Book Review: That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis

 

that hideous strength

This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there was no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world’s history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men.

Mark Studdock is a young, on-the-make sociologist, a professor at Bracton College, in an English town called Edgestow. He is far more interested in university politics than in his research or teaching. And as a member of the “progressive element” at the college, he strongly supports Bracton’s selling a tract of property to a government-sponsored entity called NICE. The NICE is the National Institute for Coordinated Experimentation, which Lewis describes as “the first fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so many thoughtful people base their hopes of a better world.” What excites Mark most about the NICE is this:

The real thing is that this time we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it’ll find out more than the old freelance science did, but what’s certain is that it can do more.

Trigger Warning: There is something in this book to offend almost everybody. It contains things that will offend technologists and believers in human progress, social scientists, feminists, academic administrators, bioscience researchers, and surely many other categories of people. It will probably also offend some Christians, for the way Christian theology is mixed with non-Christian magic. By the standards now becoming current in American universities, this book, and even this book review, should be read by no one at all.  But for those who do not accept those standards …

The Basic Story. Mark has recently married Jane, a woman with strong literary interests and vague plans for getting an advanced degree. She has recently started having disturbing, indeed terrifying, dreams, which suggest that she has a clairvoyant ability to see distant events in real time. Afraid she is losing her mind, Jane seeks advice, and is told that her dreams are actually visions, they are very real, will not stop, and are of utmost importance:

“Young lady,” said Miss Ironwood, “You do not at all realize the seriousness of this matter. The things you have seen concern something compared with which the happiness, and even the life, of you and me, is of no importance.”

Miss Ironwood warns Jane that extremely evil people will seek to use her gift, and that she would do well — both for her own interests and those of the entire human race — to join the community of which Miss Ironwood is a part, located at a place called St Anne’s. Jane responds quite negatively to the invitation, afraid that membership in the St Anne’s group will limit her autonomy. She is not interested in the dreams’ meanings; she just wants them to go away.

Mark, on the other hand, responds enthusiastically when he is invited to take a position at the NICE, temporarily located at an old manor called Belbury. One of the first people he meets there is the Head of the Institutional Police, a woman named Miss Hardcastle (picture Janet Napolitano), nicknamed the Fairy, who explains to Mark her theory of crime and punishment:

“Here in the Institute, we’re backing the crusade against Red Tape.” Mark gathered that, for the Fairy, the police side of the Institute was the really important side. … In general, they had already popularized in the press the idea that the Institute should be allowed to experiment pretty largely in the hope of discovering how far humane, remedial treatment could be substituted for the old notion of “retributive” or “vindictive” punishment. … The Fairy pointed out that what had hampered every English police force up to date was precisely the idea of deserved punishment. For desert was always finite; you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need have no fixed limit; it could go on till it had effected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would decide when that was. And if cure were humane and desirable, how much more prevention? Soon anyone who had ever been in the hands of the police at all would come under the control of the NICE; in the end, every citizen.

Another person Mark meets in his first days at Belbury is the acclaimed chemist William Hingest — who has also come down to investigate the possibility of a job at Belbury, decided against it, and strongly advises Mark to do likewise:

“I came down here because I thought it had something to do with science. Now that I find it’s something more like a political conspiracy, I shall go home. I’m too old for that kind of thing, and if I wanted to join a conspiracy, this one wouldn’t be my choice.”

“You mean, I suppose, that the element of social planning doesn’t appeal to you? I can quite understand that it doesn’t fit in with your work as it does with sciences like Sociology, but — “

“There are no sciences like Sociology. And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police run by a middle-aged virago who doesn’t wear corsets and a scheme for taking away his farm and his shop and his children from every Englishman, I’d let chemistry go to the devil and take up gardening again. … I happen to believe that you can’t study men, you can only get to know them, which is quite a different thing. Because you study them, you want to make the lower orders govern the country and listen to classical music, which is balderdash. You also want to take away from them everything that makes life worth living and not only from them but from everyone except a parcel of prigs and professors.”

Nevertheless, Mark decides to remain at Belbury, and is drawn ever-deeper into its activities–which, as only those in the innermost circles of that organization realize, are not only consistent with the goals of the 20th-century totalitarianisms, but go considerably beyond them. The NICE seeks to establish a junction between the powers of modern science and those of ancient magic, accessing the latter by awakening the medieval wizard Merlin and using him for their purposes. At the same time, Jane — despite her reservations — becomes increasingly involved with the company at St Anne’s, and is entranced with its leader, a Mr Fisher-King. (His name comes from the Wounded King in Arthurian legend.) The St Anne’s group is aware of the truth about NICE and its ultimate goals, and exists for the primary purpose of opposing and, it hopes, destroying that organization.

