Perelandra: Chapter 17

Spoiler alert: This post is part of an in-depth discussion of Perelandra by C. S. Lewis, which will inevitably reveal key plot points. If you don't want me ruining the experience for you, put this post down and go read Perelandra now. I promise I won't be offended.

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The story so far: Our protagonist, Elwin Ransom, was brought to the planet Perelandra (Venus) by the Oyarsa of Malacandra (Mars), whom he encountered in the previous book, Out of the Silent Planet. His mission to Perelandra was, as yet, unknown.

Perelandra was a warm, overcast, ocean planet with next to no solid ground. What passed for land were floating mats of vegetation, where plants grew for food and friendly wildlife dwelt. Ransom also met a green human woman, who initially mistook him for the King, her male counterpart. She was apparently in close communication with Maleldil, the supreme spiritual ruler of the universe, who helped the Green Lady understand that Ransom was from a different world and his ways were different.

Ransom and the Green Lady visited the Fixed Land, one of Perelandra's few true islands. Maleldil had made a rule forbidding the King or the Green Lady from dwelling there, or even spending the night. They saw an object fall into the sea. It was a spherical spaceship, of the same kind in which Ransom was kidnapped and taken to Mars. In fact, they soon meet his abductor, Weston, on the beach.

Weston's humanistic, scientistic beliefs had evolved into a mystical form of emergent evolution. He now believed in a cosmic Force that directed his actions. When the Christian Ransom attempted to refute this belief, he became angry and was possessed by the Force. His own personality was apparently consumed, and he became the Un-Man. He escaped to the floating islands and attempted to persuade the Green Lady to violate Maleldil's law. While Ransom was there to refute his arguments, the Un-Man was relentless and had no need for sleep, and Ransom realized he could not keep up his side of the argument indefinitely.

However, Maleldil impressed upon him that his mission was to prevent the Fall of Perelandra—if necessary, by killing the body of Weston and ending the influence of the evil entity within him. Ransom engaged in a brutal fight with the Un-Man until it escaped into the ocean, with Ransom pursuing. Weston's own personality seemed to re-emerge, but he got close enough to Ransom to drag him deep underwater. Before he could drown, however, they washed up on an underground beach. Ransom strangled Weston's body and left him for dead. While trying to find his way out, he learned that the Un-Man had lived and was following him. Confronting him again, he crushed Weston's head with a stone and threw his body into subterranean fire. He suffered a bite to the heel that never stopped bleeding.

Ransom found his way outside, emerging on a ledge on the side of a mountain, overlooking a valley. He stayed there for a time recuperating, then walked down the mountainside and up the one on the other side of the valley. At the summit he found a holy place: a basin covered in flowers with a clear pool in the centre. The Oyarsa of Malacandra was there along with the Oyarsa of Perelandra. They were awaiting the King and the Green Lady. When they arrived, the Oyeresu and Ransom bowed before them.

We have reached the final chapter of Perelandra.

Seeing the King and Queen in their regal glory for the first time, Ransom also bows to them and begs to be adopted by them. He says he has never seen man and woman before now, at least in this way. It reminds me somewhat of Plato's cave allegory. Ransom has seen human men and women, but on the fallen Thulcandra, they are but imperfect shadows cast upon the wall. The reality is the King and Queen, created by Maleldil, exactly as they were meant to be all along.

Plaster images of the Holy One may before now have drawn to themselves the adoration they were meant to arouse for the reality. But here, where His live image, like Him within and without, made by His own bare hands out of the depth of divine artistry, His masterpiece of self-portraiture coming forth from His workshop to delight all worlds, walked and spoke before Ransom’s eyes, it could never be taken for more than an image.

Man and woman were made in the image of God. Ransom recognizes the King as bearing the very face of Christ himself.

The Oyarsa of Perelandra, who has been the caretaker of the planet, pronounces that it is all being turned over to the King and Queen. They are now free even to dwell on the Fixed Land. The King is the new Oyarsa. He requests that Perelandra stay and continue to care for the world for a time, until they learn to guide it through Deep Heaven.

Oyarsa was the one upholding Perelandra, keeping it in its place and controlling its weather, but now that privilege and responsibility fall to the King and Queen. Had Adam and Eve not fallen on Earth, would they have been able to do the same? The implication, it seems to me, is that Christ's dominion over nature was not merely because of his divinity (though that obviously would be true), but because he came as the second Adam. An interesting thought.

