Perelandra: Chapter 11

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. You may well have a lot of reading ahead of you.

Ransom, brought by the Oyarsa of Malacandra to the planet Perelandra, encountered his enemy, the physicist Weston, there. Only Weston was no longer himself, having become possessed by the "Force" he reveres—really Satan or one of his fallen angels—and become what Ransom termed the "Un-Man." Weston was there to tempt and corrupt the Green Lady, the unfallen Eve of Perelandra. He did this by relentlessly trying to appeal to her sense of vanity and to persuade her that the one law on Perelandra, against dwelling on its fixed island, was made to be broken. Ransom attempted to dissuade her from heeding Weston. Fortunately, the Lady seemed resistant to the Un-Man's persuasive skills.

After days of this, Ransom sits against a tree and questions divine justice. He has made no headway against the Un-Man. If the Enemy was there in person, where is the representative of Maleldil to counter him? The answer that comes back to him in the dark is that, of course, he is Maleldil's man: an idea that he almost dismisses as blasphemy. But he realizes that Maleldil has been with him all along. His own arrival on Perelandra was as miraculous as Weston's. The fate of Perelandra is left in God's hands—and he and the Green Lady are those hands.

With a sense of horror, he understands what Maleldil actually intends him to do. He must defeat the Un-Man physically, not merely spiritually. Even if the evil thing inhabiting Weston's body could not be destroyed, Weston's body could be, and that would end its influence.

The Voice that has been influencing Ransom's thoughts then tells him: "It is not for nothing that you are named Ransom." He recognizes the significance of his name: he is responsible to resist the evil. If he failed, there would be another ransom for Perelandra—as appalling as that would be. He has resolved himself that he will try to kill the Un-Man the next day. The Voice tells him that he has cast the Enemy into sleep, and instructs him to sleep also.

This chapter is essentially a three-way dialogue between Ransom, that internal critic he calls his "voluble self," and the voice of Maleldil himself. I couldn't help picturing Ransom debating his next move with his shoulder angel and shoulder devil: the voluble self being the Bad Angel on the left shoulder, and Maleldil the Good Angel on his right. (We see this trope all the time in modern cartoons, but it's much older than that: the deuterocanonical Shepherd of Hermas speaks of two angels, representing righteousness and iniquity, attempting to guide a person's heart. And in the 16th century, Christopher Marlowe had a Good Angel and Bad Angel try to influence the titular character in Doctor Faustus.)

Lewis had a strong belief in the sovereignty of God. Hence Ransom realizes he has no idea what he could do, except do what he is able to oppose the Enemy: as he puts it, "as long as he did his best…God would see to the final issue." Lewis thought the Calvinistic system of theology too harsh, and he had too strong a belief in libertarian free will to be a Calvinist himself. Nonetheless, he aligned with Calvinist belief on the sovereignty of God: God's plans do not fail because of the weakness of his people; we simply do what God requires of us, in our weakness, and trust the outcome to him.

Ransom's thoughts go on: "If Ransom refused, the plan, so far, miscarried." Even if he does his best, if he fails, then the outcome is that Perelandra falls.

I first read the Space Trilogy in 1992, and it made such an impression on me then that I started using "Ransom"¹ as my online handle, and I still do. Reading Out of the Silent Planet, I had assumed a theological meaning to the name. However, once we get to Perelandra, we understand that the "ransom" is not the money paid to redeem a slave or a captive. That is the second ransom that he seeks to avoid. Rather, he is the one who must pay the cost of opposing the evil. In a sense, he is the price: he will fight, bleed, and suffer on Maleldil's behalf to remove the evil presence. Perelandra's innocence is to be purchased by Ransom's blood, sweat, and tears. And he must succeed.

As we'd expect from a Cambridge philology professor, Ransom correctly knows that his surname is derived from Ranolf's son. Ranolf or Ranulf was a male name introduced to England by the Norman conquest. Ranolf itself means something like "wise wolf" or perhaps "shield wolf," which itself adds another layer of symbolism to Lewis's choice of names.²

Ransom's internal struggle with killing Weston reminds me, somewhat, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He started out as a Christian pacifist, vocally opposing Nazism and refusing to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. In time he came to realize that Hitler's regime was structurally criminal and it was not enough merely to oppose Nazification: the regime itself had to be destroyed, and Hitler had to die. He joined the German military intelligence service, the Abwehr, and collaborated with the anti-Nazi conspirators it harboured.³

Bonhoeffer struggled with murder being a sin, but concluded that failing to act against such evil was the greater sin. Ransom on Perelandra begins by opposing Weston spiritually: where the Un-Man would persuade the Green Lady, Ransom would dissuade. He finds it foolish to think opposing ultimate evil could boil down to just killing Weston. "What would it prove?" Is original sin so insignificant, that stopping it can be as simplistic as bashing it on the head? What lesson would that teach? Of course, Jesus taught that "if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away" (Matthew 5:30). Cutting off your hand doesn't deal decisively with the problem of sin. But it removes the occasion for, and presence of, that sin.

"Did Maleldil suggest that our own world might have been saved if the elephant had accidentally trodden on the serpent a moment before Eve was about to yield?" A stampeding elephant is merely a force of nature, while Ransom was deliberately brought to Perelandra for this purpose, and if it is Maleldil's will that evil be removed by destroying its agent, that is no less his solution to the problem than, say, a spectacular showdown on a mountaintop against 450 false prophets. And God can even incorporate that impersonal stampeding elephant into his plans. He deposed King Ahab with a random arrow. Such "chance" events pose no problem for a believer in divine sovereignty.

Two chapters ago, the Weston-thing had tried to argue that the transgression of Earth's first parents led to the Maleldil becoming a man and redeeming humanity, which was a good thing. Ransom rebutted this by admitting that it was a good, but it was not the greater good that Maleldil had intended. There's a recapitulation of this thought when Ransom contemplates that if he will not be the ransom, then there must be another. "Not a second crucifixion: perhaps—who knows—not even a second Incarnation…some act of even more appalling love." The redemption story will not repeat itself across worlds. The Incarnation and crucifixion were Earth's; they are not Perelandra's. Ransom cannot imagine what the latter might be. The question awes and terrifies him.

And so Ransom accepts his responsibility to stand in the gap between innocence and corruption on Perelandra. We get a little of his backstory, without him going into detail: he had been tasked with doing "a very dangerous job" during World War I, and he had had to "see a certain man in London and make to him an excessively embarrassing confession which justice demanded." Ransom knows what it means to do the right thing even when the right thing is terrifying: If not me, then who?

On Malacandra, Ransom resisted Weston and Devine on behalf of Oyarsa and the Martian hnau. Here on Perelandra, he must do so again, physically interposing his body between the Un-Man and the Green Lady. And he will resist evil again, in That Hideous Strength—but that's another story. There are still six chapters left in this one.

Footnotes

¹ Or, more recently, "RansomOttawa," because there are a whole lot of Ransoms about these days.

² In Out of the Silent Planet, Lewis said "Ransom" was a pseudonym. Maybe he forgot.

³ Coincidentally, Bonhoeffer's arrest came only days before the publication of Perelandra in April 1943.