I will not here describe the war between the forces of Belbury and those of St Anne’s (to avoid spoilers), but will instead comment on the characters of some of the protagonists and some philosophically-significant events in the novel, with appropriate excerpts. I hope this will be enough to give a sense of the worldview that Lewis is presenting in this book.

Mark Studdock. His character is largely defined by his strong desire to be a member of the Inner Circle, whatever that inner circle may be in a particular context. The passage at the start of this review, where Mark agrees to engage in criminal activity on Belbury’s behalf, is proceeded by this:

After a few evenings Mark ventured to walk into the library on his own; a little uncertain of his reception, yet afraid that if he did not soon assert his right to the entree this modesty might damage him. He knew that the error in either direction is equally fatal.

It was a success. Before he had closed the door behind him all had turned with welcoming faces and Filostrato had said “Ecco ” and the Fairy, “Here’s the very man.” A glow of pleasure passed over Mark’s whole body.

That “glow of pleasure” at being accepted by the Belbury’s Inner Circle (what Mark then thinks is Belbury’s Inner Circle) is strong enough to overcome any of Mark’s moral qualms about the actions he is being requested to perform. Lewis has written a great deal elsewhere about the lust for the Inner Circle, which in his view never leads to satisfaction but only to a longing for membership in another, still-more-inner circle. In That Hideous Strength, there are concentric Inner Circles at Belbury, which Mark does penetrate — and each is more sinister than the last.

Jane Studdock is a key character in That Hideous Strength, and the state of the Studdocks’ marriage is an important part of the story. When we first meet the pair, that state is not good. Mark pays little attention to Jane, being focused almost exclusively on his career in academic politics. Jane is bored, and Lewis strongly implies that she is also “frigid,” to use the old term. Her lack of sexual interest in Mark is portrayed as not only a function of his lack of day-to-day attentiveness, but as having deeper roots:

To avoid entanglements and interferences had long been one of her first principles. Even when she had discovered that she was going to marry Mark if he asked her, the thought, “But I must keep my own life” had arisen at once and had never for more than a few minutes at a stretch been absent from her mind. Some resentment against love itself, and therefore against Mark, for thus invading her life, remained … this fear of being invaded and entangled was the deepest ground of her determination not to have a child — or not for a long time yet.

Mark notes that whenever Jane temporarily loses “a certain indefinable defensiveness,” as she does after one of her terrifying dreams, the next day there are always “inexplicable quarrels.” And when the Director of the company at St Anne’s tells her that gender is not only a physical quality but a spiritual one, she is appalled:

Now the suspicion dawned upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent.  How if this invasion of her own being in marriage from which she had recoiled, often in the very teeth of instinct, were not, as she had supposed, merely a relic of animal life or patriarchal barbarism …

These attributes of Jane’s personality are meant to embody, in Lewis’s worldview, the specifically female incarnation of the Hideous Strength (the phrase is from a poem about the Tower of Babel) — the desire for absolute domination and control over all aspects of life. This is not, however, the only aspect of her character. When facing the prospect of his own imminent death, Mark reflects:

Well … it was lucky for Jane. She seemed to him, as he now thought of her, to have in herself deep wells and knee-deep meadows of happiness, rivers of freshness, enchanted gardens of leisure, which he could not enter but could have spoiled. She was one of those other people — like Pearson, like Denniston, like the Dimbles — who could enjoy things for their own sake.

Education, Art, and Symbolism. When Mark is confronted with the above-mentioned situation, which is not only life-or-death for him, but may also have great consequences for the entire human race, the extensive education that he has received is of little use to him:

It must be remembered that in Mark’s mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical — merely “Modern.” The severities both of abstraction and of high human tradition had passed him by: and he had neither peasant shrewdness nor aristocratic honour to help him. He was a man of straw, a glib examinee in subjects that require no exact knowledge (he had always done well on Essays and General Papers), and the first hint of a real threat to his bodily life knocked him sprawling.

As part of his journey into the innermost circles of the NICE, Mark is required to undergo training in “objectivity … a process intended to kill all “specifically human” reactions in a man. First, he is put in a chilly and ill-shapen room which creates a sense of disorientation; on the walls is modern art of a non-beautiful, disturbing, and vaguely nihilistic kind.  (I will spare you a description of these extremely unpleasant objects.)

