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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 5:32am
Post #1 of 27
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**The Choices of Master Samwise** 3. "'My name also is Ransom,' said the Voice."
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In 1943, C.S. Lewis published the novel Perelandra (sometimes known as Voyage to Venus), the sequel to Out of the Silent Planet (1938), with That Hideous Strength following in 1945 to complete what is now referred to as Lewis's "Space Trilogy". The first novel was the result of an agreement that Lewis and Tolkien made in 1936: dissatisfied with the current state of fantastic literature, they each would attempt to write something to satisfy their shared longings. Lewis was supposed to write a novel on space travel and Tolkien one on time travel. Tolkien's effort was The Lost Road, never finished but a crucial step in the development of the Númenórean legend. Tolkien helped get Silent Planet published by warmly recommending it to Stanley Unwin (who passed it on to the firm of Bodley Head) and wrote later that he liked Perelandra even more. He probably heard at least parts of all three works read aloud as they were written. There are spoilers for Perelandra in what follows.
In the mythology of these novels, each of the planets in our solar system has a guiding spirit or angel. Our planet, unfortunately, is in the hands of the Devil, and thus has been embargoed by the other spirits. The hero of the first two novels (in the third, he's more of an advisor) is Elwin Ransom, a philologist who is generally understood to be slightly based on Tolkien. (Trivia question: which of Lewis's books is dedicated to Tolkien?) In Perelandra, Ransom is taken by the spirit of Venus to that planet to undertake some unknown quest. Ransom discovers on his arrival that Venus is largely oceanic and, besides a great variety of fantastic animals, is populated by just one man and one woman, who have become separated on the world's floating islands. Shortly after he meets the woman, he finds that he has been followed to Venus by a physicist who had kidnapped him and taken him to Mars in the previous novel. This man, Weston, a pure materialist before encountering the angel of Mars, once he is settled on Venus, calls upon a demon to possess him, which is the Devil’s way of getting around the interstellar spiritual blockade. Ransom then realizes that the goal of this "Un-man" is to precipitate a second Fall by convincing the Eve equivalent of Venus to violate the sole commandment laid upon her by God, who is called "Maleldil" in Lewis's trilogy. This not-Weston is very persuasive and undercuts all Ransom's counter-arguments.
The chapter that follows strikes me as rather like the heart of "The Choices of Master Samwise". The stage is set as follows:
Ransom sits up late into the night, thinking.
'This can’t go on.' . . . The Enemy was using Third Degree methods. It seemed to Ransom that, but for a miracle, the Lady's resistance was bound to be worn away in the end. Why did no miracle come? Or rather, why no miracle on the right side? For the presence of the Enemy was in itself a kind of Miracle. Had Hell a prerogative to work wonders? Why did Heaven work none? Not for the first time he found himself questioning Divine Justice. He could not understand why Maleldil should remain absent when the Enemy was there in person.
Suddenly Ransom realizes that in fact, Maleldil is and has been there, all around him, and the rest of the chapter is a long argument that Ransom's inner "voluble critic" has with a combination of God and his own conscience. (He speaks to himself and to the "Darkness" around him, but until very near the end of the debate, the Darkness does not speak back, at least not in direct quotation.) I've cut down the text by about 75% in the following excerpts, so I hope it still makes sense:
To start with, Ransom objects that "It's all very well . . . a presence of that sort! But the Enemy is really here, really saying and doing things. Where is Maleldil's representative?" But then, "The answer which came back to him, quick as a fencer's or a tennis player's riposte, out of the silence and the darkness, almost took his breath away. It seemed blasphemous." Ransom realizes that he is God’s representative. But as he clearly is unable to defeat the Un-man's arguments, he asks, "Anyway, what can I do?" He decides that "He was in God’s hands. As long as he did his best—and he had done his best—God would see to the final issue. He had not succeeded. But he had done his best. No one could do more." In return, he gets not this response (warning: language), but something just as firm: "Relentlessly, unmistakeably, the Darkness pressed down upon him the knowledge this this picture of the situation was utterly false. His journey to Perelandra was not a moral exercise, nor a sham fight. If the issue lay in Maleldil's hands, Ransom and the Lady were those hands. The fate of a world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours."
Against this he rages. "The imprudence, the unfairness, the absurdity of it! Did Maleldil want to lose worlds? What was the sense of so arranging things that anything really important should finally and absolutely depend on such a man of straw as himself?" But then he remembers that throughout history, great moments depend on small decisions. Now the angels are waiting "silent in Deep Heaven to see what Elwin Ransom of Cambridge would do." This actually gives him some momentary relief, because "No definite task was before him. All that was being demanded of him was a general and preliminary resolution to oppose the Enemy in any mode which circumstances might show to be desirable". But then, "Hullo! What was this? He sat straight upright again, his heart beating wildly against his side. His thoughts had stumbled on an idea from which they started back as a man starts back when he has touched a hot poker. But this time the idea was really too childish to entertain."
What has occurred to him is that he may have to confront the enemy physically. This terrifies him, but he sets the possibility aside as ridiculous, because, "It would degrade the spiritual warfare to the condition of mere mythology." But as readers of "On Fairy-stories" and "Mythopoeia" will guess, because Ransom takes mythology very seriously, this argumentative position that keeps the spiritual and physical apart will not stand in his mind. "Even on Earth the sacraments existed as a permanent reminder that the division was neither wholesome nor final."
