Sunday, April 22, 2012

Rachel Goodwyn- Space Trilogy #1 Out of the Silent Planet


What unfolds in this series, The Space Trilogy, seems to be series of terrible events for Ransom. Not only will no one allow him lodging on his road to his destination, but when he steps in to intervene for a young boy he is drugged, kidnapped, and taken to another planet as a sacrifice. I am always amazed by Lewis’s ability to paint such intricate and beautiful and at times most frightening images and settings in his books. This series was no exception. Shortly after arriving on the planet of Malacandra, Ransom begins to describe what he sees around him, noting that it was unlike anything he would have imagined it to be like. He said the only reference he had for what outer space and other planets would be like is what the myth of science has given him and believed only what could be there is worse than his worst nightmares. He was however very surprised to find that it was a beautiful place, a place of beautiful colors land and water. This points out the fact that we cannot know what something is until we have experienced it and to say we know what something is beforehand would not only be a lie to others but a lie to oneself. He describes the water as warm, and the gravity as being significantly less than what is found on earth and the strange tallness and thinness of the mountains on the new unknown planet. Perhaps Lewis is trying to put a theme in here that one should not make assumptions and decisions about things without first having an experience with the “thing,” whatever that thing may be.   

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