Analysis Of C. S Lewis Out Of The Silent Planet

One of C.S Lewis’s goals in writing Out of the Silent Planet, was to point out the flawed world we live in.
A major comment that Lewis is making is about the human need for self-gratification and pleasure. This idea is explored through Ransom and Hyoi’s conversation about pleasure. Ransom says, “‘If a thing is a pleasure, a hman wants it again...’” (74), to which Hyoi then goes on to try to explain that, “‘A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hman, as if the pleasure was one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing’” (74). Through this, Lewis is showing the human tendency to desire something that brings us pleasure to not only do so once, but over and over. In the conversation between Hyoi and Ransom, they go onto talk about such with poetry, food and so on, to the average human thinking of these things, the thought automatically seems to be, if you like it, you should do it until you don’t. Whereas we see through Hyoi, that is not how they perceive pleasure should be dealt with, a specific pleasure should happen once, and because it

was a pleasure, it should be treated as special, almost sacred, and not be taken for granted through overuse.
Another commentary Lewis is making through this piece of literature is the need for superiority, and the feeling of organization of life through hierarchies.
Lastly, something that Lewis is elucidating through Out of the Silent Planet, is human grotesque ideas of the unknown.

One of the first of many predispositions that are debunked through Ransom’s adventures, is Ransoms thoughts of outer space. Like many people, Ransom’s extent of thinking towards outer space was that, “‘...space was dark and cold...’” (31). The antithetical is proven to be true, “...now that the name ‘Space’ seemed a blasphemous libel... he could not call it ‘dead’; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment...He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of the worlds...Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens...” (34). Vicariously through Ransoms experience newly deemed the heavens, we are able to see that simply by going, and experiencing something for ourselves, we may see things far differently than we had expected.

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In conclusion, Lewis shows the flaws and issues of this world through his novel Out of the Silent Planet. When reading any sort of novel it is important to analyze it and relate it to oneself and the world around, to find the “takeaway” of the novel. We do an author an injustice if we blindly read a book, and take it for it’s surface level information of the story. When we are able to give attention to what it is truly saying, like C.S. Lewis is in pointing out problems in humanity, we are able to start to notice these issues as well, and make a difference in changing them for the better.