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Chapter 22 Study

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

Chapter 22 Study

Postby Kanakaberaka » May 15th, 2006, 2:26 pm

Synopis : The author gives us a look at how and why this book came to be written.
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Although this is supposed to be the final chapter of Out of the Silent Planet, it is more like an afterword. C.S. Lewis himself writes it as if Ransom and all others mentioned were in fact real people. It's sort of like the old "Dragnet" TV show where "names have been changed to protect the innocent". Obviously Lewis is not trying some practical joke on his readers by claiming his story is real. Why then include it? The first thing that came to my mind was that he was following a fantastic fiction gimmic used often by H.P. Lovecraft - Make up a ficticious headline or book and use it to give the story depth. A sort of suspension of disbelief. But when I dug a little deeper I realized that Lewis had somthing more subtle in mind.
Lewis mentions a 12th Century Platonist named Benardus Silvestris in this chapter. It turns out that he read a book by Silvestris called "De Mundi Universitate" on August 4 of 1930. The book mentions things such as the music of the spheres and other classical notions about the heavens. And it also mentions "Oyarses", planetary spirits. -
"It occurs in the description of a voyage through the heavens, and an Oyarses seems to be the "intelligence" or tutelary spirit of a heavenly sphere, i. e. in our language, of a planet. I asked C. J. about it and he says it ought to be Ousiarches. "
It turns out that "C.J." was probably C.C.J. Webb, a university associate of Lewis. So why veil this chapter in psuedo secrecy when it could have been written as a conventional afterword? It seems as if Lewis is giving us real warnings about the "real" Weston. We could hazard a guess that he was refering to Prof. JBS Haldane in humor. Or is there more to it?
I belive that the real purpose of this odd chapter is to give the history of how Lewis came to write OOTSP. To present his inspirations as living ideas rather than "discarded images". I can see now why Stanley kept bringing up the idea of Ransom changing into a Medieval mindset. In this chapter Lewis himself presents his inspiration in such a way to convince us it's alive.
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so it goes...
so it goes...
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Kanakaberaka
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Original Chapter 22 Comments

Postby Kanakaberaka » May 15th, 2006, 2:40 pm

so it goes...
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Kanakaberaka
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Posts: 1030
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Location: Just outside of Rego Park, NYC


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