Silence No Longer

David Joyner

“We are not yet fit to visit other worlds. We have filled our own with massacre, torture, syphilis, famine, dust bowls and with all that is hideous to ear or eye. Must we go to infect new realms?” (173)

“The Seeing Eye,” C. S. Lewis

Most famously known for The Chronicles of Narnia book series and his works on Christian theology, C. S. Lewis has maintained the title of a respected writer even 58 years after his passing. He often specialized in symbolism and allegory in his writings, most notably Christian themes, but he also used these ways of writing to point out the problems and fallen nature of humankind. Such is the case in the first book of The Space Trilogy (also known as the Ransom or Cosmic Trilogy), which is called Out of the Silent Planet (1938). In this novel, we are introduced to Ransom, a man who is kidnapped to Mars and forced to meet the three strange alien races residing there before realizing that the men who kidnapped him are set on exterminating those lifeforms so humans can take the planet for themselves. As a framed story, an unnamed narrator describes all these experiences before revealing that he knows Ransom personally and is writing the story down for him, and, because of this, it is believed to be a fictional version of Lewis himself. Applying the techniques of obvious allegory that he is known for, Lewis alters science fables to address his concern about using evolutionism in science to create a racial hierarchy and the dangerous consequences of such ideas in the real world.

Lewis was not a stranger to using allegory to represent his opinions and beliefs; in his first book series, he had already used many religious parallels, such as Earth’s fall, angels, and a sovereign God-figure over all creation. Also central to the plot of Out of the Silent Planet however, is the theme of race, which is contrasted between the earthling characters Ransom, Devine, and Weston and the three distinct alien races of Mars: the Sorns Hrossa, and Pfifltrigg As we continue through the story, the aliens are all mutually at peace with one another despite their vastly different appearances and personalities, while the humans naturally desire one race to be ruler over the others and want to kill the less-evolved races to make room for the expansion of humanity. Lewis uses the story to recreate the actual problem of evolutionism that had persuaded people, including Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, that the white race was the most evolved, excusing racism and inequality as acceptable. Looking beyond the story, we can see Lewis’s attempt to address humanity’s racism and imperialism based on the concerning beliefs of evolutionism at the time.

What Lewis knew about evolution and the racism that followed is not the same as it is today. Evolution primarily teaches that humans are the end of a process of evolving from one creature to the next based on necessity, beginning all the way back with a one-celled organism. This theory is commonly taught in schools across the country, and it is widely accepted in scientific fields of study. The theory was first popularized in Charles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species in 1859. Of course, if racism is no longer the focus of evolution, then that should be a good thing. Today, it is just one way of explaining where humanity came from and how humans are so different from closely related species. One way to describe this belief system is the term evolutionism where it becomes a worldview to view other situations through, such as studying animals and even the Earth’s continental crust layers. But, despite the generally good view that evolution now has, it does not erase the principles that it once used in the past. In the early years of creating an understandable chart that described the evolution of all life, the biases of those white men bled into evolutionism for years to come. And to be clear, this wasn’t added on by later writers of evolution; it came from the same man that is credited for its popularity. Going back as early as Darwin’s later book The Descent of Man (1871), “evolution was used to support scientific racism and provide validation for the racial domination and exclusion of other races from society,” which led to extreme amounts of discrimination (Pressman). While it did not initially spark racism, the problem of different races called for an eventual explanation that could not be avoided, and the issue of race in the worldview of evolutionism became very problematic as time progressed. And this was the reason for Lewis’s concern.

