That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

(Book Review)

This is the 3rd and final book in Lewis’s space trilogy. However it differs a lot from the previous books both in terms of tone and plot.

This book is often referred to as C.S. Lewis’s “worst and most enjoyable book”. It is made up of several different diverse elements. Whether they all come together succinctly as a whole may be questioned, but there’s no lack of material here to keep your interest while reading it. Consider all the different themes and plot elements in this book:

* The conclusion of the “Space Trilogy” and the fates of the characters left over from the first two books.

* More spiritual warfare

* The resurrection of Merlin, and a tie-in with the legend of King Arthur

* References to the fall of Numinor and a tie in to the Middle Earth of JRR Tolkien

* a dystopian police state future society, which is rumored to have influenced George Orwell’s writing “1984". This book was published in 1945 just a few years before “1984", and George Orwell gave it a (mostly) favorable review in “The Manchester Evening News”. (Read George Orwell’s review of this book here.)

* Similar to the animal characters in the “Narnia” series, pantomine animals play a large part in this book, in particular a bear named “Mr. Bultitude”.

* Leather clad female police squads with a tendency towards sadism

* And a bit (perhaps more than a bit actually) of the horror genre thrown in at the conclusion.

So you see what I mean. If you’ve not read this book yet, I reckon there’s at least one element above that might tempt you into checking it out.

I don’t agree with Lewis’s politics across the board (we’ll get to more of that below), but I do think that, unfortunately, we are once again living in a time when his and Orwell’s warnings about torture and police states are becoming relevant.

For instance, in “That Hideous Strength” one of the characters writes an editorial defending the police actions which reads in part, “I’ve one bit of advice. If you hear anyone backbiting the police, tell him where he gets off. If you hear anyone comparing them to the Gestapo or the Ogpu, tell him you’ve heard that one before. If you hear anyone talking about the liberties of England...watch that man. He’s the enemy.”

To my ear, this sounds remarkably like John Ashcroft’s famous comments: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.”

Also, as in “1984" and “It Can’t Happen Here”, torture plays an important part in Lewis’s dystopian society, and a lot of the problems associated with torture are examined. From a practical point as well as an ethical point. The characters discuss the problems of the reliability of information obtained from torture, and what happens when the victim legitimately has nothing to confess. Lewis also shows how quickly torture can devolve from dispassionate government policy to pure sadism.
“You won’t find anyone can do a job like mine well unless they get some kick out of it,” the chief torturer asserts at one point. All of this is of course relevant to our current national debate.

(Side note: do you ever have one of those moments of clarity where you wake up and say to yourself: “I can’t believe we’re actually debating this. How did we as a nation get to the point where we are even discussing torture as an option?”)

Other points of Lewis’s philosophy I’m less enthusiastic about. Parts of this book read like a polemic against feminism. I’m beginning to think I was too lenient to Lewis in my review of “Perelandra”. There’s even a speech in this book on the importance of obedience and submission in marriage.

As for the actual story itself:
Although this is part of Lewis’s “Space Trilogy”, all the action in this final book takes place on earth. And, although there are references to events in the previous two books, this is a fairly self contained story, and can be read on its own if you want to skip the first two books, and jump into the meat of the trilogy. (For my money, this book was the most interesting of the 3, although there are a number of people who like “Perelandra” the best because of the imaginative imagery Lewis uses in creating the Paradise water planet.)

I mentioned that “Out of the Silent Planet” was very narrative driven, and that was true. This book is written in a much different style though, and is dialogue driven. Which I think makes for much more interesting story. The quips the characters make to each other also allows for C.S. Lewis’s wit and humor to shine through in this book a lot more.
Also more dialogue means more opportunities for Lewis’s characters to use colorful language. I really wish I had known about these books back when I was going through the Christian school system.

The big problem plot wise is the problem with most religious literature: the climax is spoiled by divine intervention. This may work as theology, but it is problematic in novels. I noticed around 4th or 5th grade that most of the stories in the “adventure magazines” I got from my Sunday School classes always relied not on the characters struggling through, but on direct or indirect divine intervention in the final act. I have since then done my best to avoid religious literature like the plague.

C.S. Lewis is a more talented writer than most Christian novelists, and so the enjoyment of reading his prose somewhat makes up for this, but this kind of “deus ex machina” type ending is a real problem. (If you read the review by George Orwell linked above, you’ll notice he also cites this as his main criticism, but I’ll have you know I thought of it independently.)

Of course this isn’t always unique to Christian literature. You’ll notice I had the same criticism of Stephen King’s “The Stand”.

Useless Wikipedia Fact
"More Cowbell" is a line from an April 8, 2000 Saturday Night Live comedy sketch about the recording of the song "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult. The sketch featured guest host Christopher Walken as music producer Bruce Dickinson and Will Ferrell as fictional cowbell player Gene Frenkle. The line itself has grown into a pop culture catch phrase.

Link of the Day
More Tom Tomorrow
But were we right enough?
There’s a very silly debate going on in the blogosphere right now about whether those of us who opposed the war from the start deserve credit for our prescience if, in many cases, we did not predict every single thing that would go wrong in exactly the precise order it would do so. (You can catch up on this, if you care, by reading this from Tbogg and this from Atrios.)
Well, two things. First: Lord knows, I’ve been wrong often enough in my life and in my work, but at the risk of straining a muscle as I pat myself on the back, let me direct you for the umpteenth time to this cartoon from April of 2003, which predicted the next four years with the sort of eerie accuracy that Nostradamus could only have envied.
I will pause as the shivers run up and down your spine.
Okay then. Clearing throat, moving along: it’s also worth directing your attention to Roy Edroso, who responds to the silliness rather definitively, here.
(Read the rest of the post here)

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis: Book Review (Scripted)