It is interesting to me that Tor suggests he will be able to guide the planet and control the weather, because Perelandra is unfallen and he has taken his rightful position as its Oyarsa. Is it that had Adam and Eve not fallen, they would have been able to do likewise? They would become like gods, indeed (Genesis 3:5)! Is Lewis implying that Christ's dominion over nature was not because he was God (though that is true), but because he was its second Adam?

Perelandra calls the King and Queen by many titles. Most of them, such as "man and woman," "the Adam," or "the Crown," are self-evident. Others are a bit more obscure. The names used the most for them in this chapter are "Tor and Tinidril." These are possibly lifted from Tolkien, as the names bear a resemblance to Tuor and Idril, the grandparents of Elrond and the ancestors of Aragorn in his Middle-earth legendarium. Baru and Baru'ah are the male and female titles of a soothsayer in ancient Mesopotamian religion. Ask and Embla are the first humans in Norse mythology. Yatsur and Yatsurah appear to be Hebrew, signifying being moulded or formed (perhaps as Adam, or the creatures of Narnia, were formed from the earth).

Tor commends Ransom, saying that the children of Venus will praise him to Maleldil in perpetuity. Tor and Tinidril are the lords of Perelandra, as Ransom acknowledges; yet they also call him "lord," because in a sense he is their saviour.

Finally, we learn how the Green Lady lost the King at the beginning of the novel. He was taken by Maleldil to a distant sea—which he declares is named "Lur," echoing the task of Adam of giving everything names. Many things were taught to him there: knowledge of the nature of Maleldil, the history of Earth, what was going on with Tinidril while the Un-Man was tempting her, and the difference between good and evil. Ransom knows evil because he comes from a fallen world where it is second nature. Tinidril knows evil experientially because of her contact with the Un-Man, although she successfully resisted him. Tor knows evil only in an academic sense, never having been exposed to it, personally. But we need not have personal experience with, say, cancer or drug addition to know they are evil. In fact, we may have a clearer picture of it from the outside.

They discuss whether Earth can be redeemed from the Bent One that rules it. The language is apocalyptic: Maleldil wages war on Thulcandra; smoke rises; Arbol (the sun) is blotted out; the world is purged clean. Ransom calls these the Last Things, but to the King, they are the "beginning," or at least the end of a false start so that its real history can begin. Lewis will revisist this in the Narnia books, where the final paragraph of The Last Battle says, "All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story."

Then comes Ransom's vision of the Great Dance, in which he perceives how everything in the cosmos moves as a unified whole with Maleldil at its centre. It is accompanied by a litany of 20 declarations celebrating the greatness of Maleldil, all ending with the chorus, "Blessed be He." Many of these declarations use explicitly biblical expressions, for example, "All things are by Him and for Him" (cf. Colossians 1:16). This is no surprise: Maleldil is, after all, the God of the Bible as well as of Perelandra, and so naturally his words on the new world echo the words from the old. Ransom perceives the Great Dance as dreamlike. When he awakes, the Oyeresu and the animals have departed. Only He, Tor, and Tinidril remain. He also learns that a year has elapsed since he arrived on Perelandra, which has returned to the place in heaven where it was when Ransom arrived. (Does this mean a Veneran year? Certainly Lewis knew that Venus revolves around the Sun in only 225 days. If we assume Ransom began his voyage when Earth and Perelandra were at their closest, then after one Perelandrian year, Earth would be on the other side of the sun.)

This means it is time for Ransom to return. Tor washes the still bleeding wound on Ransom's foot: a rather obvious nod to Jesus's washing of the disciples' feet at the Last Supper. The eldila return, not as giant human figures, but the faint lights that Ransom and Lewis had perceived on Earth. Ransom lies in the coffin prepared for him, and the King and Queen, promising they would see one another again some day—they will not always be confined to their planet—cover him in the red petals that narrator-Lewis and Humphrey found in the box when he returned to Earth, and him in. The last Elwin Ransom sees of Perelandra is the King's hand raised in blessing.

That is, as the text says, The End. There's a lot going on in this chapter, even though it's mostly talk. I'm not sure that I've done it justice. But the last time I felt overwhelmed by a chapter, it was months before I came back to the book, and I wasn't going to repeat that. Better a couple days late than never.

What a wonderful story Perelandra was. It's easily my favourite of the three volumes of the Space Trilogy. At some point I might summarize this series into a review-style post to match the one I wrote for Out of the Silent Planet 20 years ago. In the meantime, though, I plan to take a break—two weekends—and then I'll start on That Hideous Strength. Look for the first article (again of seventeen) on or about September 27.