Later, Mark’s instructor comes into the Objective Room and throws a large crucifix — an extremely detailed representation of the Crucifixion — on the floor. (It is important to note that Mark is not at this time a Christian, nor had he ever been.) Professor Frost then instructs Mark to step on the crucifix and insult it in other ways.

Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling … To insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act. But it was not the only source …

“Pray make haste,” said Frost.

The quiet urgency of the voice and the fact that he had so often obeyed it before, almost conquered him. He was on the verge of obeying and getting the whole silly business over, when the defencelessness of the figure deterred him. The feeling was a very illogical one. Not because its hands were nailed and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, for all its realism, was inanimate and could not in any way hit back, he paused. The unretaliating face of a doll — one of Myrtle’s dolls — which he had pulled to pieces in boyhood had affected him in the same way, and the memory, even now, was tender to the touch.

“What are you waiting for, Mr. Studdock?” said Frost.

Mark was well aware of the rising danger. Obviously, if he disobeyed, his last chance of getting out of Belbury alive might be gone. Even of getting out of this room. The smothering sensation once again attacked him. He was himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way — neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days …

“Do you intend to go on with the training or not?” said Frost.

Lewis here is clearly asserting that symbolism is very important; that the reverence or at least respect which can attach to certain objects is an essential aspect of humanity and not an irrational holdover.

Science and Technology. Lewis signals respect for pure science and its practitioners — the chemist William Hingest (an atheist, by the way) is portrayed as one of the very few to leave Belbury with his honor intact. Concerning applied science — technology — the novel is quite negative; technology is portrayed as primarily a vehicle for obtaining power at the expense of others. Lord Feverstone, the man who recruited Mark into the NICE, explains to him that:

Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest … You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of … [what is needed are] quite simple and obvious things, at first — sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of unfit races … selective breeding. Then real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly; whatever he or his parents try to do about it.

Elsewhere (in his “Reply to Professor Haldane”), Lewis said:

Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The majority in most modern countries respect science and want to be planned. And, therefore, almost by definition, if any man or group wishes to enslave us it will of course describe itself as “scientific planned democracy.”

In that document, Lewis seems to be saying that the problem is not with technology but with its abuse by power-seekers. But in “The Abolition of Man,” Lewis went further than this and argued explicitly that technology — power over nature — is really and essentially about power over other men:

What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existencem… I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called “Man’s power over Nature” must always and essentially be.

Religion. Lewis writes, unsurprisingly, from a Christian perspective — quite subtly at first, and much more explicitly later in the book. He clearly believes the erosion of Christian belief to be a root cause, likely the root cause, of the kinds of dysfunctions he identifies throughout the book. On the other hand, he shows a certain respect for the polytheistic religions, which he believes preferable to atheistic or agnostic modernism … as when he says, “It must be remembered that in Mark’s mind hardly one rag of noble thought, either Christian or Pagan, had a secure lodging. His education had been neither scientific nor classical — merely “Modern.” And he has Mr. Fisher-King, the Director of the St Anne’s anti-Belbury group, say to Jane:

I’m afraid there’s no niche in the world for people that won’t be either Pagan or Christian. 

Lewis is at pains to present Christianity in a way that is not conventionally “churchy”…

The vision of the universe which [Jane] had begun to see in the last few minutes had a curiously stormy quality about it. It was bright, darting, and overpowering…And mixed with this was the sense that she had been maneuvered into a false position. It ought to have been she who was saying these things to the Christians. Hers ought to have been the vivid, perilous world brought against their grey formalised one; hers the quick, vital movements and theirs the stained glass attitudes. That was the antithesis she was used to. This time, in a sudden flash of purple and crimson, she remembered what stained glass was really like.

Some Concluding Excerpts and Thoughts. When NICE moves onto the land it has purchased from Bracton College, people with houses there are evicted summarily, with no access to the courts — “For the moment, we have shut up the house and Cecil has been at Rumbold, the solicitor’s, to see if we can at least have it sealed and left alone until we’ve got our things out of it. Rumbold doesn’t seem to know where he is. He keeps on saying,”The N.I.C.E. are in a very peculiar position legally.” (emphasis added) NICE has imported thousands of workmen, many of them very bad actors, and there is constant violence against the people of Edgestow.

