Molly Ransone (Post 4)

The Descriptive Lewis

Space Trilogy #2

When reading The Space Trilogy I kept thinking to myself, I wish that an artist would try and produce all the things that Lewis described in these novels. I am an art history minor, so while reading The Space Trilogy all I could think about is how I wish Lewis’s words could be brought to life in a painting. It was hard at times to visualize the creatures and landscapes of the three books. C. S. Lewis had a very large imagination and at times I had to re-read passages in the books so that I could fully understand what Lewis was trying to describe. Out of The Silent Planet was my favorite book of the three, because of all the descriptions and the colors he uses in this book. When Ransom first landed on Malacandra the crazy descriptions began.

“The purple mass looked for a moment like a clump of organ-pipes, then like a stack of rolls of cloth set up on end, then like a forest of gigantic umbrellas blown inside out” (Lewis, 45). This is one of the first things Ransom describes after leaving the space ship. I remember that I had to re-read this passage, because the things he describes are hard to grasp. I enjoyed the fact that I had to re-read the passages though, because I really dislike books that just tell you exactly what everything looks like. I like to be able to create my own images from what I read. Lewis was also descriptive in the other novels that we read this semester but Out of the Silent Plant was my favorite because Malacandra seemed like such a beautiful, and peaceful planet.