He appeals to the philosophical absurdity of the situation. Did it mean "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? Was it as easy and as un-moral as that?" After a few paragraphs of theological considerations, "To this the Darkness gave him no answer. Patiently and inexorably it brought him back to the here and the now, and to the growing certainty of what was here and now demanded. . . . Here in Perelandra the temptation would be stopped by Ransom, or it would not be stopped at all." He must destroy Weston's body, so that the spirit, being invited nowhere else, will have to flee the planet. "And thinking of these things he perceived at last, with a sinking of heart, that if physical action were indeed demanded of him, it was an action, by ordinary standards, neither impossible nor hopeless. On the physical plane it was one middle-aged, sedentary body against another, and both unarmed save for fists and teeth and nails."
At a couple points in the debate, he reflects on the men serving at that very moment on the battlefields of World War II. He wonders what would happen if he "would lose his nerve as St Peter had done"; would he be forgiven? "And he bowed his head and groaned and repined against his fate—to be still a man and yet to be forced up into the metaphysical world, to enact what philosophy only thinks." The full weight of his decision descends upon him: "He felt like a man brought out under naked heaven, on the edge of a precipice, into the teeth of a wind that came howling from the Pole. He had pictured himself, till now, standing before the Lord, like Peter. But it was worse. He sat before Him like Pilate. It lay with him to save or to spill. His hands had been reddened, as all men's hands have been, in the slaying before the foundation of the world; now, if he chose, he would dip them again in the same blood."
And the debate concludes as follows:
The thing still seemed impossible. But gradually something happened to him which had happened to him only twice before in his life. It had happened once while he was trying to make up his mind to do a very dangerous job in the last war. It had happened again while he was screwing his resolution to go and see a certain man in London and make to him an excessively embarrassing confession which justice demanded. In both cases the thing had seemed a sheer impossibility: he had not thought but known that, being what he was, he was psychologically incapable of doing it; and then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'. The same thing happened now. His fear, his shame, his love, all his arguments, were not altered in the least. The thing was neither more nor less dreadful than it had been before. The only difference was that he knew—almost as a historical proposition—that it was going to be done. He might beg, weep, or rebel—might curse or adore—sing like a martyr or blaspheme like a devil. It made not the slightest difference. The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unalterable as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heard on this subject.
Now all this reminds me pretty strongly of Sam's much briefer conversation with himself in the chapter we’re discussing. After Sam determines that Frodo is dead, he swoons, and upon awaking this happens:
'What shall I do, what shall I do?' he said. 'Did I come all this way with him for nothing?' And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.
'But what can I do? Not leave Mr. Frodo dead, unburied on the top of the mountains, and go home? Or go on? Go on?' he repeated, and for a moment doubt and fear shook him. 'Go on? Is that what I've got to do? And leave him?'
Is this where the filmmakers got the idea for Frodo’s "Go home" line?
What does Sam think "go on" means at this point, if not to take the Ring to Mount Doom, which he doesn’t contemplate doing for a few more paragraphs?
While composing Frodo's body, Sam explains that he must take Sting and Galadriel's phial. "It's too good for me, and the Lady gave it to you, but maybe she'd understand. Do you understand, Mr. Frodo? I've got to go on." (I think that is one of the most heartbreaking lines in the book.)
Then he kneels by the body while "in his heart keeping a debate." He considers undertaking a quest of vengeance against Gollum, "But that was not what he had set out to do. It would not be worth while to leave his master for that. It would not bring him back. Nothing would. They had better both be dead together. And that too would be a lonely journey." He contemplates suicide, but "There was no escape that way. That was to do nothing, not even to grieve. That was not what he had set out to do."
He asks again, "What am I to do then?" and then "He seemed plainly to know the hard answer: see it through. Another lonely journey, and the worst." So he protests, "What? Me, alone, go to the Crack of Doom and all?" And he "quailed still, but the resolve grew" as he asks, "What? Me take the Ring from him? The Council gave it to him." And then this happens:
But the answer came at once: 'And the Council gave him companions, so that the errand should not fail. And you are the last of all the Company. The errand must not fail.'
'I wish I wasn't the last,' he groaned. 'I wish old Gandalf was here or somebody. Why am I left all alone to make up my mind? I'm sure to go wrong. And it's not for me to go taking the Ring, putting myself forward.'
'But you haven't put yourself forward; you've been put forward. And as for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn't as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They didn't choose themselves.'
Finally, he says, "Ah well, I must make up my own mind. I will make it up. But I'll be sure to go wrong: that'd be Sam Gamgee all over." Then, quickly considering the options, he realizes that if he doesn't take the Ring, it will soon be found and darkness will fall on everyone. So he takes it.
How is this debate like and unlike the one in Perelandra? Sam has other debates with himself. How does this compare to those? Who is Sam talking to? Did Perelandra influence The Lord of the Rings on this point, or vice versa, or neither? Are there models in earlier literature that both Tolkien and Lewis could be drawing on? How do the decision-making processes of Sam and Ransom compare to your own experience of having to make a very hard choice? Was Rosie the prom queen? Is Sam's decision freely willed or predestined?
A few other passages in Lewis's book reminded me strongly of The Lord of the Rings.
Before setting out, Ransom says to "Lewis":
"Don't imagine I've been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications."
What does that remind you of?
In the next chapter, Ransom's long struggle with the Un-man includes this passage:
"Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him—a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish he sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument."
