One of the themes in The Space Trilogy which has always fascinated me is the extent to which a person will go to avoid death. In Out of the Silent Planet we discover that this is Weston's primary goal - that the human race on Earth may travel from planet to planet after Earth is gone, killing all other races to that the human race may go on living. In That Hideous Strength, N.I.C.E. is constantly striving "for the conquest of death" (177). They take it a step further, however, because in order to conquer death they also desire to bring about the end of organic life as well. The only thing that matters is the mental aspect of a living being - the body itself is undesirable because all such organic substances eventually die and decay.
This is a stark contrast to what the hross believe in Out of the Silent Planet. They compare the progression of life to poetry; the joy of which is not found in single moment in time, or line of a poem, but rather in looking at the poem, or remembering the life, in its entirety. Thus, death is an essential part of life because of its function in establishing the whole.
Today, more than ever, there seems to me to be a particular desire to postpone death - or even stop it entirely. This is largely due to the fact that we now have the level of scientific and technical knowledge to make it a real possibility - if not now then in the imaginable future. I personally think this can be a great and terrible thing. On one side of the coin, we now have the ability to keep ourselves and/or loved ones alive. That is good, but I often think that sometimes it is simultaneously destructive. Death is a natural part of life and must be accepted at one point or another. I firmly believe that the more one tries to hold off on the inevitable, the worse one's pain (mental and physical) will be. It is not a healthy mentality.
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