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Introduction

The final book in Lewis' theological science fiction Space Trilogy.

Introduction

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 2nd, 2008, 1:31 am

This is both an introduction to this forum and to C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. So allow me to begin with what I want to do here. Like my previous studies of the first and second books of Lewis' Space Trilogy, I plan to add a new posting once a week. However, unlike the previous books where I focused on a new chapter each week, I have decided to take Stanley Anderson's sage advice and divide the chapters up into their sub-headings. For example : Chapter one is divided up into five sub-chapters. So each week I shall focus on one of them, spreading the study of chapter one over five weeks. And readers interested in previous chapters can always go back and add their comments as the study progresses.

Now for the study -
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The title page for That Hideous Strength starts with a note that it is a "Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups". C.S. Lewis must have felt the need to include this note since adults these days are unaware that fairytales were not always children's literature. Some of the collected works of the Brothers Grimm would not be acceptable for today's children. Lewis goes on to explain this note in the book's Preface.

Right under this note there is a quote by Scottish poet Sir David Lyndsay about the Tower of Babel :
THE SHADOW OF THAT HYDDEOUS STRENGTH SAX MYLE AND MORE IT IS OF LENGTH.
The complete title of this poem is "Ane Dialog betwix Experience and ane Courteour of the Miserabyll Estait of the World". Considering the suggestion of the title of this poem, I wonder if the character of the Scottish skeptic Mac Phee was inspired by Sir Lyndsay?
Also there is the matter of the poet's name. There was a 20th Century Scottish author by the name of David Lindsay who wrote another book which inspired Lewis called A Voyage to Arcturus. At first I thought the quote was by him rather than the 16th Century poet who's name was sometime spelt the same way. This seems to be an odd coincidence.

Now on to the Preface -

Lewis warns the reader that the first two chapters are deliberately "hum-drum" and commonplace to set the scene for the fantastic happenings to come. And yet there are in fact a few suggestions in chapter one that this is more than simply a college story. Jane Studdock has her odd dreams and Bragdon Wood is described almost as wonderfully as Narnia. But I am getting ahead of myself.
Lewis makes a disclaimer that Edgestow University was not based on Durham, a real university at which Lewis taught. I wise idea condidering how readers are inclined to speculate on an author's inspiration.
Lewis also thanks Olaf Stapledon for his inspiration in writing this book. Though at the same time Lewis rejects Stapledon's ideas. I think Lewis is refering to Olaf Stapledon's novel Last and First Men which is about the future evolution of humanity beyond our recognition. Stapledon was an early proponent of what is now called "Transhumanism". We will see in the chapters to come how such ideas inspire the N.I.C.E. to complete their program for humanity.
Also, Lewis makes a reference to "Numinor and the True West" saying that readers will have to wait untill his friend J.R.R. Tolkien publishes his manuscripts. We now know all about the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Finally Lewis mentions that the time period his story takes place in is "vaguely "after the war"". This Preface was written on Christmas Eve of 1943. So the real world would have to suffer for another year and a half before seeing peace. Yet instead of being optimistic about the peace to come after the hoped for defeat of the Axis Powers, Lewis imagines a diabolical enemy more subtle and inhuman than the Nazis.
so it goes...
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Postby Stanley Anderson » September 2nd, 2008, 3:24 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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Chess Master

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 2nd, 2008, 6:19 pm

so it goes...
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Postby Sven » September 2nd, 2008, 8:07 pm

Rat! he found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?
Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.
Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
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Dedication

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 3rd, 2008, 5:19 am

so it goes...
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Postby Sven » September 3rd, 2008, 7:49 pm

Rat! he found breath to whisper, shaking. Are you afraid?
Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.
Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
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Re: Dedication

Postby a_hnau » September 6th, 2008, 9:59 am

Urendi Maleldil
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Re: Introduction

Postby Nerd42 » March 23rd, 2010, 5:55 pm

The thing I'm really interested in talking about from That Hideous Strength is the Objective Room from chapter 14. Before even the blasphemy that Studdock is expected to engage in there, I think the whole room is the most truly horrible thing in the entire book, more horrible than meeting the Head and everything else. Because there's nothing physically attacking or threatening you in the Objective Room, but the whole place is deliberately and calculatingly designed as a seemingly innocuous attack directly on the soul, to kill the spirit and leave the body (and even to some degree, the mind) intact. I very much fear that something very like this may someday be made real, for the inclinations of the Powers That Be who run our world certainly haven't abandoned the philosophy that Lewis predicted will lead to it. The scene, of course, directly connects to the central thesis of The Abolition of Man.

Of particular interest is the passage about the dots on the ceiling. The point of that passage is, I think, that the designers and builders of the room want the subject to be divested of any aversion to doing wrong and so try to get the subject to overcome a related (according to classical philosophers at least) aversion to ugliness. I'm sure the arrangement of the dots Lewis is referring to must have been calculated to leave absolutely no possibility for the average person to find any pattern in them, yet put there in a way that looks deliberate. Getting the subject used to overcoming other aversions is, I think, meant to get them to overcome aversions to or inhibitions against doing wrong.

I wish Lewis had taken the Objective Room scenes and put them into their own short story, because that would make it easier to talk about. :)
Last edited by Nerd42 on May 14th, 2010, 3:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Objectivity Room with a view

Postby Kanakaberaka » March 24th, 2010, 5:10 am

so it goes...
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Re: Objectivity Room with a view

Postby Nerd42 » March 26th, 2010, 12:43 am

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