A Life of the Mind

"'We've got to believe that God is sane'” (78).
John Wyndham's the Chrysalids (1955)

Points for Reflection

J. Wyndham's The Chrysalids (1955), pp. 1-224

1. Are David’s strange dreams grounded in fantasy or reality?
2. As constructed by the narrator thus far, is the established church’s hostile attitude towards “deviations” in plants, animals, and humans a product of mere superstition, or does it have its basis in good science and/or healthy social practice? [Shelby A]
3. What motivates David's father's particular brand of morality?
4. What various ways are knowledge and education transmitted from person to person in this novel? Are certain sources to be trusted more than others?
5. Is David’s special ability more a blessing or a curse?
6. Is David’s Uncle Axel the most compelling voice of reason in this book? Does he share any of his peers’ prejudices?
7. In this post-apocalyptic world, has a new kind of sexual egalitarianism been instituted? Do men and women have similar rights and opportunities?
8. Is all religious thought and practice rendered by the author in a way that makes it seems foolish?
9. Does the telepaths’ special form of community constitute a self-sufficient social organism? [Sadie B]
10. Do the telepaths’ abilities enrich their lives more than they endanger them? Is theirs an enviable gift?
11. Is the intolerance of the normates grounded more in practical concerns or unreasoning prejudice?
12. Examine closely the conversations held by the telepaths. Presumably, these conversations are composed of images and emotions—not words. Is this plausible, given the conversations they hold? Do they ever, that is, exchange ideas that actually could not be translated so quickly without relying on customary linguistic signifiers?
13. Does the telepathy practiced by our heroes constitute a revolutionary form of communication and intimacy so different from that which is possible among "normal" people that it seems completely fantastic, or is it merely an exaggeration/magnification of features in the communication shared by most of us?
14. Today's reading provides David and the woman from Sealand a number of opportunities to dissertate on topics like society, ethics, religion, and evolution. Consider the tone which characterizes a few of these moments: do these characters adopt a didactic voice which turns the book—briefly—into a polemic actually directed at the reader, or does their preaching relate only to the fictional world inhabited by these characters?
15. Which female representatives appear to exercise the greatest agency and free will, those living in Waknuk, those in the Fringes, or those based in Sealand?
16. Compare the doctrine of change espoused by the Fringes man who travels with David's troupe (152-55) with the doctrine articulated by the woman from Sealand (156-57, 182-83, 195-96). Is theirs the same dogma, or does it differ in any important ways?
17. A number of characters espouse separate positions about the nature, purpose, and direction of human life. Does any one voice emerge as superior to the others by the novel's end, or is every voice shown to represent the fallible perspective of a limited group?
18. Does this book either adopt or reject any ideas from Darwin's writings? Be specific.
19. Do the Sealand woman's musings operate, for the reader, as an accurate indictment of not only the Waknuk people but of our own, contemporary society?
20. Does Sealand sound (and, finally, look) like a true utopia, or can you locate/forecast any likely problems in this island culture not yet identified by the woman from Sealand?
21. Is life in the Fringes better than that in Waknuk?

C. S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man (1943)

1. In what ways do you think your education (primary, secondary, collegiate) has shaped your values?
2. Lewis’s book responds to a particular trend in not only education but modern culture writ large.  What dystopia might come about if the ideas he identifies as problems instead became the basis for a new model of society?
3. What role do you think your emotions play in the value systems you hld dear? Do you agree with Lewis’s suggestion that attempting to force emotion and reason apart, and treating them as hostile adversaries (20-21), dismantles the very notion of moral value?
4. Lewis’s argument rests on the premise that emotional experience matters deeply, and should be nurtured and trained instead of disparaged and dismissed. Can you think of any dystopic tales that dramatize the dangers of trying to suppress and/or control an individual’s emotional experience?
5. The Abolition of Man was written and published during WWII.  Does this global conflict find its way into Lewis’s examples and rhetoric, either directly or indirectly?
6. Sigmund Freud proposed a tripartite model of human function involving the id (unconscious desires), ego (conscious decision-making), and superego (moral arbiter).  Lewis suggests another tripartite model (24-25), one involving the head (reason/logic), the belly (visceral impulse and untrained emotion), and the chest (stable sentiment & moral impulse).  Which model do you find most useful in explaining your own experience?
7. Does Lewis exaggerate when according teachers the ability to profoundly shape each student, to “cut out of his soul” (8-9) certain cognitive possibilities?
8. Does Lewis appear ambivalent about the power and importance of human emotion?
9. How might one’s starved sensibility make them more vulnerable to outside influence?
10. What does Lewis mean by the phrase “trained emotions” (24)?
11. Does Lewis believe that parental instinct and affection should trump all other concerns?
12. Do you agree that “the human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour” (44), that any value we uphold can be traced back to preexisting values (the “Tao”)—that core, practical moral principles are intuited by everyone regardless of their culture or philosophy, era or religion?
13. What problems does Lewis identify in the determination to live according to one's instincts?
14. Does Lewis consider all feeling/sentiment to be merely subjective?
15. Does Lewis contend that discrete moral systems share more features than differentiate them?
16. Does Lewis believe that our altruistic impulses can powerfully shape our behavior without the assistance of “practical reason”?
17. What qualms does Lewis have with classifying humanity as merely another part of Nature?
18. Why does Lewis conclude that there is, really, no such thing as “Man’s power over Nature”?
19. Does Lewis imagine that science which helps us shape our human descendants grants those descendants more power over themselves, or less power?
20. What does Lewis imagine will truly govern the motives of the eugenicists, or “Conditioners,” who try to predetermine humanity’s future?
21. Lewis contents that Conditioners of the sort he has described are proceeding apace in all cultures throughout the world, moving to create a “world of post-humanity” (75).  Do you see any signs of what he has described in our own culture in the twenty-first century?
22. Lewis hopes that a new, “regenerate” science might come from Science itself (76), a science which “when it explained [. . .] would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole” (79). He recognizes, though, that this might be a pipe dream, and wonders whether analytical understanding always kills what it sees in order to understand it (80).  Do you, personally, believe that scientific progress and innovation tend to, in the words of Wordsworth, “murder to dissect,” or do you eagerly anticipate where scientific progress will take us in the coming years?
23. On what various cultures’ moral traditions does Lewis draw in the Appendix when providing examples of what he calls the Tao, that “law of beneficence”?

"Lebensraum 1: The Battlefield" (1941)
Percy Wyndham Lewis

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu