To Join the Dance: Perelandra and The Screwtape Letters

The fourth essay for Dr. Dauphinais, July 28, 2021

            Welcome to this week's edition of Theology on Tap, as we continue our journey through selected works of C.S. Lewis. Today will be discussing Perelandra, which is the middle book of Lewis’s space trilogy, written as adult fiction. Perelandra takes place on the planet called Perelandra by its inhabitants, and Venus by us. The main character, Elwin Ransom, is called to journey to Perelandra by mystical means, and arrives there to find a planet with animals, flora, and fauna, and only two human inhabitants. As we delve into the story, we will learn that Ransom has arrived in Perelandra near the beginning of their creation story, and that his role there is to be that of protector. If you think of Ransom as someone visiting the Garden of Eden, you will see the parallels of the story to the biblical story of creation, although Lewis himself tells us that none of the characters are allegorical.[1]

            We will be discussing Perelandra along with The Screwtape Letters, one of Lewis is most well-known works. Its format is a series of letters written by Screwtape, who we can describe as an upper middle management demon. The letters are advice and encouragement to his nephew, Wormwood, who is on an assignment to a “patient.” Wormwood’s task is to turn his patient away from God, and to the devil. Reading The Screwtape Letters can be confusing, because Screwtape refers to God as “the Enemy,” and refers to the never directly named Satan as “Our Father.”

            The first book of The Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, introduces us to Ransom and another main character of Perelandra, Weston. Even without having read Out of the Silent Planet, we know from Ransom’s consternation when Weston appears that Weston does not represent the forces of good. Ransom knows that he himself has been sent to Perelandra by the forces of good, the servants of Maleldil, but cannot imagine how Weston has come to be there. We never learn the means of Weston’s journey. However, ultimately, and not surprisingly, Weston is consumed by evil, and becomes no longer Weston, but the Un-Man. The way and moment of his consumption does not concern us here, and, for convenience, I will refer to him as the Un-Man rather than pinpointing the timing of his change.

            As the story progresses, we do not have access to the Un-Man’s thoughts, only his words and actions as reported by Ransom. However, we get insight into his thoughts obliquely, by referring to The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape’s instructive letters to Woodworm differ in detail to what from what Screwtape may have said to the Un-Man, but Wormwood and the Un-Man have identical missions: to turn their “patient” from good to evil.

            The Un-Man has the harder task, for his patient, the Green Lady, has enjoyed direct contact with Maleldil, which is the Perelandran name for God. Wormwood’s patient, on the other hand, knows God through the mediated teachings of others. Woodworm’s patient appears to be more of a casual Christian, someone who is a Christian by reason of birth and custom more than a true believer. He has recently met a woman, and, under the influence of her and her circle, is beginning to grow and believe, but Screwtape feels that Wormwood should be successful:

“Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours – and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours.”[2]

The Un-Man must turn the Green Lady from her deeply held beliefs. He tells her that Maleldil wants her to learn from others, not directly from Maleldil himself:

“Do you not see that He is letting go of your hand a little? ... He is making you older – making you learn things not straight from Him but by your own meetings with other people and your own questions and thoughts.”[3]

The Green Lady begins to believe the Un-Man. Having been secretly listening to this conversation, Ransom is concerned:

“Now that the conversation was over, [Ransom] realised, too, with what intense anxiety he had followed it, At the same moment he was conscious of a sense of triumph. But it was not he who was triumphant. The whole darkness about him rang with victory.“[4] (Chapter 8 page 214)

At this point, the Un-Man is winning by using a technique Screwtape suggests to Wormwood when he tells him that

[God’s] “whole effort, therefore, will be to get the man’s mind of the subject of his own value altogether. … but always and by all methods the enemy aim will be to get the patient’s minds of search questions, and yours will be to fix it on them.”[5]

Ransom is fearful of the Un-Man, not for himself, but for the Green Lady herself. In considering the exchanges between the Un-Man and the Lady, Ransom shows his concern:

“Perhaps she was doing no more - he had good hope that she was doing no more - than responding in a purely imaginative fashion to this new art of Story or Poetry. But by God she better not! And for the first time the thought ‘this can't go on’ formulated itself in his mind.”[6]

The Un-Man’s continuing temptations of the Lady, whether in conversations between the two of them or conversation which also include Ransom, seek to turn her from what she knows is right. For example, he shows her a mirror, and, for the first time she sees herself. She feels fear, and states she does not like the feeling. The Un-man tells her it will go away, but Ransom interrupts:

“It will never do it will never go away if you do what he wishes. It is into more and more fear that he is leading you.”

“It is,” said the Un-Man, “into the great waves and through them and beyond. Now that you know Fear, you see that it must be you who shall taste it on behalf of your race. You know the King will not. You do not wish him to. But there is no cause for fear in this little thing: rather of joy. What is fearful in it?”[7]

It is after this that Ransom comes to understand and accept his role in this: it is his task to protect the Lady and all of Perelandra, by saving her from the Un-Man:

“That miracle on the right side, which he had demanded, had in fact occurred. He himself was the miracle.”

In accepting this task, Ransom has shown one of the so-called dangers which Screwtape has warned Wormwood of:

“To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth.”

