That Hideous Strength
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That Hideous Strength is a novel by C. S. Lewis first published in 1945. It is the third in Lewis's theological science fiction series, the Space Trilogy which features the philologist Elwin Ransom. This novel follows Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra (a.k.a. Voyage to Venus). It is heavily influenced by the writing of Lewis's friend Charles Williams. The book is heavily dystopian in style.
Contents |
Characters
- Mark Studdock- Protaganist, obsessed with reaching the "inner circle" in social environments.
- Jane Studdock- Wife of Mark who experiences clairvoyant dreams.
The N.I.C.E.
- Alcazan- "The Head", a criminal executed by the N.I.C.E. who's head is supposedly kept alive by intricate machinery, becomes a communication mechanism for the "macrobes" or fallen eldila.
- Wither- Deputy Director of the N.I.C.E., he is really in charge.
- Professor Frost- Psychologist and assistant to Wither, perhaps the only other person to know what is really going on.
- Fairy Hardcastle- N.I.C.E. police chief.
- Filostrato- Physiologist who thinks he has preserved the head.
- Lord Feverstone- "Devine", politician and aristocrat who lures Mark into the N.I.C.E.
- Professor Straik- "The Mad Parson", wants to build better humans and create one "God Almighty".
St. Anne's
- Dr. Ransom- "The Pendragon" who communicates with the good eldila.
- Grace Ironwood- Psychologist and doctor who helps Jane interpret her dreams.
- Merlinus Ambrosius- The wizard Merlin, returns to serve the pendragon and save England. Receives the powers of the eldila.
- Macphee- "The skeptic." Wants to fight the N.I.C.E. with human powers.
- Mr. Bultitude- Trained human-like bear who kills Wither.
Plot
This final novel in the trilogy is a parable of the battle between man’s sinful pride and God’s will. It is set in post-war England in a small university town in which a research agency called N.I.C.E. (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments), led by fallen eldila, attempts to destroy the true nature of mankind. The N.I.C.E. represents man’s prideful greed to conquer nature and to make himself ever better, until he has conquered the last remaining piece of nature – human nature – making true man a lost memory. Dr. Ransom represents the watchful Christian, who is willing to be used by God at any moment. Additionally, Merlin, using the "angels’" powers, symbolizes that only through the God’s almighty power can the battle against the forces of darkness end in victory. Together, these characters provide a prophetic fiction that describes what could happen if mankind continues along his current scientific path.
The story centres around a young professor and his wife who are affected in different ways by the so-called science being practiced at the Institute. The professor is targeted for recruitment into the "objectivists," the inner circle of researchers who associate directly with diabolic intelligences. One of the reasons they have for recruiting him is to get control of his wife, who is plagued by disturbing, clairvoyant dreams which she lacks the wisdom to interpret. However, she is driven, partly by N.I.C.E.'s attempt to arrest her, to join a small community of people in the service of the supernatural powers opposing the Institute.
This community is nominally led by Ransom, still suffering from the wound he received from Professor Weston in his climactic fight on Venus. Here he appears as the Pendragon, the modern inheritor of the role of King Arthur. His Masters' plan is to use a mortal as a conduit for their power. However, Ransom's soul is "virginal" in this way, so he must recruit an older and more ambiguous agent, who has previously dealt with supernatural powers: the reawakened wizard Merlin.
Influences on the novel and themes
This novel, unlike the previous two, shows the influence of Charles Williams to the extent that it might be considered either an homage or a pastiche. Similarities to Williams' supernatural thrillers include the non-exotic setting, the gathering of an informal team of heroes rather than a single protagonist, the focus on a temporarily estranged married couple, and the use of Arthurian legend. There are also brief nods to J. R. R. Tolkien, and the character MacPhee is an affectionate parody of Lewis's former teacher W. T. Kirkpatrick. Olaf Stapledon influences the story indirectly. The description of the "Head" is similar to that of the Fourth Men in Last and First Men. In the book's preface, Lewis said of Stapledon "...Mr Stapledon is so rich in invention that he can well afford to lend, and I admire his invention (though not his philosophy) so much that I should feel no shame to borrow".
Another significant difference of this final volume is that, although the story is told from the perspective of multiple characters (including a bear!), Ransom is not among them, so we do not really get an in-depth understanding of his view of human society in light of his experiences among the angels and the sinless mortal beings who live on the other worlds. He is thus a much more remote character in this novel than in the previous volumes of the Space Trilogy.
The novel's central theme—that pure materialism is incompatible with ethics and, ultimately, with human life—is, as Lewis stated, based on his own earlier philosophical treatise The Abolition of Man. An extreme example of this theme is his portrayal of the leaders of N.I.C.E., two of whom (Frost and Wither) have become nihilists with no recognizably human motives as a result of their quest for a purely objective mode of thought. The novel is also Lewis's most overtly political fiction, illustrating how the alliances of state, industry, and academia and the manipulation of the mass media might move England toward fascism.
Like the dialogue between the Martian Oyarsa and Prof. Weston in Out of the Silent Planet, the discussion between Ransom and the reawakened Merlin in this book dramatizes Lewis's quarrels with modern Western materialistic culture. Lewis's criticism is conservative in many ways, but also overlaps in some aspects with left-wing critique of global capitalism.
The "Banquet at Belbury" where the evil N.I.C.E. leaders are made unable to comprhend each other's languague and are thus undone is clearly based on the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, to which the book's name also refers. When descrbing to the reawakened Merlin the conditions in the modern world, Ransom says "it is as in the days when Nimrod built a tower to reach heaven". Though not specifcally stated in the Bible, long stadning later tradition (attested in Jewish, Christian and Muslim soursces alike) attributes to the hunter king Nimrod the building of that tower, an ultimate act of rebellion against God's authority. The N.I.C.E. scientists do not build a physical tower, but they and their Satanic patrons the "macrobes" are involved in a total rebellion against God . That makes them Nimrod's succesesors, deserving of the same Divine retribution which fell upon Nimrod and his followers.
A world where genocide is legitimate
In the beginning of the book Mark, the young professor, is being successfully tempted to join N.I.C.E. by the arch-schemer Lord Feverstone. Before the reader ever has a glimpse of the N.I.C.E.'s monstrous headquarters, Feverstone gives quite a frank description of what the N.I.C.E.'s aims are:
"Quite simple and obvious things, at first - sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don't want any dead weights), selective breeding." To which Mark replies "But this is stupendous, Feverstone" and becomes all the more eager to join an institute of which these are some of the proclaimed aims.
This is all the more significant as Mark's most obvious characteristic, as portrayed by Lewis, is an extreme conformism and a strong desire to fit himself to the prevalent ideas and fashions in his social environment. Moreover, he prides himself on being part of "The Progressive Element" in his university (the term "politically correct" did not yet exist).
This clearly implies Lewis' dark 1944 vision of the post-war world: a world where, though Nazi Germany was militarily crushed (that was already a foregone conclusion when the book was written), racism and genocide have become respectable ideas, completely acceptable to "progressive" academics.
Later on, one of the N.I.C.E. directors asserts that the two World Wars were "merely the first of sixteen wars scheduled to take place until the end of the Twentieth Century", whose hidden real purpose is to exterminate the bulk of humanity and leave only "a small nucleus" desirable to the Satanic "macrobes". No wonder that Ransom talks of "The shadow of one dark wing" covering the whole of Tellus [Earth].