Is that how Sam feels while fighting Gollum or Shelob?
And a cookie to the first person who can say why I'm mentioning the following passage now:
"Once he was actually astride the enemy's chest, squeezing its throat with both hands and—he found to his surprise—shouting a line out of The Battle of Maldon . . ."
There will be a final post for this chapter up in a few minutes.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:29am
Post #2 of 27
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So, should the title be "The Choices of Samwise, and the Forces that Master Him"?
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We are given a detailed insight into Sam's thoughts, and I can read the section either has Sam having a completely internal debate, or as Sam debating with some external will or wills, which prompt him to complete the quest to destroy the Ring.
Tolkien HAS done this before - I can think of these examples, which I expect form a non-exhaustive list:
=>When dithering in Bag End, Frodo agrees with Gandalf's suggestion to go to Rivendell as a preliminary destination. He receives a hit of warm feelings as if something - his mind? an external force? - says he has made the right decision.
=>At the Council of Elrond, Frodo has a painful moment of decision in the noon-day silence before announcing that he will take the Ring to Mordor. When the Read-through passed that chapter, we had a sub-thread about the roles of intervention, fate, and free will in that moment (http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=849474#849474 )
=>On Amon Hen, Frodo is once more the battleground of different imperatives - this time I find it difficult not to read him as being pushed about by other wills (though the climax is that he appears to have a moment of free-will).
=>As a captive of the orcs, Pippin has a sort of vision of Aragorn tracking them, and this gives him the idea of dropping his broach as a clue.
I have, BTW, only just realised that The Two Towers ends as it began, with a character presented with a moral dilemma - carry on The Mission, or interrupt it to carry out a rescue. I now think that Sam's choices resemble Aragorn's.
In the Lewis passages, judging from your quotes and précis, the debate is explicitly a theological one - Dark Night of the Soul stuff. Ransom seems to see himself undertaking a religious duty and his struggle is to overcome the feeling that it's unfair that so much is being asked of him: that he really deserves more support. He's asking 'what does God want of me?' Sam asks 'what is the right thing to do?' Tolkien's readers are left to decide whether that comes to the same thing or not. Personally, I much prefer Tolkien's treatment.
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volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:02am
Post #3 of 27
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If Sam is being persuaded by an external force, what does that force know? And what does it want?
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(Sorry, missed the edit window so have to post again to include this)
Suppose we conclude that Sam is being persuaded by an external force that wants him to leave Frodo and go on to Mount Doom.
We can then discuss whether this force knows that Frodo is not really dead. If so, does it want Sam to abandon Frodo despite this? Or is this some sort of test for Sam - e.g. he must prove himself willing to put the quest above his loyalty to a dead Frodo, but not a living one?
I don' know the answers, but I'm enjoying the questions!
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volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 12:17pm
Post #4 of 27
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'lawful hatred'? A significant difference between Sam and Ransom then.
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"Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him—a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish he sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument."
C.S. Lewis, Perelandra, as quoted by NE Brigand (but my bolds)
No, I see this as very different. Sam is in a rage when fighting Gollum and then Shelob, but he fights Gollum in self defence and Shelob to save Frodo. Having driven Shelob away he doesn't try to follow and kill her. His brief resolve to get revenge by killing Gollum quickly evaporates. I see this as very different from Ransom. If I have understood your précis of Perelandra correctly, Ransom decides that it is his holy duty to assassinate 'the un-man'. He seems to be enjoying it (in a slightly guilty way), and so does Lewis.
I don't think Tolkien does 'lawful hatred' and I prefer him for it. Lewis' 'lawful hatred' makes me queasy. In the real world, a great deal of suffering has been caused by people motivated by 'lawful hatred'. Clearly lewis is writing allegory - a spiritual struggle made physical to dramatise it, I expect. But the fantasy of righteously killing your opponents strikes me as very dark stuff.
I have a quote from Ursula Le Guin that is relevant here:
There's a good deal of hatred in Lewis, and it is frightening hatred, because this gentle, brilliant, lovable, devout man never saw the need even to rationalize it, let alone apologise for it. He was self-righteous in his faith. That may be permissible to a militant Christian; but it is not permissible to a highly intelligent, highly educated man to be self-righteous in his opinions and his prejudices...
J R R Tolkien, Lewis's close friend and colleague, certainly shared many of Lewis's views and was also a devout Christian. But it all comes out very differently in his fiction. Take his handling of evil: his villains are orcs and Black Riders (goblins and zombies; mythic figures) and Sauron, the Dark Lord, who is never seen and has no suggestion of humanity about him. These are not evil men but embodiments of evil in men, universal symbols of the hateful. The men who do wrong are not complete figures but complements: Saruman is Gandalf's dark-self, Boromir Aragorn's; Wormtongue is, almost literally the weakness of King Theoden. There remains the wonderfully repulsive and degraded Gollum. But nobody who reads the trilogy hates, or is asked to hate, Gollum. Gollum is Frodo's shadow; and it is the shadow, not the hero, who achieves the quest. Though Tolkien seems to project evil into "the others", they are not truly others but ourselves; he is utterly clear about this.
...In Lewis...the enemy is not oneself but the Wholly Other, demoniac. This projection leaves the author free to be cruel, and cruelty is the dominant tone in several of these stories..
