Ransom finally arrives on the island of Meldilorn.
S6E19: “The Island” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Drop-In
Quote-of-the-week
His feeling was less than fear; it had in it something of embarrassment, something of shyness, something of submission, and it was profoundly uneasy.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 17)
Episode Movie Title
- The Island (2005)
Chit-Chat
- Matt
- Doesn’t feel ready for Easter (this episode was recorded during Holy Week)
- Andrew
- First Holy Week as a clergyman!
- Some upcoming speaking events and writing assignments
- Had a friend visiting from Virginia
- David
- Surprised his Best Man in Colorado for his birthday and went to play “Archery Tag”:
Toast
- Drinks
- Matt was drinking Tobermory
- David was drinking Auchentoshan
- Andrew was drinking Jura
- Foreign language “cheers”
- “IwlIj jachjaj” (Klingon)
- “Scotch” is translated as “burgh”
- Patreon toast
- Steve Clancy
Story Recap
Ransom is kidnapped and taken to mars by two evil colleagues who intend to make him a sacrifice to the natives so they might exploit them and their planet. But Ransom escapes, makes friends with one Martian species, living among and growing to love them and participate in their everyday life. Later is summoned to meet the ruler of the planet. Along the way he meets two other species, and learns about spirits who also inhabit the planet. He learns the common language, customs, and even their mythology, art, and religion; he also strives to defeat his nefarious captors.
The story so far…
Discussion
1. “The Journey Continues…”
Andrew notes Lewis’ language in the opening section of this chapter:
“dull… furiously… waste… terrible… choking… blinding… menace… naked… crawling… drop… burst… conflagration… jagged… giant… bad teeth”
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
2. “Seeing Meldilorn”
Change in language
The language changes as Ransom draws closer to Meldilorn:
…an almost circular lake—a sapphire twelve miles in diameter set in a border of purple forest. Amidst the lake there rose like a low and gently sloping pyramid, or like a woman’s breast, an island of pale red, smooth to the summit, and on the summit a grove of such trees as man had never seen. Their smooth columns had the gentle swell of the noblest beech-trees: but these were taller than a cathedral spire on earth, and at their tops, they broke rather into flower than foliage; into golden flower bright as tulip, still as rock, and huge as summer cloud.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
When Andrew mentioned Rivendell and Lothlórien, Matt interjected to say that he had ordered the Rivendell Lego Set.
Expectations of Meldilorn
Ransom didn’t quite anticipate Meldilorn looking the way it did:
He did not know what he had expected. The old dreams which he had brought from earth of some more than American complexity of offices or some engineers’ paradise of vast machines had indeed been long laid aside. But he had not looked for anything quite so classic, so virginal, as this bright grove
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
David once again compared it to the native culture in Star Trek: Insurrection:
3. “The water taxi”
Meeting a hross
Hitting the gong summons a boat and Ransom was delighted to see that a hross was manning the boat:
As it came towards them Ransom’s heart warmed to see that it was paddled by a hross
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Hnau Manners
Andrew noted the manners between the different hnau:
‘It is welcome, Augray,’ said the hross politely. ‘Is it coming to Oyarsa?’
‘He has sent for it.’
‘And for you also, Augray?’
‘Oyarsa has not called me. If you will take Ren-soom over the water, I will go back to my tower.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
4. “I’m on a boat!”
Freedom
Ransom is given liberty on the Island
He learned that his own procedure on arriving in Meldilorn must be to go where he liked and do what he pleased until Oyarsa called for him.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Andrew refers to a phrase which he guesses is often falsely attributed to Martin Luther:
“Love and do what you will.”
St. Augustine, Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John (Paragraph 8)
5. “Exploring the Island”
Stonehenge
Ransom explores the island and sees some guest houses, as well as some Stonehenge-like structures:
For the rest the island seemed desolate, and its smooth slopes empty up to the grove that crowned them, where, again, he saw stonework. But this appeared to be neither temple nor house in the human sense, but a broad avenue of monoliths—a much larger Stonehenge, stately, empty and vanishing over the crest of the hill into the pale shadow of the flower-trunks
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Andrew mentioned the tombs in The Horse and His Boy, as well as the bee-hive kilns near Lewis’ house:
David recalled earlier in the chapter where the gong design included “large arabesques“:
There they found a gong and hammer hung on a pillar of stone. These objects were all richly decorated, and the gong and hammer were of a greenish blue metal which Ransom did not recognize… He was struck by the fact that the pictorial work was not confined to the emptier spaces; quite often large arabesques included as a subordinate detail intricate pictures
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Eldila and Joy
The Island is shimmery because it is filled with eldila:
‘The island is all full of eldila,’ said the hross in a hushed voice…
Where he looked hardest they were least to be see.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
…and David compared this with Lewis’ own words about trying to capture Joy:
I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, and remote) and then, as in the other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 1)
This made Matt think of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle:
Angels and Saints
The eldila make Ransom feel uncomfortable:
…it was not exactly uncanny, not as if he were surrounded by ghosts. It was not even as if he were being spied upon; he had rather the sense of being looked at by things that had a right to look. His feeling was less than fear; it had in it something of embarrassment, something of shyness, something of submission, and it was profoundly uneasy.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
David connected this with the shyness of the ghosts in The Great Divorce.
Humility
Matt was reminded of his interview with Sister Miriam James (S5E37). This lead Andrew to quote Lewis’ words about humble people:
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)
David quoted the following Scriptural passages:
But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
Luke 5:8
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
Isaiah 6:5
6. “More visitors”
New Arrivals
More hnau begin to arrive in Meldilorn:
The situation brought vividly back to his mind his experience as a new boy at school—new boys came a day early—hanging about and watching the arrival of the old hands.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
David pointed out that Lewis describes such a scene in Surprised By Joy. It reminded Andrew of a scene from The Way where pilgrims arrive in Santiago.
