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Just finished THS for the first time

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Re: re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Stanley Anderson » August 7th, 2006, 5:12 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Lirenel » August 22nd, 2006, 11:46 pm

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? - Psalm 27:1

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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Mavramorn » September 14th, 2006, 11:11 pm

What I find interesting about the three books in this trilogy is that although there are some horrible parts, Lewis never just 'leaves you' there.

For example when Weston/the Un-man is talking about 'the rind', suddenly Ransom says something like "There are boys who haven't even begun to shave on the battlefields at this very moment, and you're here talking all this nonsense" (sorry if that's way off, but that's the gist). Anyway, it brings you back "down to Earth" with a bumb.

However bad things get, there's always a 'lightener'. Another would be the animals crashing into Belbury at the end of THS.

As a matter of interest, I found Perelandra more disturbing than THS, yet I felt it was more 'feelgood' than THS. On another note, I did not get this odd feelgood/bad feeling with The Dark Tower, although I still found it really interesting.
"Could it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest...green?"
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...to discover strange new worlds

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 25th, 2006, 12:06 pm

I used to think that THS was a bit longer than it should have been. But now I'm not so sure. Lewis had a lot to say about the spiritual condition of the natives of our home planet.
In both OOTSP and Perelandra Ransom is challenged on worlds quite different from ours. On Malacandra he saw unfallen races who survived an attack by our own fallen Oyarsa. On Perelandra he witnessed a replay of our Garden of Eden story, but this time the first parents overcome temptation. Before reading THS I thought that our Earth would be familiar terratory. That was not Lewis' intention. Instead he presented Thulcandra, and illustrated it's place in the rest of the cosmos. The book had to be longer than the earlier two because we all have so many preconceptions about what our world is all about. Lewis had to give a account of what our spiritual condition is on this planet.
As for Ransom's transformation, I too found it discombobulating. However, when we consider what Ransom went through on Perelandra, how could he not have been changed by doing his part against the forces of darkness. It is interesting that it's easier to portray an evil character such as the Un-man convincingly that it is to describe a glorified person such as Ransom in THS.
so it goes...
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 4th, 2006, 7:02 pm

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Re: re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Stanley Anderson » October 4th, 2006, 8:23 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 4th, 2006, 10:27 pm

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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby rusmeister » October 5th, 2006, 3:47 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 5th, 2006, 8:05 pm

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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby rusmeister » October 6th, 2006, 4:09 am

I don't know how interesting or relevant you'll find the context, but here it is. It's in response to a comment about being "a man of the 21st century".

http://cslewis.drzeus.net/forums/viewto ... 72&start=0

In any event, my point is not details, but the general awareness that we dismiss ancient writings (thoughts, attitudes) as being 'primitive' (in a pejorative sense) when the truth is often that there were good reasons for this that we, in our arrogance, do not have the capacity to understand. We are under an illusion that we have 'progressed' and that humanity somehow is 'better' now. I always loved Star Trek, but its humanist "we are going to improve" semi-utopian philosophy is horse-puckey.

Just remember the talk about being a "man (or girl or whatever) of the eighties". What does that mean now?

By insisting that we are 'modern' we limit ourselves to our time, and when that time passes, so do we.

"That which is not eternal is eternally out of date."
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 6th, 2006, 8:02 pm

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Re: re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby rusmeister » October 7th, 2006, 4:16 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby rusmeister » October 7th, 2006, 4:33 am

A little Chesterton never hoit.
On progress:
The case of the general talk of "progress" is, indeed,
an extreme one. As enunciated today, "progress" is simply
a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.
We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute
pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress--that is to say,
we meet every proposal of getting something that we know about,
with an alternative proposal of getting a great deal more of nobody
knows what. Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most
dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition
to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous. So far from it being
the truth that the ideal of progress is to be set against that
of ethical or religious finality, the reverse is the truth.
Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless
he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals.
Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost
say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible--
at any rate, without believing in some infallibility.
For progress by its very name indicates a direction;
and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction,
we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress.
Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been
an age that had less right to use the word "progress" than we.
In the Catholic twelfth century, in the philosophic eighteenth
century, the direction may have been a good or a bad one,
men may have differed more or less about how far they went, and in
what direction, but about the direction they did in the main agree,
and consequently they had the genuine sensation of progress.
But it is precisely about the direction that we disagree.
Whether the future excellence lies in more law or less law,
in more liberty or less liberty; whether property will be finally
concentrated or finally cut up; whether sexual passion will reach
its sanest in an almost virgin intellectualism or in a full
animal freedom; whether we should love everybody with Tolstoy,
or spare nobody with Nietzsche;--these are the things about which we
are actually fighting most. It is not merely true that the age
which has settled least what is progress is this "progressive" age.
It is, moreover, true that the people who have settled least
what is progress are the most "progressive" people in it.
The ordinary mass, the men who have never troubled about progress,
might be trusted perhaps to progress. The particular individuals
who talk about progress would certainly fly to the four
winds of heaven when the pistol-shot started the race.
I do not, therefore, say that the word "progress" is unmeaning; I say
it is unmeaning without the previous definition of a moral doctrine,
and that it can only be applied to groups of persons who hold
that doctrine in common. Progress is not an illegitimate word,
but it is logically evident that it is illegitimate for us.
It is a sacred word, a word which could only rightly be used
by rigid believers and in the ages of faith.
"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 7th, 2006, 11:34 pm

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re: Just finished THS for the first time

Postby Coyote Goodfellow » October 11th, 2006, 10:34 pm

"I don't care if it is wrong," said one of the moles. "I'd do it again."
"Hush, hush" said the other animals.
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