There were increasing complaints of threatening and disorderly behaviour on the part of the N.I.C.E. workmen. But these complaints never appeared in the papers. Those who had actually seen ugly incidents were surprised to read in the Telegraph that the new Institute was settling down very comfortably in Edgestow and the most cordial relations developing between it and the natives. Those who had not seen them but only heard of them, finding nothing in the Telegraph, dismissed the stories as rumours or exaggerations. Those who had seen them  wrote letters to it, but it did not print their letters.

In America today — perhaps in Britain as well — the idea of  pseudo-governmental institutions that are “in a very peculiar position legally” and cannot effectively be challenged in the courts, and of newspapers that will not print facts inconvenient to those organizations, surely does not seem as outlandish as it once would have.

Earlier in the novel, Miss Hardcastle has explained to Mark how easy it is to manipulate the newspapers and their readership. When Mark objects that this is surely not the case, with those papers having educated readers, she responds:

“Why you fool, it’s the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they’re all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don’t need reconditioning. They’re all right already. They’ll believe anything.”

Okay, I’ll stop here. Apologies for the long review, but my objective was both to encourage people to read the book and to provide for a broader group a fairly comprehensive sketch of the thought-provoking ideas it contains.

Previously posted at Chicago Boyz, where there is a thoughtful comment thread.

Published in Culture, Literature
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  1. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Thanks for posting that.  It has been over 35 years since I read the book.  I didn’t remember all those parts you posted, but I do remember some of the impression it made on me at the time, as I had recently begun work for a scientific institute located in a bucolic setting that was in the first stage of the process of tearing out trees and grassy slopes to be replaced with a larger, more efficient building.

    I didn’t recall that Lewis had expressed his views on legal punishment in that book, but I do recall that he expressed the same views elsewhere.

    I’ve read a lot of Lewis’s work more than once. Abolition of Man is one I’ve read several times.  I don’t think I ever re-read the trilogy of which this is a part.

    Anyhow, your post has brought back some memories.  Thanks for doing it.  It makes me think these books might be worth re-reading now.

    • #1
  2. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    You should point out that  That Hideous Strength is the third book in a trilogy, though is does stand up well on its own.

    I find myself listening to some progressives talking on NPR, and sometimes I think they sound frighteningly similar to N.I.C.E.

    • #2
  3. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Yes, the book is indeed part of a trilogy…actually the only one of the three I’ve read, couldn’t really get into the other one I tried.  It does stand by itself very well.

    • #3
  4. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Amazingly, there is actually a sub-agency of the British National Health Service called NICE:

    https://www.nice.org.uk/

    • #4
  5. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    Well,   I agree that Lewis’s “Space Trilogy” is really not much of a trilogy.   All three are easily read as stand-alone books.   The second one does benefit slightly from a prior reading of the first one, but even that is not needed.

    The first one, Out of the Silent Planet, is a Christian science fiction tale, and is suitable as a juvenile Christian SF novel.

    The second one is Perelandra,  and it is more of an allegory that works out some interesting ideas about the story of Adam and Eve, and neither it nor That Hideous Strength would be recommended to juvenile readers.

    • #5
  6. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    I read the book myself about 20 years ago, and while the plot particulars have faded, what I do remember in particular was the subversion and takeover of Bracton.  I remember it vividly as I experienced something very like it in the takeover of the prep school I attended.  While it remained academically vigorous, it was taken over by hard left social manipulators and corrupted in its purpose and operation.  The school I knew exists no longer.  What Lewis describes at Bracton hit very close to home, and anticipates Rules For Radicals very closely.

    • #6
  7. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Wow. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought of this book during the last 7 years.  I keep remembering the horrifying scenes at the end with the head – the revealed hollowness of the bad guys, the blandness of their ambitions, their appetite for nothingness.

    Then I think of the lonely fight that Ransom and the group at St Anne’s are waging, and how hopeless it seems in the face of all that politically correct manipulation that the enemy is working.  And I am ashamed that I can despair.

    It’s funny that I can, tonight, find new strength when I realize that this exact struggle has been going on longer than Obama and the current radical progressives.  Lewis was observing all of this in Alinsky, Marcuse, and the rest, but his reading list was much older. Everything I think is a new affront he reminds me is in fact an age-old battle.

    The “Space Trilogy”, of which this is the third installment, is well worth the time of anyone here on Ricochet.

    • #7
  8. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    It’s been almost forty years since I’ve read this. Great review.

