They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

Timothy Lawrence and I have wondered whether George Lucas had ever read C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and whether it influenced Star Wars. But now I’m also wondering whether he ever read Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and whether it influenced his contributions to Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Initially this thought occurred to me because both the novel and the film have a group of villains, who, to help them take over the world, try to harness a higher power, even though this is at odds with their ideology. The anti-Christian N.I.C.E. wants to use Merlin for his magic, but magic is antithetical to their stated scientism, and Merlin, it turns out, is a Christian. The anti-Jewish Nazis want to use the Ark of the Covenant, which necessitates that they perform a “Jewish ritual.” In the violent finales of both the novel and the film, the cynical, impious villains are destroyed by the very power they sought.

But that last point of overlap led me to consider what may be a more important thematic connection between That Hideous Strength and Raiders. The fact is that neither Dr. Ransom and Co. nor Dr. Jones and Co. have to do almost anything to foil the N.I.C.E. or the Nazis. Dr. Ransom sends people to find Merlin before the N.I.C.E. do, but Merlin finds him. All Ransom does is instruct Merlin what to do and present him to the eldils so they give Merlin the power to destroy the N.I.C.E. And, as some plot-hole sleuths are quick to point out as if it were a weakness of the film, the outcome of Raiders would have been the same no matter what Indy did or didn’t do. He could have stayed home.

But to think that Raiders was supposed to be about Indy defeating the Nazis and instead he turns out to be useless is to entirely miss the point. The great revelation at the end is that the God of Israel does not need any man’s help to defeat His enemies. The point is that Indy moves from, as Tim puts it, “fram[ing] his search for the Ark in purely material, rational terms” to “at least [having] enough holy fear” to know to close his eyes when the Ark is opened. What if Indy is there, not to save the day, but to learn firsthand that our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3)?

Ransom’s skeptic friend MacPhee would share Indy’s disdain for “superstitious hocus pocus,” and he’s also the kind of person who would make the above complaint about Raiders of the Lost Ark. In That Hideous Strength, he doesn’t understand why Ransom’s strategy for countering the N.I.C.E. is so passive, so deferential to the eldils (whom MacPhee does not believe in), and so much like just living ordinary lives. He says at one point, “It may have occurred to you to wonder, Mrs. Studdock, how any man in his senses thinks we’re going to defeat a powerful conspiracy by sitting here growing winter vegetables and training performing bears. [OK, that last part isn’t so ordinary.] It is a question I have propounded on more than one occasion. The answer is always the same; we’re waiting for orders” (p. 189 in the Scribner 2003 edition).

Then, after Merlin has overthrown the N.I.C.E., MacPhee seems to wonder whether he, too, could have stayed home. He says, “I’d be greatly obliged if any one would tell me what we have done—always apart from feeding the pigs and raising some very decent vegetables.” To which Ransom replies, “You have done what was required of you … You have obeyed and waited” (368). Ransom’s response reminds me of the last line of Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Waiting on God and being ready to act at a moment’s notice is itself a form of action.

Besides, what MacPhee doesn’t see is that the communal life being cultivated at Ransom’s Manor at St. Anne’s is a valuable form of resistance to the cruel, manipulative culture of the N.I.C.E. HQ at Belbury. At Belbury, animals and people are tortured; at St. Anne’s, they are rehabilitated. At Belbury, people are used and turned on each other; at St. Anne’s, they are cared for and submit to one another in love and respect. I like Jake Meador’s recent observation at Mere Orthodoxy that the community at St. Anne’s is practicing something like the Benedict Option, which is say that Lewis puts the emphasis on spiritual formation within Christian community instead of on political action. 

It may seem like Indiana Jones is superfluous in his own story, or like the only characters that matter on the side of the good guys are Ransom and Merlin. Likewise, we may question what good it does to follow Paul’s command to lead quiet lives (1 Thess. 4:13) in a world of so much noise, when maybe we could try pulling the levers of political power to bring it down a few decibels. I say all this not to endorse quietism, but to ask whether we trust that God has the power to vindicate His justice in His own time and in His own way, and whether we are striving to first be faithful in the little things He entrusts to us, things as simple as growing winter vegetables.

Men with Chests

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis famously coined the phrase “men without chests” (p. 26 in the 2000 HarperOne edition). But what does it mean to be a man with a chest? What is the Chest?

Lewis is adapting Plato’s idea of the tripartite soul. In his Republic, Plato says the human soul has: [1] a rational, philosophic part (literally, the wisdom-loving part); [2] an appetitive part (the pleasure-loving part, though more specifically the money-loving part because money helps satisfy all the other appetites); and [3] a spirited part, which loves honor and victory (p. 251 in the 1992 Hackett edition). According to the Republic, the spirited part should submit to the rational part, and together the rational and spirited parts should rule over the appetitive part (117). And Lewis agrees with all this: “Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element’” (24). Yet Lewis makes two significant changes. 