Favourite kind of weather
…the climate was almost that of a warm earthly day in late September—a day that is warm but with a hint of frost to come.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
7. “A cosmic realisations”
The story of Malacandra in stone
Ransom sees a stone which depicts some event in Malacandrian history:
Side by side with representations of sorns and hrossa and what he supposed to be pfifltriggi there occurred again and again an upright wavy figure with only the suggestion of a face, and with wings. The wings were perfectly recognizable, and this puzzled him very much. Could it be that the traditions of Malacandrian art went back to that earlier geological and biological era when, as Augray had told him, there was life, including bird-life, on the harandra? The answer of the stones seemed to be Yes. He saw pictures of the old red forests with unmistakable birds flying among them, and many other creatures that he did not know. On another stone many of these were represented lying dead, and a fantastic hnakra-like figure, presumably symbolizing the cold, was depicted in the sky above them shooting at them with darts. Creatures still alive were crowding round the winged, wavy figure, which he took to be Oyarsa, pictured as a winged flame. On the next stone Oyarsa appeared, followed by many creatures, and apparently making a furrow with some pointed instrument. Another picture showed the furrow being enlarged by pfifltriggi with digging tools. Sorns were piling the earth up in pinnacles on each side, and hrossa seemed to be making water channels. Ransom wondered whether this were a mythical account of the making of handramits or whether they were conceivably artificial in fact.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
We will discover in a future episode that this is a copy of a carving made many years before.
The Solar System
Ransom sees another stone which depicts the Solar System:
The sun was there, unmistakably, at the centre of the disk: round this the concentric circles revolved
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Here is the Solar System from the Out of the Silent Planet Wiki with Malacandrian names:
Ransom is surprised to see from the stones that the angel-like creature has wings and that Venus is associated with the female:
In the first and smallest of these was pictured a little ball, on which rode a winged figure something like Oyarsa, but holding what appeared to be a trumpet.
…
The first ball was Mercury, the second Venus—‘And what an extraordinary coincidence,’ thought Ransom, ‘that their mythology, like ours, associates some idea of the female with Venus.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
From the stones he realizes that Earth is without its guardian:
The ball was there, but where the flame-like figure should have been, a deep depression of irregular shape had been cut as if to erase it.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Andrew referred to the iconoclasm in Utrecht, Holland:
Andrew says that the Malacandrian picture must be very old. He says this because it seems that the removal of Earth’s Oyarsa predates the fall of Lucifer. However, as we will find out later, this is a copy of an older picture.
8. “Meeting a pfifltrigg…”
The appearance of a pfifltrigg
David found this image on the Silent Planet Wiki:
Matt tried to remember something he had seen in a movie… Answer next week!
Rackham Reference
The text makes a reference to Arthur Rackham, an artist who made a great impact on Lewis:
What I had read was the words Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods. What I had seen was one of Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to that volume. I had never heard of Wagner, nor of Siegfried. I thought the Twilight of the Gods meant the twilight in which the gods lived. How did I know, at once and beyond question, that this was no Celtic, or silvan, or terrestrial twilight? But so it was. Pure “Northernness” engulfed me…
C.S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 5)
Portrait
Ransom stands for his portrait:
‘Yes, yes. Not so good as I hoped. Do better another time. Leave it now. Come and see yourself.’
…
‘No,’ said the pfifltrigg. ‘I do not mean it to be too like. Too like, and they will not believe it—those who are born after.’ He added a good deal more which was difficult to understand; but while he was speaking it dawned upon Ransom that the odious figures were intended as an idealization of humanity.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
9. “No Babel”
Common Language
Ransom discovers that the hrossa language is the shared language on Malacandra:
‘…everyone has learned the speech of the hrossa… They are our great speakers and singers. They have more words and better. No one learns the speech of my people, for what we have to say is said in stone and suns’ blood and stars’ milk and all can see them. No one learns the sorns’ speech, for you can change their knowledge into any words and it is still the same. You cannot do that with the songs of the hrossa. Their tongue goes all over Malacandra. I speak it to you because you are a stranger. I would speak it to a sorn. But we have our old tongues at home.
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Andrew described this as a reverse Babel and David described it in terms of Pentecost.
Transposition
David referred to Lewis’ essay, Transposition, which speaks about higher and lower levels of communication. Andrew referred to the book Patterns of Love and Courtesy.
Enough food?
While discussing the life of the pfifltriggi, the question of provision comes up again:
Kanakaberaka wrinkled his nose. ‘Then there is not food in plenty on your world?’
‘I do not know,’ said Ransom. ‘I have often wished to know the answer to that question but no one can tell me…’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
10. “Women in charge”
What keeps you at work?
Ransom asks what it is that keeps people at work. He is told (perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek) that it’s the woman:
‘…Does no one keep your people at their work, Kanakaberaka?’
‘Our females,’ said the pfifltrigg with a piping noise which was apparently his equivalent for a laugh.
‘Are your females of more account among you than those of the other hnau among them?’
‘Very greatly. The sorns make least account of females and we make most.’
C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet (Chapter 19)
Wrap-Up
Question-of-the-week
Q1. What is the best island you’ve ever visited?
Q2. Which co-host is like each of the three hnau (sorn, hross, and pfiflitrig)?
Q3. If you could spend a season in Rivendell or Lothlorien, which would you choose and why?
Question-of-the-week
We are offering free gifts for anyone who gets any new “Deborah”s to support us! We lost Deborah 2 this week!