    Lewis’ take in technology has always grated a little bit. Anyone that worked up about it should have to live in a cave for about a month sans the benefits of – well – anything. Clothing is a technology. So is agriculture. It’s going to be a long month.

    He makes up for it in all kinds of ways, though. The hoot I gave out when I first encountered the name of Mr. Fisher-King scandalized the Reading Room in the Illini Union.

    • #8
  9. Augustine Member
    Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    A wonderful book, if slow-moving and hard to get into for some.

    I love the cross-references to The Abolition of Man and Screwtape Letters.

    And now I guess I’ll have to go back and actually read over your post.

    • #9
  10. Vice-Potentate Inactive
    Vice-Potentate
    @VicePotentate

    Meh, the first two are better. Probably not as applicable to current events, but definitely better.

    • #10
  11. Liz Member
    Liz
    @Liz

    Thanks for the great review. It’s going on the list.

    • #11
  12. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Percival:The hoot I gave out when I first encountered the name of Mr. Fisher-King scandalized the Reading Room in the Illini Union.

    And somehow I missed or forgot that you are a fellow U of I alumnus!

    Thanks for the review Mr. Foster. I can only add that of Lewis’s non-theological works, this is the one we keep going back to here. His description of the corruption of the academy seems as accurate today as when he wrote it.

    • #12
  13. Augustine Member
    Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    I read it at last.  A marvelous post.  Well done, and thank you!  Well worthy of the Main Feed promotion you just got.

    Below is a minor quibble.

    David Foster:

    Concerning applied science–technology–the novel is quite negative; technology is portrayed as being primarily a vehicle for obtaining power at the expense of others.

    I never got that vibe from Abolition or That Hideous Strength.  I thought the point was just that technology is that sort of power–not that that sort of power is inherently bad.  Like other forms of power, its moral quality depends on who is using it, to what ends, and with what result.

    • #13
  14. Nancy Spalding Inactive
    Nancy Spalding
    @NancySpalding

    I read the trilogy first as a teenager, purely as stories, not as allegory or social criticism. The first two are much more fun as stories, with magical & adventurous aspects; this one is much less fun in that way, but I have reread it since & been shaken by its prescience. I think it is time for another rereading… The temptations & corruption of an educated or professional person in today’s milieu arepresented here more realistically & chillingly here than as elsewhere– in part because Lewis recognizes them as temptation & corruption, and his characters don’t.

    Lewis, like Tolkien, was not such a fan of the industrial revolution (having had such close personal experience of it in the trenches of WWI), but I think the point here in that regard is more power, corruption, and the uses of technology for control– illegitimate control, of normal legitimate human activity.

    • #14
  15. Augustine Member
    Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Isn’t it great that science fiction illustrates one of the best books ever in the philosophy of science–The Abolition of Man?

    You know, there ought to be a book about that.

    • #15
  16. Eustace C. Scrubb Member
    Eustace C. Scrubb
    @EustaceCScrubb

    I read Out of a Silent Planet and Perelandra in high school and at the time couldn’t get into reading That Hideous Strength. Eventually, I did read that third book and was amazed at how prescient Lewis was about our day. But Perlandra is still may favorite of the three with a stark contrast between the wonderful beauty of creation and the vile ugliness of evil.

    • #16
  17. John Penfold Member
    John Penfold
    @IWalton

    Thanks.  What always amazes me about Lewis and Chesterton, is how deeply and completely they grasped the essence of modernity and post modern man from the very beginning.   Who are our Lewis and Chestertons today, giving us insights into the dark side of the near future?

    • #17
  18. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    Augustine…re Lewis’s attitude toward technology:

    I never got that vibe from Abolition or That Hideous Strength.  I thought the point was just that technology is that sort of power–not that that sort of power is inherently bad.  Like other forms of power, its moral quality depends on who is using it, to what ends, and with what result.

    I read this excerpt from Abolition of Man:

    What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existencem… I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called “Man’s power over Nature” must always and essentially be.

    …especially the last two sentences…as implying that exercise of power by technology is inherently a zero-sum game, benefiting some at the expense of others.

    • #18
  19. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    The book, indeed the entire trilogy, was reviewed quite negatively by the eminent British scientist (and Marxist) JBS Haldane.  Lewis responded to the critique at length.  I excerpted the dialogue here.

    • #19
  20. cuppajoe Inactive
    cuppajoe
    @cuppajoe

    Great post, I found these books in my late 20’s in my new wife’s bookshelf. I found That Hideous Strength the most interesting and is the only one that I have re-read. The story line is more of the mystery genre that I enjoy, at least to my mind. Highly recommend these books.

