Ransom helps the hrossa kill the hnakra.
S6E14: “Predator” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Drop-In
Quote-of-the-week
‘So,’ said Hyoi, ‘we are hnakrapunti. This is what I have wanted all my life.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
Episode Movie Title
- Predator (1987)
Chit-Chat
- David
- I’ve lost my job at Evernote, but am now doing final round of interviews
- My appearance on The Inklings Variety Hour podcast is now available.
- His next child will be a girl and her name will be Lucy.
- Andrew
- Starting a Owen Barfield class
- Planning with Canon Laura Biron Scott from Holy Trinity Church
- An upcoming article about Easter
- Just been confirmed for the Camp Allen C.S. Lewis retreat in October.
- His wife, Christin Ditchfield-Lazo has just received some new book contracts
- Encourages Matt to try Poetry 180
- Matt
- Working too hard.
- He attended a wedding this past weekend
- His Grandfather passed away
Toast
- Drinks
- Matt was drinking Benrinnes
- David was drinking Jura
- Andrew was drinking Lagavulin 11 Offerman Edition
- Foreign language “cheers”
- “Santé!” (French)
- Patreon toast
- Nathan Johnson
Story Recap
Cambridge professor Ransom, kidnapped by two men, including an old school acquaintance, and taken to Mars, finds himself at the center of a spiritual and interplanetary conflict. After escaping his captors, he finds himself among a friendly species, the hrossa. He learns their language, makes many friends and lives with them for some months. He learns about the three races in their society and also discovers he shares a common faith with the hrossa. After some time he finds himself hunting a hnakra, a water monster and the hrossa’s beloved and deadly foe.
The story so far…
Discussion
1. “Preparations”
Hunting the Hnakra is something which Ransom never thought he’d do, but his time on Malacandra seems to have changed him:
A short time ago, in England, nothing would have seemed more impossible to Ransom than to accept the post of honour and danger in an attack upon an unknown but certainly deadly aquatic monster… Perhaps, too, there was something in the air he now breathed, or in the society of the hrossa, which had begun to work a change in him…
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
Andrew used this passage to speak about obedience:
It was necessary, and the necessary was always possible
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
Previously we had said that “hnau” referred to rational creatures, but in this section it seems that it is also related to virtue, and fortitude in particular:
Whatever happened, he must show that the human species also were hnau.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
David noted homophonic names in Lewis’ characters. One of the hross we meet in this chapter is called “Whin”, which sounds the same as “Hwin” from the Narnian Chronicle, The Horse and His Boy. Incidentally, “hross” means “horse” in Icelandic.
2. “The Hunt”
David was getting flashbacks in this section to Dances with Wolves and it made Matt think of Braveheart:
Andrew referred to a poem where the cross speaks about the crucifixion of Christ:
Ransom humbles himself:
Something long sleeping in the blood awoke in Ransom. It did not seem impossible at this moment that even he might be the hnakra-slayer; that the fame of Hmān hnakrapunt might be handed down to posterity in this world that knew no other man… But he had had such dreams before, and knew how they ended. Imposing humility on the newly risen riot of his feelings, he turned his eyes to the troubled water of the current which they were skirting, without entering, and watched intently.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
When speaking about how our community and our surroundings change us, David quoted this passage from Mere Christianity:
If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 4)
3. “Ministering Spirit”
‘What is it, sky-born?’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
‘It is the Man with you, Hyoi,’ said the voice. ‘He ought not to be there. He ought to be going to Oyarsa. Bent hnau of his own kind from Thulcandra are following him; he should go to Oyarsa. If they find him anywhere else there will be evil.’
Andrew describes the difference between a kenning and an epithet. Also, when speaking about interruptions, he quoted a Lewis scholar he met in England at The Eagle and Child:
The grace is in the interruptions
Derick Bingham
Speaking of interruptions, while we were recording, we received a message from Jake Dean on Slack and Andrew read it out!
Loved this week’s episode. I can’t blame @Matt Bush for any misunderstandings regarding the representations…nature was fascinating. Also @David Bates I enjoyed you pointing out how the hrossa use the hnakra as a mascot and comparing it to our use of the symbolism of the cross (and how both are odd).