The enemy, which here of course means God, wants our allegiance and obedience because he loves us, because what he wants from us and for us is good. The devil, on the other hand, wants our allegiance because he sees us as food. Screwtape will find pleasure in Wormwood’s ultimate failure:

“I have always desired you, as you (pitiful fool) desired me. The difference is that I am the stronger. I think they will give you to me now; or a bit of you. Love you? Why, yes. As dainty a morsel as ever I grew fat on. You have let a soul slip through your fingers.”[8]

Ransom realizes that the only way to safeguard the Lady and Perelandra is for the Un-Man to die. He has an interior argument as to whether it is rightly his task to undertake the safety of the Lady and the land, and ultimately resolves to kill the Un-Man:

“He could hardly remember why he had accused himself of megalomania when the idea first occurred to him. It was true that if he left it undone, Maleldil Himself would do some greater thing instead. In that sense he stood for Maleldil: but no more than Eve would have stood for Him by simply not eating the apple, or than any man stands for Him in doing any good action. As there was no comparison in person, so there was none in suffering - or only such comparison as maybe between a man who burns his finger putting out a spark and a fireman who loses his life in fighting a conflagration because that spark was not put out.”[9]

            Once Ransom has made his decision, Maleldil grants him a night of sleep in safety before his real fight begins. The fight Ransom and the Un-Man through woods, fields, and hills, and ultimately to an underground cavern which opens into a cliff that leads to a sea of fire. Through three chapters, and over twenty pages, the fight rages. It is a war both physical and mental. Ransom’s attempts to kill the Un-Man are never quite successful, until, finally, Ransom picks up a large stone:

“‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, here goes - I mean Amen,’ said Ransom, and hurled the stone as hard as he could into the Un-Man’s face.[10]

With that call upon the Most Holy Trinity, Ransom is finally successful. After rolling the body off the cliff into the sea of fire, Ransom rests:

“There may be a way out of these caves or they may not. But I won't go another step further today. Not if it was to save my life - not to save my life. That's flat. Glory be to God, I'm tired. A second later he was asleep.”[11]

After three days of rest and recovery in the tomb-like cave, Ransom does ultimately exit the cave and return to the living world of Perelandra. He is greeted by two eldila, roughly the equivalent of what we refer to as angels. He hears one tell the other:

“‘Look on him, beloved, and love him,’ said the first. ‘He is indeed but breathing dust and a careless touch would unmake him. And in his best thoughts there are such things mingled as, if we thought them, our light would perish. But he is in the body of Maleldil and his sins are forgiven. His very name in his own tongue is Elwin, the friend of the eldila.”[12]

The Eldila tell Ransom that it is the “morning day”:

“The world is born to-day, said Malacandra. “To-day for the first time two creatures of the low world, two images of Maleldil that breathe and breed like the beasts, step up that step at which your parents fell, and sit in the throne of what they were meant to be. It was never seen before. Because it did not happen in your world a greater thing happened, but not this. Because the greater thing happened in Thulcandra [Earth], this and not the greater thing happens here.”[13]

The Lady, now the Queen, along with the King, greet Ransom with love and as equals. The Queen tells him

“‘As soon as you had taken away the Evil One,’ she said, ‘and I awoke from sleep, my mind was cleared.’”[14]

Awakening, the Lady has had the same conversion which Wormwood’s patient had had:

“He is there daily meeting Christian life of a quality he never before imagined and seeing it all through an enchanted glass because he is in love. He is anxious (indeed the Enemy commands him) to imitate this quality.”[15]

As Ransom, the Queen and the King speak, the morning, the beginning, begins:

“‘What is it the beginning of?’ [Ransom asks]

‘The beginning of the Great Game, of the Great Dance,’ [replied the King.] “I know little of it as yet. Let the eldila speak.’”[16]

And thus begins the dance of creation, the dance of praise, the dance of God:

“All which is not itself the Great Dance was made in order that He might come down into it. In the Fallen World He prepared for Himself a body and was united with the dust and made it glorious forever. This is the end and final cause of all creating, and the sin whereby it came is called Fortunate and the world where this was enacted is the center of worlds. Blessed be He!”[17]

Perelandra is safe. Ransom returns to earth, to continue his life is service to God, whether in what we call the ordinary course of life, or in the extraordinary course of life and service to which Ransom has been called.

            That ends our Theology on Tap session for tonight. Thanks for being here, and join us again next week when we will discuss two more works of C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair from the Narnia series, and Miracles.

Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. Reprint, New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021.

Lewis, C. S, and Lyle W Dorsett. The Essential C.S. Lew

[1] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Preface, 145

[2] . S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (repr., New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021), Chapter 7, 32-33

[3] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 8, p. 213

[4] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 8, p. 214

[5] C. S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (repr., New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021), Chapter 14, 59-60

[6] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 10, p. 229

[7] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 10, 236

[8] C. S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (repr., New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021), Letter 31, 171

[9] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 11, 245

[10] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 14, 267

[11] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 14, 268

[12] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 16, 277

[13] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 16, 278

[14] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 17, 286

[15] C. S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (repr., New York: HarperCollins e-Books, 2021), Letter 24, 97-98

[16] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 17, 290

[17] C. S Lewis and Lyle W Dorsett, The Essential C.S. Lewis (repr., New York: Scribner, 2017), Perelandra, Chapter 17, 291