Thulcandra - Major Themes

Major Themes

Dr. Bruce L. Edwards, in The CS Lewis Review, writes that a long-time correspondent, nun Sister Penelope of the Community of St. Mary the Virgin, asked him about the provenance of the novel. He replied, "Any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under cover of romance without their knowing it" (9 August 1939, in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis) - "in science fiction, Lewis himself had discovered a worthy vehicle for reinvigorating and reinserting relevant discussion of Christian ideals and the biblical worldview into popular discourse."

The eldila, who work for Oyarsa as messengers and maintainers of the planet, are meant to supply the role of angels, although the text of the book reveals that they are not identical to angels despite their similarities. Oyarsa is a more powerful eldil, akin to an archangel or patron deity. Oyarsa tells Ransom that "the least of my servants" (Chap. 18) possesses the power to un-make any spaceship sent from Earth intending evil to Mars and its denizens.

In this way, Oyéresu have some traits of the Ainur of the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien, who was a friend of Lewis. Oyarsa's superior, Maleldil the Young, represents Jesus. The 'Old One', the creator of Mars, is God the Father. Part of the background in Out of the Silent Planet is that Earth's Oyarsa (who is obviously Lucifer) became "bent" (corrupt), destroyed most of the life on Mars, and was forcibly imprisoned inside the Moon's orbit, leaving him to rule the inhabitants of the Moon and the (subsequently created) humans of Earth. (Robert McClenaghan says, "Although the novels' Christian subtext is veiled in references to 'Maleldil' and 'dark eldils,' the outlines of the cosmic struggle are clear. The rebellion of the earthly oyarsa suggests the rebellion of Satan—which, Ransom learns, was redeemed by the sacrifice of Maleldil the Young (Christ).") His attempts to convince the inhabitants of Mars to flee the devastated planet to other worlds were stopped by the Oyarsa who killed the rebels and subsequently reshaped some parts of the planet's surface to continue to support life. This was, however, billions of years ago.

Mars' Oyarsa also asks Weston, "What do you do when a planet is dead? ... Then what when all are dead?" To Weston, such a "defeatist" attitude is intolerable, although had the Martians settled Earth, nascent mankind would have obviously received short shrift. On hearing it he declares himself on the side of the Bent One and his defiant attitude ("He fights, jumps, lives, not like Maleldil who lets everybody die").

The concepts of space and other planets in this novel are largely taken from medieval cosmology. For more information on it, see C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image, a series of lectures on this cosmology that were published after his death.

Lewis depicts Mars based partly on what was known of it at the time and partly on legend. For example, Mars' atmosphere was known to be thin and unbreathable, but he decided to treat the canals of Mars as real though he was already aware that they probably did not exist. Lewis reconciles this by having Mars' breathable atmosphere concentrated in the canals, or handramits, and some blotchy lowland areas where the pfifltriggi live, while the bare surface of Mars, or harandra, is cold and lifeless. This state, according to the novel, is the result of the ancient attack on Malacandra by the Bent One, and the livable areas are the product of Oyarsa's subsequent emergency excavations. While journeying through a trench in the harandra with Augray the sorn, Ransom had to breathe out of an oxygen bottle, and the sky was pitch black, except when a dust storm colored the sky ochre (of course, this ochre colour is permanent in the real Mars' sky). Larry Niven's planet Canyon in the Known Space series likewise shares the feature of having a trench with breathable air while most of the world's air is too thin. Lewis also depicts things on Mars as having vertical exaggeration relative to their closest Earth counterparts, which he felt to be appropriate for Mars' lower gravity-- although the humans on Mars apparently observe its lower gravity only inferentially from this vertical exaggeration, and generally do not directly experience their own decreased weight.