovers that he’s arrived at a floating island. He stumbles around as he gets used to the movement of the island and without fear he takes some fruit from a nearby tree…

It was none of the fruits he had tasted before. It was better than any of them. Well might the Lady say of her world that the fruit you ate at any moment was, at that moment, the best. Wearied with his day’s walking and climbing, and, still more, borne down by absolute satisfaction, he sank into dreamless sleep.

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• This is another pre-echo of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, when they arrive at Aslan’s table.

04. “Stepping Out Into What Might Be…”

Q. Ransom awakes while the world around is still in darkness. He hears the sound of a man and woman very close by. What are they discussing?

• It is clear that they have been discussing the Fixed Land, and the rule about dwelling on it. The man, who we later discover is Weston, has begun his work of bending her thoughts. The woman asks:

“I am wondering,” said the woman’s voice, “whether all the people of your world have the habit of talking about the same thing more than once. I have said already that we are forbidden to dwell on the Fixed Land. Why do you not either talk of something else or stop talking?”

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Andrew referred to “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters” explaining that the higher a thing is, the lower it may become once corrupted, and that it may only take minor corruptions to lead to the destruction of souls.

The better stuff a creature is made of—the cleverer and stronger and freer it is—then the better it will be if it goes right, but also the worse it will be if it goes wrong.  A cow cannot be very good or very bad; a dog can be both better and worse; a child better and worse still; an ordinary man, still more so; a man of genius, still more so; a superhuman spirit best—or worst—of all.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one-the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C. S. Lewis, Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters

• Back to the story: the man says the rule is strange, and a contradiction of the rule on Thulcandra, his home planet. Of course, this rule would make no sense on earth, since the only place where humans can dwell is on fixed land. This argument by Weston is not so much a direct attack as a sowing of suspicion where it is not needed.
• He next suggests that even if she does not follow through, she should consider dwelling on the fixed land. The Lady’s response is clever:

“Because this forbidding is such a strange one,” said the Man’s voice. “And so unlike the ways of Maleldil in my world. And He has not forbidden you to think about dwelling on the Fixed Land.”
“That would be a strange thing–to think about what will never happen.“

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Thinking about staying on fixed land isn’t a sin in and of itself, but it is rather useless. The only thing that could be gained from it is temptation to act in a sinful way.
• The man says that it’s literature!

“…in our world we do it all the time. We put words together to mean things that have never happened and places that never were: beautiful words, well put together. And then tell them to one another. We call it stories or poetry. In that old world you spoke of, Malacandra, they did the same. It is for mirth and wonder and wisdom.”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• The scene reflects the play “Back to Methuselah” by George Bernard Shaw. In it, the serpent tempts Eve by asking her to dream of things that never were.

“You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?”

George Bernard Shaw, The Serpent, Back to Methuselah

• It’s interesting to see how Weston’s philosophy on the humanities has changed since “Out of the Silent Planet”.

“I don’t care twopence what school he was at nor on what unscientific foolery he is at present wasting money that ought to go to research.”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Out of the Silent Planet, Chapter One

• Andrew referred again to “The Screwtape Letters”, and the Devil wanting to keep people fixated on the unknown future rather than the fixed past or the tangible present.

It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future.

C. S. Lewis, Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters

• He also recommended Christians follow the teachings of St. Paul:

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

• These teachings are how the Lady acts throughout the course of the conversation; bringing the conversation back to the desires of Maleldil.
• Matt asked when – if ever – it is okay to indulge in fantasy. Once again, David and Andrew thought “Screwtape” was useful here to explain how Weston is attempting to capture the woman’s imagination.

Think of your man as a series of concentric circles, his will being the innermost, his intellect coming next, and finally his fantasy. You can hardly hope, at once, to exclude from all the circles everything that smells of the Enemy: but you must keep on shoving all the virtues outward till they are finally located in the circle of fantasy, and all the desirable qualities inward into the Will. It is only in so far as they reach the will and are there embodied in habits that the virtues are really fatal to us. (I don’t, of course, mean what the patient mistakes for his will, the conscious fume and fret of resolutions and clenched teeth, but the real centre, what the Enemy calls the Heart.) All sorts of virtues painted in the fantasy or approved by the intellect or even, in some measure, loved and admired, will not keep a man from our Father’s house: indeed they may make him more amusing when he gets there.

C. S. Lewis, Screwtape, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter Six

• Andrew suggests that the Devil changes tactics frequently, and that one should be on the lookout for this. The tools themselves are relatively neutral, much like a gun is a neutral object, to be used for good or evil depending on the wielder. The best thing to consider is if the thing that one is thinking of is drawing him closer to God or to the self.
• The man says that Maleldil desires us to think of impossibilities:

“Because the world is made up not only of what is but of what might be. Maleldil knows both and wants us to know both.”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• This blows the Lady’s mind:

“Stepping out of what is into what might be and talking and making things out there . . . alongside the world.”

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

Q. When the Lady says she will have to ask the king what he thinks of these ideas, she realises that the world could have been different such that she had never been parted from the king. What does the man say?

• He says that separation does not happen on fixed land. This is not entirely true, of course.
• The man does appear to be encouraging agency, but not in a particular direction. Again, he contends that Maleldil has never encouraged the Lady to think about staying on the Fixed Land.

“He has never forbidden you to think about it. Might not that be one of the reasons why you are forbidden to do it–so that you may have a Might Be to think about, to make Story about as we call it?”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• David said that the scene reminded him of the ape Shift from “The Last Battle”.