Ursula Le Guin
This review, entitled "The Dark Tower by C S Lewis" was originally published in The New Republic, 1977, and is anthologised in "Dancing at the Edge of the World (Grove Press 1989)
(This quote has appeared in a Reading Room discussion before http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=720884#720884 )
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volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 8:12pm
Post #5 of 27
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C. S. Lewis? Or, well, maybe not
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Thanks again for another long meditation on Tolkien’s writing – leading a chapter discussion can do this to a fellow, as many of us know. I can’t speak to all of this, but I did have several reactions at different points in your essay that I would like to share.
1. I read the Space Trilogy when I was about 13, and I haven’t read it since. Much later, when I joined this board and began feeding a serious Tolkien addiction, I did learn that Lewis based some parts of his hero Ransom on J. R. R. Tolkien. What struck me today was that Ransom’s first name is Elwin – something that didn’t stick when I read the book, partly because he is called Ransom throughout, and party because Elwin had no meaning for me back then.
Now, of course, I remember that Tolkien repeatedly used this name for the hero of his abortive “Time Travel Novel” (which was the companion project to Lewis’ Space Trilogy): Elwin in “The Lost Road” of 1937, Alwin in “The Notion-Club Papers” of 1945. If I remember it rightly, the English name Elwin is derived from Old English Aelf Wine, or “Elf Friend”. Elendil, the Numenorean hero ancestor of Gondor and Arnor in The Lord of the Rings, can be read to mean “Elf Friend”, and of course the concept of a mortal being an Elf Friend is a recurring theme in LotR. Surely Lewis knew of the name’s importance to Tolkien, and so linked Ransom to his friend not just by profession and habit (Ransom is a philologist and lover of the outdoors) but by name as well.
Wait, don’t tell me: Lewis dedicated “Surprised by Joy” to Tolkien. Ha ha.
2. I was taken by the extended quotation you provide in which Ransom realizes that a future action of his is irrevocably set by some force of destiny that he is helpless to contest.
without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'. ... The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unalterable as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. (Perelandra)
You ask us to connect this with Sam’s sense of inevitability about his taking the Ring, and the quest, from an apparently dead Frodo. I actually made a different connection.
First, like NoWizMe, I find I rather dislike this intently and elaborately-crafted interior monologue. It reads way too much like a philosophical essay, dropped wholesale into what purports to be a novel. Now, I admit, it’s certainly possible that Lewis’ mind worked this way – logically, impeccably expressed, and deeply philosophically—and that Ransom, being a character modeled on Lewis’ friends and associates among the Oxford faculty, might also be capable of thinking like this. But that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to read while trying to sustain the fictional suspension of disbelief that this monologue is taking place on the untamed and alien surface of Venus rather than in a seminar room or some pub in an academic town. Given the connection of themes – free will, predestination, fate of the world in one weak man’s hands, etc. – in this book and in the LotR chapter we’re discussing, I totally agree with NoWiz that Tolkien beats Lewis hands down for finding a palatable way to treat with philosophy, religion, and ethics in a fantasy novel.
Second, this prose may be worlds apart (ha ha) from Tolkien’s, but it echoes strongly in my mind with the style of another writer from this period: George Orwell. Here are some passages from Nineteen Eighty-four (published in 1948), which I think echo Lewis’ Perelandra in style and in theme:
For whom, it suddenly occurred to him to wonder, was he writing this diary? For the future, for the unborn. His mind … fetched up with a bump against the Newspeak word DOUBLETHINK. For the first time the magnitude of what he had undertaken came home to him. How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless. (Nineteen Eighty-four)
He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment--he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps--of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before O'Brien had dropped his hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person. (Nineteen Eighty-four)
Note the confusion about the actual relationship of future and past; and the idea that past episodes in ones life often come to mind unbidden, to illustrate some present problem.
To drill down a little deeper, but further from Master Samwise perhaps, one particularly evocative part of Ransom’s thinking, that you showed us, is this:
You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say that he had been delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged into unassailable freedom. Ransom could not, for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. (Perelandra)
As I read this, Lewis speculates that accepting God’s destiny eliminates the possibility of free will; and then inverts the idea to suggest that to put oneself in the hands of God is the only “unassailable” form of freedom. I am not sure I agree with Lewis, but where have I read similar meditations, at least in contemporary English literature rather than in Paradise Lost or the posts of our missing TORn friend a.s.? Orwell again comes to me with this:
'God is power. But at present power is only a word so far as you are concerned. It is time for you to gather some idea of what power means. The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. You know the Party slogan: "Freedom is Slavery". Has it ever occurred to you that it is reversible? Slavery is freedom. Alone--free--the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die, which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the Party so that he IS the Party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.’ (Nineteen Eighty-four, bold by squire)
This looks like the same debate, to me – only Orwell in his cynicism has put the Devil in the place where Lewis has put God!
Now, since I teach Orwell to my class, and read Tolkien for fun, and have read Lewis and several other midcentury English authors of what I would call “novels of ideas”, I have speculated to myself before now that all these writers were basically struggling with questions that were of central importance to any thinking person in that time. How is it that Men of Power – dictators, or scientists, or even democratically-elected leaders – had rendered the world of the mind and the spirit so apparently irrelevant to the future of the political and social world?
