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Chapter 8 Study

An archived study of the first book in Lewis' theological science fiction Space Trilogy.

Chapter 8 Study

Postby Kanakaberaka » March 27th, 2006, 2:36 am

Synopsis: Ransom runs for his life into the Malacandran wilderness. Weston, Devine and the Sorns are unable to catch up with him and are soon left behind. The rest of this chapter is basicly a travelog about the Malacandran forest. Finaly as night falls, Ransom finds a warm place to sleep.
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Another author might have focused on the action of Ransom's escape. It certainly has the potential for suspense and thrills. Lewis instead gives short shrift to the chase sequence and instead has Ransom on a sort of nature hike through the purple forest of and alien world. Talk about an abrupt change of focus! And yet Lewis has a reason for doing this. He always despised action stories that ignored the setting of the action. In an essay entitled "On Stories" Lewis says, "But the fact is that what is said to be the most 'exciting' novel in the world, The Three Musketeers, makes no appeal to me at all. The total lack of atmosphere repels me. There is no country in the book - save as a storehouse of inns and ambushes. There is no weather. When they cross to London there is no feeling that London differs from Paris. There is not a moment's rest from the 'adventures': one's nose is kept ruthlessly to the grindstone. It all means nothing to me."

And so this chapter is Lewis' attempt frame the action into a vivid background. Ransom is not running through any old English or for that matter terrestrial forest. And Lewis wants us to appreciate that fact. That is the reason why he gets the chase scene cliche' out of the way to concentrate on the discription of the Malacandran landscape. And considering that we are being introduced to a world quite different from ours, I think that Lewis has it right. Most of the discriptions concern the effect of lower gravity on the landscape. Here Lewis does a fine guessing job, Even though our recent Mars probes reveal a flat, desert like planet nothing like the gravity defying hills and gullies of Malacandra. Then again, our probes have not yet explored those fabled Martian canals . Lewis even provides a reason for a livable temperature on Malacandra. Numerous hot water springs flowing down to a river in the valley form a sort of natural radiator system. The focus is on the flora rather than fauna here. Only one or two "red creatures" scuttled across Ransom's path. This lack of detail is realistic in that anyone who has viewed wild creatures in their natural habitat will tell you that don't often lay around long enough to be observed. Just as the land is formed by the low gravity, so are the purple plants which Ransom discribes as trees. They stretch up tall to reach the sky supported only by the air.

In between the action of Ransom's escape and his communing with Malacandran nature, he takes time to reflect on the apperance of the sorns. "They were quite unlike the horrors his imagination had conjured up, and for that reason had taken him off his guard. They appealed away from the Wellsian fantasies to an earlier, almost an infantile, complex of fears. Giants -ogres -ghosts -skeletons: those were its key words. Spooks on stilts, he said to himself; surrealistic bogy-men with their long faces." For now the sorns are still monsters in Ransom's mind. Albeit, not science fiction monsters but more traditional fairy tale style demons. This view will change in later chapers.

By the end of this chapter Ransom needs to sleep, quite understandably because of his all day run and hike. At first he is reluctant to get comfortable next to a hot spring cataract thinking that another aquantic monster might live there as well. He falls asleep in the comfort of the streams warmth unintentionaly.

so it goes...
so it goes...
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Kanakaberaka
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Original Chapter 8 Comments

Postby Kanakaberaka » April 3rd, 2006, 3:41 pm

so it goes...
User avatar
Kanakaberaka
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Posts: 1030
Joined: Jul 1999
Location: Just outside of Rego Park, NYC


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