05. “Older Than the King”

Q. The Lady says that she’ll get the King to make her “older” about this matter. How does the man respond?

• The man responds by saying that, in the matter of Stories, he may be no older than the lady, after all, Piebald/Ransom has made the lady older on a number of matters which the King had never mentioned. He claims that this is from God:

“…now Maleldil has sent you other men whom it had never entered your mind to think of and they have told you things the King himself could not know.”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• The Lady’s response is wonderful, as she recognises a potential good that Maleldil intended for her.

“I begin to see now why the King and I were parted at this time. This is a strange and great good He intended for me.”

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Andrew encouraged listeners to heed the word of St. Paul again, and consider the good God intends out of bad or uncertain situations.

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28

• Matt said that pain can serve the purposes of God. Lewis writes about this in “The Problem of Pain”.

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Q. The Lady says that Maleldil is not putting much into her mind about these questions, giving us a hint of the constant communication we’ve seen between them up until now. What is the man’s explanation for this?

• He describes it as “letting go of your hand a little”, but the lady points out that Maleldil is everywhere.
• The man says this is true, but He is making the lady “learn things not straight from Him but by [her] own meetings with other people and [her] own questions and thoughts”. He even goes so far as to say that through this Maleldil is making her “a full woman”, comparing her til now to being like the dumb beasts. 

Q. The man says that when the Queen meets the King again, she will know more and make him older. How does she react to this?

• She says Maleldil would not like this. In reply the man asks:

“Do you not think the King must sometimes be tired of being the older? Would he not love you more if you were wiser than he?”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• She asks:

“Is this what you call a Poetry or do you mean that it really is?”

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Weston assures her that everything he’s said has been real. But she responds:

 “But how could anyone love anything more? It is like saying a thing could be bigger than itself.”

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• The man argues that if the lady followed this course, she’d be like the woman on his world.

“They are of a great spirit. They always reach out their hands for the new and unexpected good, and see that it is good long before the men understand it. Their minds run ahead of what Maleldil has told them. They do not need to wait for Him to tell them what is good, but know it for themselves as He does. They are, as it were, little Maleldils. And because of their wisdom, their beauty is as much greater than yours as the sweetness of these gourds surpasses the taste of water. And because of their beauty the love which the men have for them is as much greater than the King’s love for you as the naked burning of Deep Heaven seen from my world is more wonderful than the golden roof of yours.”

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Lewis has talked about the true and good version of this ascent to holiness in “Mere Christianity”. We are meant to reflect God’s glory, not our own:

“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity

• The Lady says that she wishes she could see it all and, unlike earlier with Malacanda, she does not seem to receive any vision. However, rather than responding in envy, she immediately turns to praise:

“How beautiful is Maleldil and how wonderful are all His works: perhaps He will bring out of me daughters as much greater than I as I am greater than the beasts. It will be better than I thought. I had thought I was to be always Queen and Lady. But I see now that I may be as the eldila. I may be appointed to cherish when they are small and weak children who will grow up and overtop me and at whose feet I shall fall. I see it is not only questions and thoughts that grow out wider and wider like branches. Joy also widens out and comes where we had never thought.“

C. S. Lewis, The Green Lady, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• This reply was clearly a defeat for Weston, who sulks away.

“I will sleep now,” said the other voice. As it said this it became, for the first time, unmistakably the voice of Weston–and of Weston disgruntled and snappish.

C. S. Lewis, Weston, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

06. “Let the Heavens Rejoice, Let the Earth Be Glad”

Q. The man announces that he will now sleep and it’s only now that Ransom concludes for certain that the man was Weston… How is it possible that he hadn’t been certain until now?

• Weston’s “snappish” voice and the subject they were discussing sounded like Ransom’s old foe; but the manner in which he was speaking was a departure from his usual “alternation between pompous lecturing and abrupt bullying”!
• There were also other questions:

1. How did Weston recover from his physical crisis so quickly?
2. How did he reach the floating island?

• Ultimately, he determines that Something has control over Weston, and it’s something worse than him.

Something which was and was not Weston was talking: and the sense of this monstrosity, only a few feet away in the darkness, had sent thrills of exquisite horror tingling along his spine, and raised questions in his mind which he tried to dismiss as fantastic. 

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• Weston thinks that by turning away from God, he becomes greater. However, the more you turn away form God, the worse you become, and the less you retain of yourself. This is shown most explicitly in “The Great Divorce”, where the ghosts are shadows of themselves, until the spirits arrive to help them become solid on the journey. Service to God is perfect freedom and reality. Service to the enemy looks like slavery and unreality.
• Bob Dylan was right:

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

Bob Dylan, Gotta Serve Somebody

• We will be used either way, but who you serve will determine how you are treated.

Satan is without doubt nothing else than a hammer in the hand of a benevolent and severe God. For all, either willingly or unwillingly, do the will of God: Judas and Satan as tools or instruments, John and Peter as sons.

C. S. Lewis, Letter to St. Calabria, September 20th, 1947

Q. We’re told that Ransom was conscious of a sense of triumph at the conclusion of the conversation between the man and woman, but who or what is triumphant?

From without, most certainly from without, but not by the sense of hearing, festal revelry and dance and splendour poured into him–no sound, yet in such fashion that it could not be remembered or thought of except as music. It was like having a new sense. It was like being present when the morning stars sang together [Job 38:7]. It was as if Perelandra had that moment been created–and perhaps in some sense it had. The feeling of a great disaster averted was forced upon his mind…

C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, Chapter Eight

• This calls to mind the biblical imagery from Job…

when the morning stars sang together,
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Job 38:7

Q. As Ransom falls asleep, what is his hope?

• Ransom hopes that a second attempt will not be made, and that he was brought to the planet to be simply a witness to the averted crisis.

Wrap Up

Concluding Thoughts

• Andrew reminded listeners that though things might seem dark, if we invite God in, we can be victorious.

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