In these novels I find again and again long and eloquently composed monologues or discursions by characters in a fictional setting, on subjects like ethics, power, sovereign rule, and the role of thought vs. action. The writers, Lewis and Tolkien and also Golding, Huxley, Greene, and Waugh, were both religious (often Catholic, a tiny minority in England), and were educated at Oxford or similar ancient, religiously-inspired, institutions. Orwell is a bit of an outlier here; he went to Eton, but not to University, and so perhaps his writing is ultimately more pessimistic about the future of spiritually-minded intellectualism. In the 1930s-50s, England was a world that had already lost its footing in the First War, was collapsing economically, found itself under siege, both ideological and military, by both extremes of totalitarianism, and was forced to respond by adopting some of the enemy’s methods and ideas. England’s writers – or the ones I’m identifying here – seem to have been compelled to work out through fiction their own role, and the roles of their readers among the educated middle class and intelligentsia, in what one of them bitingly called the Brave New World.
3. Is this where the filmmakers got the idea for Frodo’s "Go home" line?
As I said in last week’s discussion, I think the film is drawing on the previous chapter, where Frodo commanded Gollum to leave them and return to the living world now that he was able to find his own path to Mordor at the top of the pass. But yes, you’re right, the phrase ‘go home’ appears here, applied to Sam. Who knows why the writers made that odd choice?
4. Are there models in earlier literature that both Tolkien and Lewis could be drawing on?
My thoughts above are that Tolkien and Lewis were writing about their own times, in their own fantastic ways. But I’m sure there are earlier examples in literature to be found, as well.
5. You note a few other passages in Lewis's book that “reminded me strongly of The Lord of the Rings”.
"Don't imagine I've been selected to go to Perelandra because I’m anyone in particular. One never can see, or not till long afterwards, why any one was selected for any job. And when one does, it is usually some reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly, it is never for what the man himself would have regarded as his chief qualifications."
What does that remind you of? This, of course:
‘Why was I chosen?’
‘Such questions cannot be answered,’ said Gandalf. ‘You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and heart and wits as you have.’ – LotR I.2, ‘Shadow of the Past’, Gandalf responding to Frodo about why Frodo has inherited the burden of the Ring.
6. And a cookie to the first person who can say why I'm mentioning the following passage now:
"Once he was actually astride the enemy's chest, squeezing its throat with both hands and—he found to his surprise—shouting a line out of The Battle of Maldon . . ."
I’m guessing it’s because Tolkien used the Battle of Maldon as a base for his critical theory of ‘Northern courage’ and wrote a radio play and accompanying essay about it in the early 1950s. Interestingly, Sam Gamgee is often noted by critics as the character in LotR that best fits Tolkien’s anti-heroic prescription in The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son: a simple man who follows and serves his master, rather than seeking vain and fatal glory, is the truer and more glorious hero in the eyes of God. It’s not clear from your quote where Lewis falls in this spectrum: is Ransom more like Torhthelm or Tidwald here? That is, is he doing God’s work or his own in screaming in triumph as he slaughters the enemy?
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:06pm
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"I now think that Sam's choices resemble Aragorn's."
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Yes, indeed! But which of the Three Hunters is Sam most like, as he pursues the orcs and their captive?
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:24pm
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Curiously, "Ransom" was not originally the hero's name.
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What struck me today was that Ransom’s first name is Elwin – something that didn’t stick when I read the book, partly because he is called Ransom throughout, and party because Elwin had no meaning for me back then.
Now, of course, I remember that Tolkien repeatedly used this name for the hero of his abortive “Time Travel Novel” . . . I'm glad you picked up on that. I don't know whether the protagonist of Out of the Silent Planet always had the first name Elwin, but here's a curious twist: when Tolkien sent the novel to Stanley Unwin for consideration (it had already been rejected by the publisher of Lewis's poetry collection Dymer), the hero's last name was not Ransom but . . .
Unwin.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:25pm
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What about the Rohirrim who "sang as they slew"?
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Maybe they didn't feel hatred at that moment, but they seemed to be enjoying their slaughtering!
But another reason that Perelandra passage reminded me of Sam fighting Shelob is Ransom's feeling that:
"What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument."
Because Tolkien describes Shelob thus: "Knobbed and pitted with corruption was her age-old hide, but ever thickened from within with layer on layer of evil growth." Are those just metaphors, or is she literally, like the Un-man, made of "corruption" and "evil"?
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:32pm
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Sam has his quota of lawful hatred - a rare helping in Tolkien, to be sure
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Thanks for that response; I agree with you and LeGuin that Tolkien and Lewis take noticeably different approaches to the dangers of self-righteousness and its resulting hatreds.
However, I think Tolkien does touch on the "lawful hatred" in the first quote we are given by NEB. Yes, as you say, Sam's rage at Gollum at the end of the previous chapter is partly frustration that he is being kept from helping Frodo. But there is also the suggestion that he takes personally Gollum's betrayal:
Fury at the treachery, and desperation at the delay when his master was in deadly peril, gave to Sam a sudden violence and strength that was far beyond anything that Gollum had expected...
The fight is described in more detail, I think, than any other duel in the entire book. When Gollum finally gives up and heads for the hills, so to speak, Sam is focused entirely on catching and killing him:
Sword in hand Sam went after him. For the moment he had forgotten everything else but the red fury in his brain and the desire to kill Gollum. - both from LotR IV.9
These lines do seem, to me, to echo Lewis' description of Ransom's hatred that NEB has offered us. Yes, Sam's hatred "quickly evaporates", but that doesn't make the height of his passion any less extreme.
