I'm your Venus
I'm a few pages away from finishing Perelandra, the second book of C. S. Lewis's "Cosmic Trilogy". I read and loved the first book (Out of the Silent Planet) as a child, and thought I had read the other two; now I'm fairly sure I attempted and abandoned each of the latter after a hundred pages or so. You see, Silent Planet, while it's filled with obvious Judaeo-Christian allegory, does a fairly good job of keeping that allegory in the background, as a theme running underneath the primary plot. Perelandra, on the other hand, leaps out with a big Christian symbolism stick and systematically beats you over the head with it until you're ready to beg for mercy, divine or otherwise.
As is always the case with Lewis, there are some very intriguing theological and moral questions raised (and, in part, answered) in this book. The hero's "garden of Gethsemane" night spent wrestling with the relationship between human freedom, the divine will, and predestination was particularly interesting. And his portrayal of the Edenic innocence of the Lady was fascinating at first, though she quickly grew rather tiresome (which is probably a sad commentary on my own jaded state).
But what really annoyed me was the cartoonish, obvious EVIL of Dr. Weston, or rather of the spirit of Satan using Weston's body as its vehicle. Do we really have to disembowel Venusian frogs to demonstrate that Satan isn't a nice guy? And, more to the point, what does it say that our hero Ransom can't out-argue the Prince of Lies on behalf of Jesus (going by the name Maleldil in this series), and is instead reduced to trying to beat Satan to death in unarmed combat? Please! I thought this was the religion of turning the other cheek and all that. I came away rather disgusted with the forces of Good; if your arguments are so weak you have to kill your opponent to win the debate, you don't have a very good position.
Early in the book, when I recognized that Lewis was crafting a Venusian reworking of the Eden myth, I expected that Ransom would be the serpent. After all, as soon as he meets the Lady, he begins teaching her to question, to doubt, to see new perspectives. I had a rather lovely "the Lord moves in mysterious ways" plot worked out in my head, with Ransom's innocent, well-intentioned conversations with the Lady leading her into the sin of disobedience, triggering a second Fall and the need for divine redemption -- O Felix Culpa! Picture poor Ransom, realizing the necessary but "evil" part he had been duped by the "good" God into playing. That would have been some delicious reading, I think.
Of course, this is just what happens when you let a crazy Gnostic like me read a Christian allegory. I always end up rooting for the wrong team.
As is always the case with Lewis, there are some very intriguing theological and moral questions raised (and, in part, answered) in this book. The hero's "garden of Gethsemane" night spent wrestling with the relationship between human freedom, the divine will, and predestination was particularly interesting. And his portrayal of the Edenic innocence of the Lady was fascinating at first, though she quickly grew rather tiresome (which is probably a sad commentary on my own jaded state).
But what really annoyed me was the cartoonish, obvious EVIL of Dr. Weston, or rather of the spirit of Satan using Weston's body as its vehicle. Do we really have to disembowel Venusian frogs to demonstrate that Satan isn't a nice guy? And, more to the point, what does it say that our hero Ransom can't out-argue the Prince of Lies on behalf of Jesus (going by the name Maleldil in this series), and is instead reduced to trying to beat Satan to death in unarmed combat? Please! I thought this was the religion of turning the other cheek and all that. I came away rather disgusted with the forces of Good; if your arguments are so weak you have to kill your opponent to win the debate, you don't have a very good position.
Early in the book, when I recognized that Lewis was crafting a Venusian reworking of the Eden myth, I expected that Ransom would be the serpent. After all, as soon as he meets the Lady, he begins teaching her to question, to doubt, to see new perspectives. I had a rather lovely "the Lord moves in mysterious ways" plot worked out in my head, with Ransom's innocent, well-intentioned conversations with the Lady leading her into the sin of disobedience, triggering a second Fall and the need for divine redemption -- O Felix Culpa! Picture poor Ransom, realizing the necessary but "evil" part he had been duped by the "good" God into playing. That would have been some delicious reading, I think.
Of course, this is just what happens when you let a crazy Gnostic like me read a Christian allegory. I always end up rooting for the wrong team.