First, Lewis brings in an analogy between the soul and the body that Plato does not use: “The [rational] head rules the [appetitive] belly through the [spirited] chest” (24). More on that in moment. And second, he expands the range of functions encompassed by the concept of the spirited element. 

The index of my copy of Republic tells me the Greek word used for ‘spirit’—thumos—also means ‘anger’ (299). And in fact, Plato puts a lot of emphasis on how it is “the spirited part by which we get angry” (115; cf. 251). Those who live for honor or take honor the most seriously are proud, and the proud can be quite, well, touchy. Plato acknowledges that, at worst, the spirited part can be “hard and harsh” and marked by “savageness.” But, at best, if the spirited part is rightly channeled, the anger and pride that are aroused whenever honor is at stake can produce courage, one of Plato’s four cardinal virtues (87). 

Lewis also associates the spirited element or Chest with courage, using the example of a soldier in battle to show how, without having a courageous Chest, the soldier will not be able to fulfill his duty while under fire (24). But Lewis, being a Christian who knows Christ’s command to turn the other cheek and who has read Paul’s celebration of humility—and above all, has been soul-transformed by the gospel of grace—cannot give anger and pride the controlling interest in the Chest. Instead of associating the spirited element with anger, pride, and honor, Lewis associates it with the terms “trained emotions,” “Magnanimity,” and “Sentiment” (24-25). He says the Chest is “the seat … of emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments” (24-25). In most people, anger is volatile, not stable. I think we can infer from Lewis that the person who follows his anger all the time is controlled by his appetitive part, not by his spirited part as Plato supposed. But if anger were reined in by reason and habit and if it was only heeded and acted on when the emotion corresponded with reality—if someone could be angry only about those things that rightly merit anger, and in the right degrees—then anger would be at home in the Chest. But it wouldn’t be the only emotion at home there. So what else is included in Lewis’s conception of the Chest?

To approach a clearer, fuller answer to that question, I’ve found it helpful to ask, first, Why does he use the word “Chest” and not “Heart”? Actually, he does use “heart” at least once in the text. He says: “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it” (19). But within a few pages he has swapped out “Heart” for “Chest,” and he clearly prefers the latter term. Why? Is it just that for modern readers the heart has all kinds of mushy, sappy connotations that Lewis wants to avoid? Maybe, but I think there’s more to it. The image of the Chest is richer, more complex. Consider basic anatomy. The chest houses the heart, yes, but it also houses the lungs, and both are held in place and protected by bones: the spine and the rib cage. What if Lewis has all these parts of the physical chest in mind? The Chest encompasses the heart, which we popularly associate with emotions and conscience, but it can also encompass the lungs by which we breathe—and in the Bible, breath is linked to spirit—and it also recalls the English idiom we use to tell people to have courage: “show some backbone.” Thus, the Chest concept retains Plato’s emphasis on courage and honor while making room for other virtues and pointing to how we are ultimately spiritual beings, not just spirited ones. God breathed life into us so we could know and love Him. 

So what does it mean to be man (or woman!) with a chest? It means having strong bones, strong lungs, and a strong heart. It means having “the harder virtues” we need when the going gets tough and painful self-denial is called for (24). It means living in reliance on God just as we live by the breath he gives us moment-by-moment. And it means having an emotional life that is rightly ordered, meaning our feelings are appropriate and proportionate to the realities and situations that evoke them.

(An aside: Likening the parts of the soul to the physical body underlines why we must be led by the rational and spirited parts and not by the appetitive part. The human brain, just like the heart and lungs, is shielded by bones. The stomach is not. It is the most vulnerable of these essential organs. In the same way, the human soul is most vulnerable to falling into vice by way of the appetites.)

This post is indebted to recent conversations with Tim Lawrence about the tripartite soul, and to a Malcolm Guite lecture on Herbert’s poem “Prayer (I)” that I had the privilege of attending a few days ago. It was when Guite explained the line that prayer is “God’s breath in man returning to his birth” that he pointed out how in Scripture breath and spirit are inextricably linked; that was when I had the “Aha!” moment that resulted in this post.  

New Article: Reading with the Jedi

I have a new article, titled “The Dead Speak!: Reading with the Jedi,” that was published today over at the Mere Orthodoxy blog. It combines several of my favorite things: Star Wars, reading and reading ethics, and quoting from C. S. Lewis and Alan Jacobs. I am grateful to Tim Lawrence for his feedback on the early drafts, and to Jake Meador for publishing the article.

