40 pages • 1 hour read
C. S. LewisPerelandra
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1943A 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 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Ransom awakens after his strenuous swim to find a long-legged bird singing nearby. It is daylight. He discovers that he is back on his own island. Several other islands, including the one with the woman on it, have gathered and created a sort of continent in the calm water. He sees the woman walking and singing to herself. He hails her, and she turns and begins to speak. Ransom is overwhelmed in part by the fact that she is also fully naked. He finds himself not aroused but aware of his own body. The woman apologizes for laughing at him. They discuss concepts of time and space. She explains that Maleldil created everything in the Field of Arbor, which explains their similar appearance.
Ransom requests to stop talking, as he is exhausted, and then asks to come to her island, which she accepts. He finds himself fatigued after swimming over and falls asleep. He awakens to find the dragon and a yellow, wallaby-like creature waiting for him. They lead him to the woman. In conversation with her, he learns that there is a King on the planet and that these two are the only humanoids. They have lost each other and now the woman waits for him, so that she may have children. She refers to herself as “the Mother” and the King as “the Father.” Ransom explains the concepts of death and discomfort to her. After this makes her contemplate, she returns to say that it is all for their good, that these challenges are purposeful and that they should take joy in everything Maleldil sends. Ransom argues that she would be happier with the King, whom she mistook Ransom for, but she argues that it doesn’t matter and that she must appreciate it all. She ends their conversation and Ransom leaves.
Chapter 6 Summary
After his meeting, Ransom begins to feel better about being on his own. He notices that all the islands are near the green pillar and he sees that it is a larger continent that appears stationary and full of vegetation. The woman arrives and tells Ransom she plans to go to this Fixed Land. Ransom says he’d like to go as well, since it reminds him of Earth. She is horrified by this and asks where he lives and sleeps if all the land is fixed. On Perelandra, it is forbidden to live on the Fixed Land. She reasons that there must be different laws on different planets.
As they discuss this, something falls out of the skyand lands in the sea. They decide to find it by going to the Fixed Land for high ground. The woman calls fish to help them travel. They ride to the Fixed Land and Ransom is happy as he steps off the fish and feels land beneath him. They walk up the land, which grows steeper as they travel on. They have to climb at one point and Ransom tears the skin on his knee and begins to bleed. The woman asks about this and he explains pain.
Ransom comes upon a circle of nine pillars surrounding a seven-acre plateau. He and the Queen search the sea from this vantage point and see an object floating in the water. The object reminds Ransom of the ship that Professor Weston used to take the kidnapped Ransom to Malacandra in the trilogy’s first book,Out of the Silent Planet. He fears that this may be a similar situation and that if this is proof of Professor Weston being on Perelandra, Random will be better prepared than before. Ransom asks the woman if there are any eldila on the planet, as the eldila defeated Weston on Malacandra. She explains through Maleldil’s teaching that Perelandra, the first planet created after Maleldil became man, has no eldila because this is the way He wants it to be. Ransom explains that there are some eldila who are not willing to give up their place of superiority, especially the Oyarsa of Tellus. They see the black object in the sea split into two and what looks like a boat drive away from the ship. The waves begin to grow, and the woman says they must get off the island, also suggesting that she confront the driver of the boat. Ransom races ahead of her to stop this meeting, but she runs close behind. They meet the boat and Weston comes out, fully clothed and wearing a pith helmet. As Ransom tries to send the woman away, Weston asks Ransom what the meaning of his arrival is.
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Here, we establish that the woman represents Eve while Ransom, for the moment, seems to be Adam. Both are naked, but Ransom does not feel shame in this state: “If he was a little ashamed of his own body, that [..] had nothing to do with difference of sex” (52). Instead, his shame is in his own ugliness. We also learn that Maleldil stands in for the Christian God, in the tradition of the Trinity, as the woman tells Ransom, “in your world Maleldil first took Himself this form” (54). Lewis establishes for us the basic plot then, based on Christian mythology, so that he can use that for his commentary. He explores concepts of pleasure and pain, especially the pleasure of seeking knowledge mixed with the resulting pain of knowing. When Ransom scrapes his knee and explains pain to the woman, she wants “to scrape a little skin off her own knee to see if the same would happen” (69). This human desire for knowledge calls up the image of the fruit of knowledge, which we are reminded of by all the fruit of Perelandra, which, when consumed, possesses the ability to call up emotion and feeling, rather than just taste memory, in the person who consumes it.
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By C. S. Lewis