This scientific racism founded in evolution brought forth the idea of preserving the evolved races by blotting out the more inferior races through different means in social society, which has become known as evolutionism. As described in a paper from Trinity College, it was natural, according to those who professed what they called “social Darwinism,” that “species have an innate tendency to strive for selfpreservation, which leads to competition and, ultimately, a winner whose strength indicates they are the best suited for survival” (Pressman). In this scenario, white men placed themselves as the most evolved, while other races were seen as being less evolved. We see this in World War II and the Nazi regime, along with the ventures of imperialism. This “scientific” view of humanity gave people a valid excuse to hate and discriminate against non-white individuals. Based on their physical appearance alone, other aspects were determined about them, like their moral or intellectual capacity. To those who truly believed this ideology, “the ceaseless control of ‘inferior’ races was necessary in order to maintain the dominant group’s survival and success” (Pressman). They avoided mixing the white race as a way of “sterilization” of the less evolved characteristics of other races, hoping to eventually rid them altogether. As extreme as it may sound, this was one drawback of racial hierarchy provided by evolutionism. It led to imperialism, seeing advancement in other races’ territory as a moral step towards preservation of humanity, and the first world war. All these things being fueled by evolutionism inspired Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet. What worked very well in Lewis’s favor was the choice to write his argument against scientific racism in science fiction form.

Lewis found a setting in the false scientific belief from a few decades before, as did many other writers around that time, that Mars had life forms far more advanced than those on Earth. It all began in 1877, when an astronomer named

Giovanni Schiaparelli spotted trenches on Mars using a refractor telescope. He described them using the word “canali,” meaning marks or grooves. When translating his description, however, it became the English word “canals,” so people began to say that the trenches were full of water, like a dug-out system (Chayka). Lewis uses this to his advantage to create a world that was once a serious theory and implements it directly through the novel. Because Mars’s trenches had to have been built by someone advanced, more so than anything earth had the capabilities of, many things were assumed about the life forms and the planet itself. The common belief was that Mars had to be older than Earth in order to create more advanced civilizations, which Lewis states directly in his book (151). He builds his civilization using these false views of alien life, life forms that are “politically, socially, technologically far advanced” (Hillegas), and yet uses this theme to show how truly unadvanced the human race is. While many people focus on other aspects like technology or physical elements, Lewis challenges the expectations of evolved life forms in order to shame the social biases and racial characteristics that evolutionists used in determining it. By this comparison, he points also to the tell-tale signs of a socially mature society: rationality and peace, both of which humans lacked in Lewis’s time.

In the novel, when Ransom escapes his captors and flees into the forests of Mars, he eventually meets another life form on the shore. This first alien race that the readers are introduced to does not resemble humans physically in the slightest, insinuating at first their lack of evolution. “It was something like a penguin, something like an otter, something like a seal; the slenderness and flexibility of the body suggested a giant stoat. The great round head, heavily whiskered, was mainly responsible for the suggestion of seal; but it was higher in the forehead than a seal’s and the mouth was smaller” (Lewis 55). The Hrossa, the name of the species that is eventually mentioned in the story, do not look more advanced than humans—not in the slightest. If anything, the description is more animalistic, with Lewis using the comparison of a seal to provide imagery and describing their lives as simplistic in nature, similar to the stone age. But this portrayal also misleads the reader based on the appearances provided, as Ransom later learns that they are the linguistic race of the three existing on Mars. In fact, all three Martian races speak the language that the Hrossa originally speak, only differing in pronunciation (98), proving their advancement is far more than what can be determined from their appearance. In addition to this, they are also writers of poetry and “fishermen,” so to speak. It is an amazing contrast, as Ransom himself learns that “the shapes of their heads no longer mattered” (85), a direct blow against the evolutionists’ belief in “socially desirable characteristics” that were used to determine differences between highly or lowly evolved races (Pressman). Lewis is not denying the advancement in the Hrossa in the slightest but instead focusing on the social and intellectual advancements in place of the physical ones that evolutionists would falsely read.