Finally, we are shown in this chapter that Sam is torn between love and hate, the ultimate extremes that result from his placement between Frodo and, if I may say, anti-Frodo. As he debates what to do if now that Frodo is dead, his first thought is that his duty is to hunt down and kill Gollum. Only on second thought does he realize that continuing the Ring quest is his real duty to his late master.
Now he tried to find strength to tear himself away and go on a lonely journey - for vengeance. If once he could go, his anger would bear him down all the roads of the world, pursuing, until he had him at last: Gollum. Then Gollum would die in a corner. - LotR IV.10
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 9:55pm
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and the joy of battle (or killing) was upon them. It might be arguing semantics if they felt "lawful hatred," or maybe not. I don't think they thought they were in an existential battle with Evil Incarnate when they charged the Southrons. Rather, they were a militaristic society that glorified war and therefore enjoyed it when it happened. They were happy to have enemies to slay; they didn't hate them at a gut level, the sort of "lawful hatred" that would justify genocide. More like they appreciated having enemies they could stab and kill. Almost grateful for their presence, in a way.
Yet that description is far different from how they felt at Helm's Deep when they were fighting for their own survival and the defense of their homeland. At the Pelennor, they were more like happy mercenaries killing foreigners they knew nothing about.
Back to Shelob: while she is described as shaped by evil and corruption, I think of her as more of an intelligent monster than the incarnation of evil. Killing her would not rid the world of sin the way killing the devil would.
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:05pm
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Do we know that the character's last name was originally Unwin instead of Ransom? In the only source I have, the letter that Tolkien wrote to Unwin recommending the first book of Lewis' series, it's unclear:
It is only by an odd accident that the hero is a philologist (one point in which he resembles me) and has your name.
Carpenter's editorial footnote to this says:
This indicates that in the original draft of Out of the Silent Planet the hero was named Unwin; in the published book his name is Ransom. - both quotes, Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 24
But that doesn't necessarily follow, to me. Unwin, rare in any case, can be either a first or last name in English. In the published book, he is Elwin Ransom. Why wouldn't the earlier name be Unwin Ransom, rather than Xxxxx Unwin? (No one, I guess, would imagine Lewis starting out with Elwin Unwin!).
I could guess that Carpenter, like me and a lot of other people, had forgotten that Ransom, referred to throughout the book by his last name, does have a first name, Elwin. Unwin and Elwin are a lot easier to switch; the first means "Unfriend" and the second means "Elf Friend". Finally, I have always assumed Ransom was a highly meaningful name for the character, conveying that the hero is a sacrificial offering to make amends for the sins of the Earth in the eyes of the rest of the solar system.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:05pm
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Good point (as is N.E Brigand's about the singing Rohirrim)
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I think I still see a difference, though one that is collapsing under scrutiny!
(Edit) And I just see I've croos-posted with CuriousG!
As I understand it, Ransom decides that it is morally necessary to kill the un-man and goes and does so. Sam is murderous in his rage, but lacks that cold, righteous calculation. And even the battle rage that is unusual in hobbits, who are not a martial culture likely to 'sing as they slew', or to play a 'game' like Legolas and Gimli at Helm's Deep competing to kill the most orcs.
Even the Rohirrim, Legolas and Gimli are aggressive in battle, but not determined to kill otherwise. There is no crusade or jihad launched against the Harradrim after the war, as far as we are told.
That said, I do wonder (with George RR Martin) what Aragorn does about the remaining orcs.:
And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren't gone – they're in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles? In real life, real-life kings had real-life problems to deal with. Just being a good guy was not the answer. You had to make hard, hard decisions. Sometimes what seemed to be a good decision turned around and bit you in the ass; it was the law of unintended consequences. I've tried to get at some of these in my books. My people who are trying to rule don't have an easy time of it. Just having good intentions doesn't make you a wise king. GRR Martin interviewed for Rolling Stone magazine http://www.rollingstone.com/...e-interview-20140423
Tolkien has made orcs the 'un-men' in a way. They are The Other, the monsters, and that usually means genocide:
~~~~~~
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(This post was edited by noWizardme on Mar 14 2016, 10:07pm)
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:17pm
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The orcs aren't just "in the mountains" after Sauron's destruction.
As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope. - LotR VI.4 The implication is that the orcs aren't going to be a problem for anyone until a new Dark Lord arises (which is inevitable, everyone agrees, but it will take some time).
It's absurd to talk of "little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles". There was no need for Aragorn to "pursue a policy of systematic genocide", and there is no need to twist the moral universe of Middle-earth into something it's not, just to make a claim of superiority for an alternate moral universe. Fantasy is fantasy - no work of fantasy I've ever read is 'realer' than another. The difference is the quality of the imagination and the execution, not the adherence to whatever is meant by "real-life".
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:24pm
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Your source is also mine (except I didn't have the book at hand). "Elwin Unwin" seems pretty unlikely to me, too.
As per the subject line of my lead post, "Ransom" is indeed a significant name, but not particularly so until Perelandra. "Unwin", whether first or last name, makes sense in the first book because one reason the villains believe they can successfully kidnap him is that he is a bit of a loner.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:26pm
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" 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'. ... The thing was going to be done. "
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without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'. ... The thing was going to be done. There was going to arrive, in the course of time, a moment at which he would have done it. The future act stood there, fixed and unalterable as if he had already performed it. It was a mere irrelevant detail that it happened to occupy the position we call future instead of that which we call past. (Perelandra)
I wondered about that too. I have reassured myself, the night before an exam, say, that the die is now cast and I might as well get some sleep as fret about the paper. At 3pm tomorrow I will be asked to put down my pen and will leave the exam room... I can have found this idea restful. Maybe this is what Ransom means?