Jake Dean, Slack
We speculated that the eldil may be bringing news of pregnancy to Hleri, Hyoi’s wife:
‘I have a message for Hleri,’ said the eldil. ‘But you will not be able to take it. I go to her now myself. All that is well. Only—let the Man go to Oyarsa.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
4. “Sushi”
Ransom didn’t want to leave the hunt:
Ransom was not so sure of his courage but that one part of him felt an instant relief at the idea of any diversion from their present business. But the other part of him urged him to hold on to his newfound manhood; now or never—with such companions or with none—he must leave a deed on his memory instead of one more broken dream. It was in obedience to something like conscience that he exclaimed:
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
Ransom, Hyoi, and Whin kill the hnakra:
When he recollected himself they were all on shore, wet, steaming, trembling with exertion and embracing one another… He was one with them. That difficulty which they, accustomed to more than one rational species, had perhaps never felt, was now overcome. They were all hnau… And he, even Ransom, had come through it and not been disgraced. He had grown up.
‘So,’ said Hyoi, ‘we are hnakrapunti. This is what I have wanted all my life.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
5. “The gunshot”
Hyoi is killed by Weston and Divine:
At that moment Ransom was deafened by a loud sound—a perfectly familiar sound which was the last thing he expected to hear. It was a terrestrial, human and civilized sound; it was even European. It was the crack of an English rifle; and Hyoi, at his feet, was struggling to rise and gasping.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
David mentioned the adaptation of Out of the Silent Planet by Murphey Thelen, in which he voices Hyoi:
We discussed the final Hyoi’s final words, and a listener, Brian Shepherd, sent David an email earlier that week suggesting that this could be the equivalent of a knighthood, the conveying of an honour on Ransom before he sets off the on next part of his quest. Andrew compared it to Sir Peter Wolfsbane/Fenris-Bane in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. This lead to an extended discussion as to the possible male/female differences.
He did not know the words for ‘forgive,’ or ‘shame,’ or ‘fault,’ hardly the word for ‘sorry.’ He could only stare into Hyoi’s distorted face in speechless guilt. But the hross seemed to understand. It was trying to say something, and Ransom laid his ear close to the working mouth. Hyoi’s dulling eyes were fixed on his own, but the expression of a hross was not even now perfectly intelligible to him.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
‘Hnā—hmā,’ it muttered and then, at last, ‘Hmān hnakrapunt.’
David shared the (supposed) final words of Oscar Wilde:
My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.
Possible last words of Oscar Wilde
We then discussed the boat’s culpability in what happened:
No,’ said Whin. ‘I have been thinking. All this has come from not obeying the eldil. He said you were to go to Oyarsa. You ought to have been already on the road. You must go now.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
Andrew mentioned the latin phrase Felix Culpa, as well as Dr. Diana Glyer‘s book, Clay in the Potter’s Hands. He also referred to the U2 song, Until The End of the World. David reminded his co-hosts of what the hrossa had said in the previous chapter, that there are worse things than death:
…it is not a few deaths roving the world around him that make a hnau miserable. It is a bent hnau that would blacken the world
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 12)
David also pointed out the parallels between Hyoi’s corpse and that of Lewis’ mother’s:
Hyoi’s face became as alien and animal as it had seemed at their first meeting. The glazed eyes and the slowly stiffening, bedraggled fur, were like those of any dead beast found in an earthly wood.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 13)
I was taken into the bedroom where my mother lay dead; as they said, “to see her”, in reality, as I at once knew, “to see it”. There was nothing that a grown-up would call disfigurement–except for that total disfigurement which is death itself. Grief was overwhelmed in terror. To this day I do not know what they mean when they call dead bodies beautiful. The ugliest man alive is an angel of beauty compared with the loveliest of the dead.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 1)
Andrew referred to The Lapsed Bear of Stormness who loses his sentience.
Wrap-Up
Question-of-the-week
Let us know your answer to this episode’s question:
We suggested that Hyoi’s final words to Ransom were rather masculine in style. What might the feminine equivalent be? …or might it be the identical?
Question-of-the-week