Love and Death in Pirates of the Caribbean

In my post yesterday, I sketched out a proposed chiastic structure for Dead Man’s Chest, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with what I identified as the turning point:

Scene X: The Kraken attacks ship #2; Elizabeth’s dress is blamed for the attack but it’s Will’s fault

The turning point should be a thematically significant moment if it is to be at the heart of a true ring composition. I didn’t think this one scene could carry that much weight. It’s a major action set-piece, but doesn’t have much going for it narratively. Later in the day I talked with Tim Lawrence about it, and he helped me identify that the turning point should actually be two scenes: this one, and the scene preceding it. So here’s a revised theory of the turning point:

Scene X’: Norrington learns how he can get a pardon from Becket; Elizabeth, using Jack’s compass, realizes she has an attraction for Jack

Scene X”: The Kraken attacks ship #2; Elizabeth’s dress is blamed for the attack but it’s Will’s fault

Adding Scene X’ fits with the patterns I’ve already traced. It brings in another key Norrington moment to complement Scenes B’ (arrest warrant) and B” (pardon); it sets up Jack and Elizabeth’s flirtation in Scene G” (which deepens Jack’s betrayal of Will in Scene G’); and it is also relevant to the ring because it involves Jack’s compass, complementing Scenes D’ (compass confused) and D” (compass clear).

But why does the turning point need to include both X’ and X”? It’s because X’ complements A’, and X” complements A”:

Scene A’: A wedding without a groom (teacups filled with rain)

Scene A”: A wake without a body (mugs filled with grog)

The film opens with Will and Elizabeth’s wedding being cancelled because Becket arrests them for treason. Then, in Scene X’, we realize that Jack is another threat to Will and Elizabeth’s ability to marry. Immediately following this, Scene X” gives a preview of how the Kraken will finally destroy the Black Pearl and consume Jack. Then, the final scene of the film shows the survivors grieving that event, a fate they fought throughout the film to avoid. So Scenes X’ and X” really are the twinned turning point scenes of the film because they are also twinned with the film’s bookends.

More than that, this ring composition makes sense for the film—it’s not something I’m imposing on the film arbitrarily—because the whole story, at heart, is about characters who try to avoid marriage, death, or both. The beginning, middle, and end points of the ring only reinforce this. 

The film begins with a wedding without a groom. Something comes in between a man and his commitment to a woman, and all that this commitment would entail: fidelity, stability, fatherhood. In Will’s case, the hindrance was unwanted. But Davy Jones cut his own heart out so he could forsake his beloved, and although Bootstrap Bill stuck around long enough to father Will, he did not stay behind to raise him. Jones and Bootstrap chose the supposed freedom represented by the sea and by piracy over the responsibility of the hearth. In the turning point of the film, Elizabeth realizes she is likewise tempted to bail on her own wedding. For a moment, the desire to be with a pirate (and thus become a pirate herself) is more compelling.

The film ends with a funeral without a body. Yet just as no one can really miss their own wedding, no one can really miss their own funeral. In the film, people keep trying to forestall the inevitable, with disastrous results. Dying sailors sign on to join Davy Jones’ crew so they can delay Judgment Day by one hundred years—and proceed to experience one hundred years of hell on earth. Jack keeps scheming after ways to not have to die in exchange for the extra thirteen years Jones gave him—and how many sailors have to die for his folly before he finally runs out of schemes? The turning point scene in which Will watches the Kraken take down a merchant ship gives Will ideas for how to stop the Kraken from taking down the Black Pearl, but those strategies can only buy Jack a little more time. The Kraken that swallowed Jack’s hat is like the crocodile that swallowed Captain Hook’s clock: a living reminder of the shortness of time and the certainty of death.

But how do these two themes—marriage and death—relate? What’s the connection between the wedding and the funeral, and between Elizabeth’s choice between two men and Jack’s looming appointment with the Kraken? Here’s my theory: marriage is one way of dying to self to serve the good of another, and thus avoid a different and far worse kind of death. Jones, Bootstrap, and Jack each refuse sacrificial love so they can live to serve themselves, and the end result for each of them is death, not just physical but spiritual. A man could skip his wedding, but if that is a harbinger of a life-long pattern of living for himself, the result won’t be a funeral without a body, but a funeral without mourners, and worse, an eternity alone. 

Fortunately for Jack, in the eleventh hour he realizes he cannot abandon his friends and crew, and he willingly risks his own life to save them. This doesn’t keep the Kraken at bay, but it does mean Jack is mourned as “a good man.” In contrast, the heart of Davy Jones locked away in a chest—a refusal of death by love—reminds me of this passage from C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loves (HarperOne, 2017): 

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and you heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell” (155-156, italics added).

The choice facing all these characters is the same one facing all of us: Death being inevitable, when and how do we want to die? We can either submit ourselves to small daily deaths now, or we can die eternally later.