Or maybe Ransom does mean (and so presumably Lewis means - Lewis' is a chronic user his novels as a pulpit or lecture hall) that he is being guided towards this future with little choice. Something like a character in a 'rail shooter' (a genre of video game in which a player can make some limited choices, but is obliged to follow a path set up by the game designers, the only alternative being to 'die')?
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:42pm
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Ah - I hadn't read Martin as saying his fiction was superior, just different in intent
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I didn't read Martin as claiming his fiction was superior. I read him as explaining why - within the way his fictitious world works - people given absolute power end up ruling badly, even if they are (or try to be) noble.
Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn't ask the question: What was Aragorn's tax policy?... As before http://www.rollingstone.com/...e-interview-20140423
I'd read 'can' in "Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good" as meaning 'Tolkien is entitled to...'(because of the medieval philosophy he's adopted).This is one of the charms of LOTR - as Tolkien himself says, if the War of the Ring had followed the course of real-life wars (such as the Second World War) the Ring would of course not have been deliberately destroyed.
Come to think of it, defeated orcs do seem to vanish conveniently (taken by trees, or fleeing wailing etc.). Personally I'm happy with that, but I see how it would be unsatisfactory were Aragron a character in a GRR Martin Westeros story.
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:49pm
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I think he means he has no choice
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Or at least, that he perceives that he has no choice.
In your studying scenario, although of course you meant to take the exam and get it over with, I expect you would admit you knew you had the option of fleeing: dropping out, taking the consequences, etc. Thus, you had free will even if you had no intention of exercising it.
As I read Ransom's/Lewis' words, I get that he feels - or knows, rather, since the certainty is the whole point - that he has no free will, or freedom, left in the matter.
For most of us, knowing the future will be brighter in a day or two is, as you say, restful or reassuring. But that is not the same as considering the intervening time as already being in the past, so that the terms past and future can no longer be distinguished. That is the interesting and alarming image of what it means to live a predestined life, as Lewis gives it to us.
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squire
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 10:59pm
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As I read it, he mocks the Aragorn/orc scenario with absurd exaggeration (baby orc cradles??), then contrasts Tolkien's apparently ridiculous way of writing with "I, on the other hand, understand and write about the realities of kingly rule and evil creatures". It's not just in his fictitious world that absolute power leads to bad rulers, it's in the real world. He claims to match reality in his fiction - witness his use of 'reality' and 'real-life' when talking about his scenarios - and the assumption of the result being superior fiction is implicit.
But I'm not a reader of Martin's work, and don't know much about him. If he acknowledges in other interviews or writings that he knows he's comparing apples to oranges in contrasting Aragorn and Theoden to the kings in his stories, I'm glad to hear it.
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CuriousG
Half-elven
Mar 14 2016, 11:33pm
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My sense from the battle of the Morannon is that the Orcs without an evil master became dispersed, stupid, suicidal, unorganized as a fighting force, and essentially harmless. The Men from East and South fought on, but no one needed to exterminate the Orcs:
As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.
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enanito
Rohan
Mar 15 2016, 2:10am
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What about orcses and goblinses during the B.D.G. period? (Before Dol Gildur)
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I'm not sure how well that logic holds up in the reverse time frame. That is, if orcs were to die once Sauron's power disappears, how then did the Wise account for their existence after Isildur cut off the Ring? Wouldn't the fact that orcs and goblins still multiplied in the mountains during those long years, be evidence that not only was the Ring still around, but Sauron as well? Or did they attribute it to just the Ring's power, even if they imagined that Sauron himself might possibly never return?
And even prior to that, when Sauron was in Numenor playing Mr. Nice Guy, there were plenty of evil orcs in M.E., and I don't necessarily think they were under Sauron's control at that point. Just being evil on their own, cuz that's what they're good at, right?
Melkor's destruction sure didn't put an end to orcs in M.E. either (many of his minions seemed to survive to fight another day)
I'm not saying Sauron's destruction wouldn't also destroy "his creatures". But to me it's only those truly "spell-enslaved". I can readily imagine Shagrat or Gorbag, released from Sauron's control, still having minds of their own to go off and loot/plunder/ravage with their little bands. Since this chapter "humanizes" them, I just don't see them as mindless ants without Sauron's will to control them. But perhaps that's their destiny after all.
(This post was edited by enanito on Mar 15 2016, 2:14am)
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No One in Particular
Lorien
Mar 15 2016, 3:09am
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Ransom vs. Sam...to the death? Ok, no, not really.
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In the Lewis passages, judging from your quotes and précis, the debate is explicitly a theological one - Dark Night of the Soul stuff. Ransom seems to see himself undertaking a religious duty and his struggle is to overcome the feeling that it's unfair that so much is being asked of him: that he really deserves more support. He's asking 'what does God want of me?' Sam asks 'what is the right thing to do?' Tolkien's readers are left to decide whether that comes to the same thing or not. Personally, I much prefer Tolkien's treatment.
