C. S. Lewis' - That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man and the Role Man's Nature Plays Free Essay Example

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The Ends Justify the Means

The power of the majority is in its force. A man alone cannot erect a tower to heaven but many hands together can accomplish any task. “The shadow of that hideous strength, six miles and more it is of length,” Sir David Lyndsaay describes the biblical Tower of Babel in The Monarchie. An account is given in the bible of a time when the earth had recovered from the catastrophe of Noah’s Flood where the new population was all one city and one nation.

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No one was opposed to the other and everyone accepted a common language and a common dialect. These men were to become the ancient Babylonians. A people remembered for their hideous strength. Banning together after the flood these men built a giant city and erected an unforgettably large tower in the midst of it with plans to make it reach heaven. God saw this and confused their languages, scattering them across the world.

These men came together to make sure the world never forgot them. It is from this reference that Lewis draws the title of his novel That Hideous Strength.

That Hideous Strength is the conclusion of a space trilogy written by C.S. Lewis as a commentary on humanity’s most grotesque ability. That strength is described in Lewis’ interpretive work The Abolition of Man. The power of the majority is an unstoppable force that commonly exists for the good of the few and ultimately the destruction of many.

As man evolves and becomes more technologically advanced he will forget the classic morals. There will be no more need for classic morality as men find scientific bridges that rest over the rivers of consequence and lead straight from lust to pleasure. Yet the men who can afford to build these bridges will become bridge builders and those left behind will be used as tar for their scientific Tower of Babel. Men will attempt to become gods perfect in their structure and thoroughly incorruptible.

The novel goes into detail on how easily a group of people, much like the Nazi Party during World War Two, can rule the world with propaganda and fear. A conglomerate calling itself The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments poses as a family friendly wholesome lot bent on perpetuating the common good. However that is far from their true goal of becoming remembered at any cost as they attempt to control all aspects of human life. The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments works to abolish all human privacy and decency, forcing a collective bent on completing their goals. The novel also focuses on the importance of communication, the true common good, companionship, materialism, majority rule, and the status of evil within men.

At novel’s start we are introduced to a couple with serious communication problems. Mark and Jane hardly speak with one another; they are immensely unhappy. They perpetually blame each other for the problems in their marriage causing an immensely weak bond. Confused communication is perpetuated as an important theme throughout the novel as the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments perpetuates a constant state of miscommunication. Lewis uses the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments to show how easily an entity can appear to be doing well for people while intentionally harming them. The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments controls the media. They constantly publish propaganda that makes them look better than they really are. They are constantly spinning stories to make themselves appear harmless. They propagate a façade of caring to the public that goes unquestioned when backed by their seemingly humanitarian efforts.

However the importance of communication is highlighted by the author’s insistence on emphasizing language and the minute details of language. “And Dimble, who had been sitting with his face drawn, and rather white, between the white faces of the two women, and his eyes on the table, raised his head, and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth. Jane felt her heart leap and quiver at them. Everything else in the room seemed to have been intensely quiet; even the bird, and the bear, and the cat, were still, staring at the speaker. The voice did not sound like Dimble's own: it was as if the words spoke themselves through him from some strong place at a distance--or as if they were not words at all but present operations of God, the planets, and the Pendragon. For this was the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon and the meanings were not given to the syllables by chance, or skill, or long tradition, but truly inherent in them as the shape of the great Sun is inherent in the little waterdrop. This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the first star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven,” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength.) It is astonishing how Lewis captures the subtleties of how language conveys meaning and mystery. He highlights the silence prior to speech in order to reference the stillness of true communication. Effective communication seeks to understand and accept silence. As the novels main problem is that like the ancient Babylonians progress is stopped when not everyone knows the same language. “We all have different languages; but we all really mean the same thing,” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength.) In the same sense we find communication oversteps language and is truly drawn from the desire of obtaining the common good. If we all, regardless of being able to understand each other or not find that we can communicate with one another then we can work together to create a better future.

Lewis in both these literary works conveys the urgency of assessing the status of men’s nature. The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments like the ancient Babylonian example contends support for the hypothesis that the innate nature of man is evil. When the majority rises up it shall always be for the cause of evil. For when the Tao is discarded by science and technological advances man no longer needs good. As right and wrong are merely subjective to groups who have skills beyond the Tao. “The impulse to scratch when I itch or to pull to pieces when I am inquisitive is immune from the solvent which is fatal to my justice, or honor, or care for prosperity. When all that says ‘it is good has been debunked, what says, ‘I want’ remains. It cannot be exploded or ‘seen through’ because it never had any pretentions.” [5] Men will finally move away from the Tao completely finding it easier to merely do what they even at the cost of the good of others while masking their personal gain as the good of the many.

The National Institute for Coordinated Experiments demonstrates the abolition of man. “Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petition. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artifacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the Abolition of Man,” (Lewis, The Abolition of Man.) This organization moves under the mask of humanitarianism in order to obtain their version of the common good. “We want you to write it down--to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan't have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We'll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you'd have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing it is--the word 'experiment' is unpopular, but not the word 'experimental.' You must'nt experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments and it's all correct,” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength.) Forcing the masses to embrace their version of what is right eliminating the concept of right and wrong the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments moves to enslave humanity for their sheer amusement. They have conquered their own humanity and thereby right claim the world as their prize. Humans with the same resources they had who did not achieve as much as they have clearly deserve to be ruled and this further demonstrates how technological advances and the loss of the Tao causes humanity to lose the differences between right and wrong.

Together these literary works embody a potential problem for a changing society. As morality becomes ambiguous those left to rule have only to serve themselves. “What should they find incredible, since they believed no longer in a rational universe? What should they regard as too obscene, since they held that all morality was a mere subjective by-product of the physical and economic situations of men? The time was ripe. From the point of view which is accepted in Hell, the whole history of our Earth had led up to this moment. There was now at last a real chance for fallen Man to shake off that limitation of his powers which mercy had imposed upon him as a protection from the full results of his fall. If this succeeded, Hell would be at last incarnate. Bad men, while still in the body, still crawling on this little globe, would enter that state which, heretofore, they had entered only after death, would have the power of evil spirits. Nature, all over the globe of Tellus, would become their slave; and of that dominion no end, before the end of time itself, could be certainly foreseen,” (Lewis, That Hideous Strength) Nothing will impress them and they will decide the paths of innovation. As man advances he will lose the essence of human nature, morals; he will take on obligation and soon following he will become subject to his own lawlessness. “Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to man. The battle will then be won. We shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it,” (Lewis, The Abolition of Man.)Man has obtained nothing. Without morality justice becomes an ideology buried beneath the desires of men. “Having mastered our environment, let us now master ourselves and choose our own destiny,” (Lewis, The Abolition of Man.) Man is neither good nor evil. The human nature expressed in the universality of the Tao has been abolished and each man has only his own desires to fulfill regardless of those beneath him. In a changing society the art of the old customs is lost in translation and everything good becomes confused by desire.

Aristotle might argue that the way the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments foresee running the country is merely unjust. Although they are educated and well-bred individuals if they run a government solely based on benefitting the few it is unjust. Their government is built on the back of perversion and shrouded in inequality. “The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but the governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many, are perversions,”(Aristotle, The Politics.) Furthermore this government enslaves the poor and uneducated making it unjust and unfit for human standards. “Justice is equality for equals and inequality is justice for unequals. When the persons are omitted, then men judge erroneously. The reason is that they are passing judgment on themselves, and most people are bad judges in their own case,” (Aristotle, The Politics.) The desires of men will erect from man his greatest monuments and imminent destruction.