Perelandra

To initiate, this passage comes from the British writer C.S Lewis and his prose piece ‘Perelandra’. It was published in 1944 and thus probably written during the last couple of years of the Second World War (which ended in 1945). This piece is a descriptive narration which lacks any type of direct dialogue between the characters, as we mainly have only one, and has an interesting play on the verb tenses.

The fragment we were given is a three paragraph narration that has longer sentences at the beginning and little by little begins shortening them until by the final paragraph they are very short. The long sentences being used to slow down the time that will be very important in the passage and hence to build up the suspense and tension in the ambience until the sentences become short and speed up the time in the story, building the tension more and more to a point where it seems like something is coming or something will occur. The story is also told by a protagonist narrator which we know thanks to the use of the first person and the direct access to the character’s mind along with his feelings and thoughts. This narrator is retelling us the story (“I have naturally no wish to enlarge on this phase of my story. (…) I would have passed it over if I didn’t think that some account of it was necessary for a full understanding of what follows”[line 19-20]) of his trip over to Ransom’s house, a path which will trigger his paranoia and fear. The style of the writing is very direct as the narrator is practically in a one-sided dialogue with his readers.

As I said before, the story basically presents one character, of whom we don’t know the name but he is also the narrator, we are also provided with a referenced character named Rans...

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...s “And immediately the impulse to retreat, which had already assailed me several times leaped upon me with a sort of demoniac violence”(lines 34-35) in addition he says “If anyone expected me to go into that house and sit there alone for several hours, they were mistaken!”(line 36-37)

In conclusion C.S. Lewis utilizes all the literary tools at his disposal very effectively to create an empathy between the reader and the narrator, by utilizing the pace of the words and the sentences to create a tense and suspenseful environment, also he delves very deep into the mind and thoughts of the narrator so really the reader doesn’t have any information besides the biased information the narrator gives us. As well as utilizing a lot of repetition and description of his thoughts that will emphasize in the overall ambiance of fear to darkness, being alone and being insane.