I've never read the Lewis story in question, but from the quote it appears that Ransom is a "thinking man", intelligent, someone who considers weighty matters and makes a choice on the best option available. (He might be considered gentry, like Mr. Frodo, if he were found in such a setting.) Sam, on the other hand, is a working hobbit, prone to a set worldview full of little to no gray areas; his main character trait is service. That's important, because Christianity in general stresses humbleness and servitude in all things. (I'm not Catholic. I can't speak to what Tolkien might have believed specifically.) There is no more valued role in Christianity than that of the servant. Sure, Sam lapses into his anger at Gollum, but it isn't a lasting thing. In short order, he comes to his senses and realizes that he must continue to serve. Any vengeance against Gollum would have to wait.
Ransom questions things like predestination, free will, and his own purpose. Sam only does what Frodo needs him to do, and what he has been told needs to be done.
That tendency toward service above all seems to me to be one of the strongest single examples of how Tolkien's religion informed his writing, at least for the Baggins Family Chronicle.
While you live, shine
Have no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands an end.
Seikilos Epitaph
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Mar 15 2016, 3:45am
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"Ransom questions things like predestination, free will, and his own purpose".
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Isn't Sam doing that, somewhat, two chapters earlier when contemplating himself as the character in a story? Isn't he doing it now when he asks, what am I supposed to do?
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Discuss Tolkien's life and works in the Reading Room!
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No One in Particular
Lorien
Mar 15 2016, 4:23am
Post #23 of 27
(2729 views)
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For Sam, the simplest answers are always the best answers.
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Isn't Sam doing that, somewhat, two chapters earlier when contemplating himself as the character in a story? Isn't he doing it now when he asks, what am I supposed to do?
To a point, I guess,but his answer seems to be almost always the same-some variation on "you're thinking too much/above your station, just do as you're told". I can't think of anything offhand that breaks the pattern, anyway, although as I mentioned in another post, I don't have the book anywhere near me. That's an oversight on my part. :)
While you live, shine
Have no grief at all
Life exists only for a short while
And time demands an end.
Seikilos Epitaph
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Mar 15 2016, 9:04am
Post #24 of 27
(2701 views)
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I think it's most likely that Ransom supposes he has no free will, but I thought it possible to read the passage otherwise...
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Ransom might be pretending to himself that he had no free will, in order to make it easier for him to go along with what he believes he must do.
In my night-before-my-exam example, I was well aware that I was playing mind games with myself. I found it more restful to think about how I would feel having finished than to think about the hours up to the point where I opened the paper and could or could not see how to answer the questions. In a way perhaps, I was gaining comfort by pretending that the future was predestined. I think it is possible to read the Ransom quote and wonder whether he is doing something like that - pretend he has no choice to bolster his courage. But I agree with you it reads as more likely that he feels he really has no choice. (And you could say, what is the real difference between believing you have no choice and actually having no choice?)
If I had been asked what I expected to happen if I refused to sit my exam, I would certainly have said that I thought I could choose to stay in bed until it was over. I would not then expect fate or God or something to over-ride my decision - e.g. for me and my bed to appear magically in the exam hall (though that kind of thing is a common anxiety dream about exams, I believe) In reality, of course there was no chance of me deciding not to do the exam, so I would have been claiming that I had free will in the matter but was not choosing to use it. An empiricist would presumably say that the only way I could prove I had free will there would have been to exercise it.
~~~~~~
volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our upcoming ROTK read-through http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=893293#893293
A set of links to our Book III discussions can be found here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=886383#886383
A wonderful list of links to previous read-throughs is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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dormouse
Half-elven
Mar 15 2016, 10:06am
Post #25 of 27
(2703 views)
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The singing of the Rohirrim always reminds me....
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... of a First World War poem Tolkien would certainly have known - Julian Grenfell's 'Into Battle' :
The naked earth is warm with Spring, And with green grass and bursting trees Leans to the sun's gaze glorying, And quivers in the sunny breeze; And life is Colour and Warmth and Light, And a striving evermore for these; And he is dead who will not fight, And who dies fighting has increase.
The fighting man shall from the sun Take warmth, and life from glowing earth; Speed with the light-foot winds to run And with the trees to newer birth; And find, when fighting shall be done, Great rest, and fulness after dearth.
All the bright company of Heaven Hold him in their bright comradeship, The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven, Orion's belt and sworded hip:
The woodland trees that stand together, They stand to him each one a friend; They gently speak in the windy weather; They guide to valley and ridges end.
The kestrel hovering by day, And the little owls that call by night, Bid him be swift and keen as they, As keen of ear, as swift of sight.
The blackbird sings to him: "Brother, brother, If this be the last song you shall sing, Sing well, for you may not sing another; Brother, sing."
In dreary doubtful waiting hours, Before the brazen frenzy starts, The horses show him nobler powers; — O patient eyes, courageous hearts!
And when the burning moment breaks, And all things else are out of mind, And only joy of battle takes Him by the throat and makes him blind, Through joy and blindness he shall know, Not caring much to know, that still Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air Death moans and sings; But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
Anthologists and commentators on war poetry tend to be embarrassed by it now, because it speaks to an older understanding of war. The anger and bitterness of Sassoon et al is so much easier to present to a modern audience. But Grenfell's poem meant a lot to the men who actually fought in the trenches. There's no hatred in it at all, lawful or otherwise. There's no explicit enemy in it. It expresses only an acute awareness of life and its beauty on the part of a man who knows he may die at any moment. And whatever any of us might make of the morality of it, (however far it may have been from the more sordid realities of the Somme or Passchendaele) I think that's the idea behind the singing Rohirrim and I'm sure it's one Tolkien would have understood.
For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood and every spring
there is a different green. . .
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