The contrast between the antagonists' morals and Ransom's is very clear and valuable. The characters are well-introduced, the plot enchanting, and the spirituality fascinating. 'Out of the Silent Planet' is an excellent beginning to C.S. There are 2 instances of 'damn,' 1 of 'ass' (used to mean 'fool'), and 3 of 'Who the devil?', 'By God!', etc. A mountain is described as 'looking like a woman's breast'. When Ransom first meets one of the Malacandrian creatures, he believes the belt it is wearing is its genitals. Devine says Weston can have relations with some of the native creatures, 'if he's so fond of them', though he never does. There are no women around, however, and there's nothing crude about it. Ransom, Weston, and Devine wear no clothing during the voyage because it's very hot. Ransom is drugged by Devine to make kidnapping him easier. Weston and Devine are implied to have been smoking both cigars and cigarettes, and Devine is said to be drunk at least twice throughout the course of the tale. A joke is made by Devine about a young boy being fond of alcohol, which appears to be true. Ransom is invited to visit and 'have a drink' (whiskey, though he never actually tastes it). Weston and Devine shoot several inhabitants of Malacandra. They later detain Ransom by force and knock him out with a blow to the head. When Ransom initially meets Weston and Devine, they are scuffling with a boy in an attempt to kidnap him. The arch-angel (Lucifer) of our planet is also mentioned.

The Young Maleldil is obviously Christ, while His father, mentioned several times, is obviously God the Father. The 'eldil' on Malacandra are what we would call angels and Oyarsa, a key character in the latter part of the book, is the arch-angel of Malacandra. believing that population cleansing and killing off another planet's inhabitants to make room for humans is the right thing to do), but that is clearly pointed out and shown to be wrong. One of the antagonists has rather skewed views as to what is moral (i.e.

He and his captors, Weston and Devine, land on the planet Malacandra (which we later learn is the inhabitants' name for Mars), where Ransom unwittingly learns that he is to be delivered to the natives, presumably as a human sacrifice to their gods. Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge don, is abducted while trying to perform a good deed, and is taken as a hostage on a journey through space. An excellent read with some alcohol content and profanity used by antagonists.ĭr.

Silent planet book