55 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. LewisOut of the Silent Planet
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1938A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Weston informs Ransom that they are in outer space, about 85,000 miles from Earth, on their way to a planet called Malacandra. Malacandra has a more familiar name “invented by terrestrial astronomers” (28), but Weston refuses to reveal it. He will only tell Ransom that Malacandra is inhabited. When Ransom asks why Weston and Devine are so cruel to him, Weston chides that one life, or a million lives, are insignificant compared to what space travel offers: the ability to access “infinity, and therefore perhaps eternity” (29). Ransom vehemently disagrees and again demands to know what he has to do with the entire situation. Weston shrugs and says that he and Devine are just acting on the orders of the inhabitants of Malacandra, adding that he feels justified in doing anything to advance the progress and lifespan of humanity. He gives Ransom a weighted belt to counteract the reduced gravity of space.
Ransom is surprised by the constant heat and brightness within the ship, which goes against his perception of space as dark and cold. To his surprise, he feels alert and well, even brave. He begins to wonder aloud what will happen later in the day as the heat increases, but he soon realizes that the only time in space is “the changeless noon which had filled for centuries beyond history so many million cubic miles” (31). Weston warns him to stop talking because the spaceship has a limited supply of oxygen.
Chapter 5 Summary
Despite his strange surroundings, Ransom begins to enjoy his time as a prisoner on the spaceship. Weston and Devine switch off shifts in the ship’s control room. When Devine is off, he talks to Ransom often, scoffing at Weston’s “solemn scientific idealism” (32). He alludes vaguely to the possibility of material gain on Malacandra with ironic references to “the white man’s burden and the blessing of civilization” (32). Like Weston, he will not give a straight answer about Ransom’s role in the voyage.
Still, Ransom finds himself feeling extremely happy. One side of the spaceship remains in perpetual daylight, while the other is in endless night. Ransom splits his time between these two halves, enjoying the “sweet influence” of the solar system as well as the “unrelenting though unwounding brightness” (35) of space seen through the ship’s skylight. He compares the uplifting brightness of space to the heavens.
One night, while tidying up in the galley, Ransom overhears a conversation between his captors. Devine is arguing that they will not need to drug Ransom when they reach Malacandra because he will “eat out of [their] hand[s] at the first sight of a sorn” (36). He speculates that Ransom is wanted by the inhabitants of Malacandra as a kind of human sacrifice. Ransom again becomes terrified. He tries to imagine what a sorn is; due to the influence of popular science fiction authors like H. G. Wells, his mind is immediately “peopled with horrors such as ancient and medieval mythology could hardly rival” (37). The idea of being handed over as a sacrifice to whatever monstrous creatures are waiting on Malacandra is unacceptable, so he vows to escape or take his own life. Hoping that God will forgive him, he pockets the sharpest knife from the galley.
Chapter 6 Summary
The next morning, Ransom’s terror has abated, and his light mood has returned. He accepts that he may die, because “death [can] be faced, and rational fear of death [can] be mastered” (38). He is more troubled by his fear of the unknown monsters that may be waiting on Malacandra. As time passes, the quality of the light in the spaceship changes, and the temperature decreases—signs that they will soon land. As the ship approaches Malacandra, the men feel the effects of the planet’s strong gravitational pull. They lose their senses of direction and get sick, their symptoms worsening as they approach the new planet. Finally, their ordeal ends as all of the light of space dims, “as if some demon had rubbed the heaven’s face with a dirty sponge” (41). Ransom is upset to be leaving the blissful peace of space and wonders how he ever thought of space as a dead void when it’s really the planets that are “mere holes or gaps in the living heaven” (41). He is so lost in thought that he doesn’t notice the moment of his arrival on Malacandra.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Traveling aboard the spaceship, Ransom battles a strong fear of the unknown. He assumes that unfamiliar things are dangerous by default. Even though Weston and Devine have proven themselves amoral, Ransom trusts them more than he trusts the theoretical inhabitants of Malacandra; Weston and Devine are human and therefore understandable to him. In the absence of any knowledge of Malacandra, Ransom draws on the writings of authors like H. G. Wells, who portray the inhabitants of other planets as menacing and lawless. Lewis himself was a fan of Wells, but he lamented the state of science fiction during his time. He disliked the popular portrayal of humans as a superior species in a solar system otherwise filled with violent and repugnant creatures, and he did not believe that humans have a right to colonize other planets, a sentiment portrayed in many popular science fiction novels. The specific reference to Wells, in the context of Ransom’s fears, is a callout to how science fiction sometimes primes readers’ minds to believe that nonhuman creatures are inferior. Lewis will subvert this idea through Ransom’s Malacandrian encounters.
Despite his fear, Ransom attains new levels of clarity and spirituality during his voyage. Proximity to outer space brings him an inexplicable sense of joy and peace. Space is full of light, directly contradicting his previous science-based notion that space is cold and dead. This contrast sets up a theme of the interplay (and occasional contradiction) between a scientific mindset and the laws of spirituality. Weston and Devine, guided only by their scientism, attribute their altered states of mind aboard the spaceship to strictly physical causes and therefore cannot share in Ransom’s beautiful experience of the heavens.
Weston in particular uses scientific progress as a twisted justification for amorality, an attitude he flaunts by telling Ransom that the advancement of space travel is worth losing a million lives. Ransom strongly disagrees with the idea that progress justifies harming living beings, citing his issue with vivisections, which are procedures in which living animals are operated on for scientific research. Notably, Lewis does not portray all scientific mindsets in a negative light. Ransom himself possesses scientific knowledge that he will eventually use to contextualize some of his experiences on Malacandra. Ransom’s character proves that science and spirituality can coexist and even strengthen one another.
The happy realization about space also foreshadows Ransom’s coming spiritual awakening on Malacandra. In describing the effects of space on Ransom’s psyche, Lewis uses the biblical phrase “sweet influence.” When lying in bed observing the ship’s skylight, Ransom feels this sweet influence “pouring or even stabbing into his surrendered body” (33), signifying a powerful transformative experience.
Ransom’s experiences of wonder and spiritual connection contrast with Weston’s and Devine’s matter-of-fact cruelty as they prepare to sacrifice Ransom to the sorns. The conversation Ransom overhears between his captors makes it clear that Weston and Devine have differing motives for their joint voyage. Devine references material gain, while Weston’s motives concern scientific progress. Both of these motives are Lewis’s critiques of what he believed was an overly secular, hedonistic society that focused on the idea of progress at any cost.
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