Re: OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET (C.S. Lewis)


"Dorothy J Heydt" <djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ItnIwu.5n0@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> In article <dr7q7q$c7f$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> westprog <westprog@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >"John VanSickle" <evilsnack@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> >news:YQBBf.6144$vU2.783@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >> Cambias wrote:

> >> > Thrice-great Dr. Hermes has hit upon one of my own personal problems
> >> > with Lewis (and, interestingly, with Chesterton as well): he doesn't
> >> > give the opposition a fair chance to present their ideas.

> >> It's his book. He doesn't have to present the other side any more than
> >> your school district has to present the other side of the evolution
> >> debate.

> >> And it's not as if the opposition has no voice and no books of its own.

> >It's not a matter of fairness. If half the characters in a book aren't
> >allowed to speak freely, the book suffers as a work. And if they aren't
> >allowed strong arguments to for the good guys to rebut, the good guys
never
> >come to life either.

> Actually, Weston does get a chance to make a very persuasive
> speech, worthy of Saruman (on an average day, not at his very top
> form), with lots of phrases designed to stir a man's heart and
> blood. Unfortunately, they don't survive translation and Oyarsa
> is in any case not a man and lacks a circulatory system
> altogether.

I'm not arguing that Lewis or Chesterton were particular offenders on this
count - though Heinlein certainly is.

> The whole Weston-makes-a-speech-Ransom-tries-to-translate scene
> is reminiscent of the one early in _Foundation, remember it?
> where Lord Dorwin arrives as an Imperial envoy and Salvor Hardin
> has everything he says surreptitiously recorded and run through
> the Foundation's symbolic-logic cruncher. "When we edited out
> all the meaningless back-and-filling, the cautious qualifications,
> the soothing-syrup phraseology, all the goo and dribble, we had
> nothing left. Everything canceled out. Lord Dorwin, gentlemen,
> in six days of negotiations *didn't say one damned thing,* and
> said it so you never noticed."

Yeah, but that's science fiction. That could never happen in Real Life.

> >IMO, a major flaw in LOTR is that while all the characters get tempted by
> >the ring, the reader never feels "Go on, just this once - otherwise that
> >nice lady we've just met gets killed by the orcs". The reader always
wants
> >the characters to restrain themselves - hence a lack of tension.

> Which reader is this of whom you speak? What lady is about to be
> killed by which orcs?

There's never a situation where Aragorn, or Gandalf, or even Boromir is
placed where he might do some immediate good - which we would accept as
good - by taking the ring. They give up the ring (or don't) knowing that it
might do some good for them in a hypothetical future, but that a little bit
later, it Would All Go Wrong. That's a fairly tepid temptation. I'd have
liked them to have an immediate need to use the ring, and reject it anyway.

This is made a bit difficult because the powers of the ring, invisibility
aside, are left quite vague.

> I certainly never felt any wish for anyone
> to use the Ring, and in fact if I'd been in the Party I would
> have made a little bag to go around the Ring, with the chain
> running in and out of it, hundreds of tough stitches holding it
> shut, so that a finger can't be inserted into it. (Except then
> how would Frodo have escaped from Boromir?)

Which means that while all the characters are feeling tempted by and
frightened of the ring*, the reader never is. I think that's a pity.

J/


.

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