    • #20
  21. Janie Cheaney Inactive
    Janie Cheaney
    @JanieCheaney

    George Orwell described it as “a crime story.”  I wrote a study guide beginning here:     http://www.redeemedreader.com/2011/08/that-hideous-strength-an-introduction/

    • #21
  22. RyanFalcone Member
    RyanFalcone
    @RyanFalcone

    I read the trilogy last summer, as I have made C.S. Lewis readings an annual summer activity for four or five years now! I’m afraid that the experience of reading all three in sequence became a bit fatiguing. Lewis is a fantastic writer but his style is so far removed from anything I am used to, that it became very challenging. I found Hideous Strength to be my favo(u)rite though. From my Christian perspective, I found that what I took from the book is that for all the strength and power that men claim as their own, there will never be anything that can topple God from his throne. It can be a deeply disturbing and ominous book otherwise.

    • #22
  23. Tenacious D Inactive
    Tenacious D
    @TenaciousD

    The Objective Room episode is Lewis at the absolute top of his game.

    • #23
  24. Augustine Member
    Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    David Foster:I read this excerpt from Abolition of Man:

    What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existencem… I am not speaking of particular corruptions and abuses which an increase of moral virtue would cure: I am considering what the thing called “Man’s power over Nature” must always and essentially be.

    …especially the last two sentences…as implying that exercise of power by technology is inherently a zero-sum game, benefiting some at the expense of others.

    I still don’t think he means that.  Especially with the bolded sentence and the contrast he’s drawing in context: between the idea that technology means power over nature and the reality that it means power over man.

    I think it really is just what I called it: a mere quibble.  I think it’s just great that you cross-referenced Abolition and the “Inner Ring” stuff.

    • #24
  25. lesserson Member
    lesserson
    @LesserSonofBarsham

    Oh come on people…another book to read!? What do you think I am, retired? (opens up Amazon browser tab…)

    • #25
  26. donald todd Inactive
    donald todd
    @donaldtodd

    Lewis, in whatever genre he is writing, is worthy of reading.  He makes his points well.  As was noted by one of our peers, the results of men without chests appears in That Hideous Strength which is fiction, but is also appearing in real life in our colleges and universities where a new form of morality is being pushed, notably political correctness, which also has its own set of punishments.

    • #26
  27. Brian Clendinen Inactive
    Brian Clendinen
    @BrianClendinen

    I love That Hideous Strength. I wish there was a whole Christian genre that took the style of this book. There is such a lack of darkness in Christian Literature, it is all so happy go lucky and the bad thing are written to beat around bush on the darkness, even though the Bible  is bluntly dark in many passages.

    • #27
  28. skipsul Inactive
    skipsul
    @skipsul

    Brian Clendinen:I love That Hideous Strength. I wish there was a whole Christian genre that took the style of this book. There is such a lack of darkness in Christian Literature, it is all so happy go lucky and the bad thing are written to beat around bush on the darkness, even though the Bible is bluntly dark in many passages.

    Read Frank Peretti.  His stuff is hit or miss, and his writing is nowhere near Lewis’s level, but sometimes he gets the same themes.  His early work, This Present Darkness, borrows heavily from That Hideous Strength.

    • #28
  29. Augustine Member
    Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    skipsul:

    Brian Clendinen:I love That Hideous Strength. I wish there was a whole Christian genre that took the style of this book. There is such a lack of darkness in Christian Literature, it is all so happy go lucky and the bad thing are written to beat around bush on the darkness, even though the Bible is bluntly dark in many passages.

    Read Frank Peretti. His stuff is hit or miss, and his writing is nowhere near Lewis’s level, but sometimes he gets the same themes. His early work, This Present Darkness, borrows heavily from That Hideous Strength.

    Never occurred to me till now.  Great connection.

    • #29
  30. MJBubba Member
    MJBubba
    @

    In the Age of Obama I sometimes hear Progressives on NPR describing the outrageous positions of Christian conservatives while papering over the threat of Islam.

    It occurs to me more and more that the Progressives are much like the leaders of N.I.C.E.   They don’t think much about how the Jihadis will eventually kill them all;  their only focus is the death of the Christians, and what happens after that won’t matter.

    So I can imagine that they will happily put us on the guillotine,

    and then they will celebrate their victory by putting each other on the guillotine.

    • #30
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