Gold-digging On Malacandra
In Out of the Silent Planet, Weston first appears with his accomplice, Dick Devine (who later becomes Lord Feverstone in That Hideous Strength), attempting to abduct a mentally impaired youngster named Harry. They plan to take him to Malacandra (Mars) as a human sacrifice. It is then that they are surprised by Elwin Ransom, the main character of the novel, who is known to Devine. Devine persuades Weston to abduct Ransom instead.
In the course of their flight to Malacandra Ransom overhears a conversation between Weston and Devine that discloses to him their sinister purpose in abducting him. Shortly after their landing on Malacandra Weston and Devine attempt to drag Ransom to a towering, distant figure making its way across a lake to meet them. However, an accident occurs, in the form of a dangerous fish-type or crocodilian animal in the water (possibly a hnakra) breaking Ransom’s captors’ concentration, and allowing him to flee. In the course of his adventures on Malacandra, Ransom learns that the Oyarsa, the being to whom he was to be ‘sacrificed’, wanted only to speak with one of his kind. That is, a human. Weston, however, is of such a paranoid bent, that he can not conceive of another creature not wishing to do him harm: also, human sacrifice is the sort of superstition that he is conditioned to expect from "primitive" cultures. It is eventually revealed that the (immediate) purpose of Weston’s and Devine’s journey to Malacandra is to mine gold, which the planet has in abundance (this is primarily Devine’s desire, who is obsessed with money). Weston’s plan is to usher in a new age of space colonization in order to ensure that man and his descendants will, in some form, continue to survive for all eternity (the idea was actually borrowed from Stapledon's Last and First Men). The seeming idealism of this plot is corrupted by Weston’s obviously callous and Machiavellian attitude towards all other forms of life (including intelligent ones).
Read more about this topic: Professor Weston
Famous quotes containing the word gold-digging:
“The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)