Another race that is introduced in the later half of the novel, the Pfifltrigg, are the least mentioned species, only getting a small part of the story to fully grasp. Ransom reacts rather harshly to one’s appearances and facial features, stating that its head “was long and pointed like a shrew’s, yellow and shabby-looking, and so low in the forehead that but for the heavy development of the head at the back and behind the ears (like a bagwig) it could not have been that of an intelligent creature” (Lewis 121). Already, Ransom has determined their intellectual capacity by what they look like in comparison to animals, much like how evolutionism would have viewed non-white races. Once again, we see an animalistic belief about appearance here, forming an immediate opinion of it. Ransom is quickly corrected after observing further and seeing that the Pfifltrigg wear clothing (122), and he also learns that they are actually the artists and craftsmen of the other races (105). Lewis uses terms like “insect-like” and “reptilian” in this section for the same purpose as the Hrossa’s description, to cast doubt on the physical traits that were associated with the “evolved” races and prove that appearances have nothing to do with being more evolved.

The last race is the Sorns which are much more complicated than the others due to their more human-like features that evoke two different reactions in Ransom. First, he fears them most in the first half of the book because of their grotesque human appearance. Ransom describes his first sighting of one with disgust: “so crazily thin and elongated in the leg, so top-heavily pouted in the chest, such stalky flexible-looking distortions of earthly bipeds [. .] He had a momentary, scared glimpse of their faces, thin and unnaturally long, with long, drooping noses and drooping mouths of half-spectral, half-idiotic solemnity” (44). Unlike the other races, the Sorns are more closely described to look like distorted human beings, as Ransom later explains: “the face, it was true, took a good deal of getting used to—it was too long, too solemn and too colourless, and it was much more unpleasantly like a human face than any inhuman creature’s face ought to be” (99). Once again, Ransom views these races through his own understanding of what creatures and people should look like, but this species crosses the line for Ransom far more than the others because of how human they appear. Lewis creates his protagonist to fear the Sorns, the most logical and idea-driven of the three races, far more than the Hrossa who are essentially massive seal beasts, on account of their similarities blurring the lines between human and alien species. Augray, the Sorn whom Ransom socially interacts with, reveals himself to be very intelligent, focusing on research and information. Once again, the race proves itself as advanced as humans, such as one invention that is essentially an oxygen tank (105), despite their twisted human features that would alone suggest a less intelligent being to the evolutionists of that day. Ransom sees those similarities as disturbing because they overthrow the racial hierarchy that is subconsciously existent in the field of science and society at the time, showing the true effects that those ideas had on the world through a more extreme example of race.

Another strange subconscious reaction to the Sorns’ likeness and characterization is the suspected place in hierarchy that they hold because of it. When Ransom meets the Hrossa, he assumes (with no information) that the Sorns might be “a semi-intelligent kind of cattle” (60). He later learns that the Sorns are very intelligent in science and information, leading to the conclusion that “they must be the real rulers, however it is disguised” (Lewis 72). Much like the evolution-fueled beliefs of the time, it was naturally expected that “one must dominate the others” (Schwartz 535). From this contrast, Lewis makes the point of humans and their addiction to evolutionism, expecting there to be one race that is superior to the others. As time goes on, Ransom finds that there is no “dominant species” (73) but rather a harmony of three groups, living peacefully and sharing each other’s services. Even so, it is impossible for Ransom to accept this fact until he talks to Augray the Sorn personally. Lewis makes it clear that, because of the Sorns’ similarities to humankind, and before he learns of the intelligence of the other races, Ransom assumes by his evolution-rooted ideas that the Sorns must be rulers over them all. Ransom in no way endorses evolutionary ideas outright, but it’s clear that he has been exposed to them unknowingly, signifying, in an extreme case of symbolism, how deep these ideas of race existed in the world.

The strongest thinking to overcome for Ransom is the very thought of all these different races getting along with one another. Lewis reminds the reader that “three distinct species had reached rationality, and none of them had yet exterminated the other two” (72), showing peculiarity through the eyes of Ransom, a standin for the human race. While these creatures live amongst each other in peace and without another thought, humans are contrasted with them many times throughout the book. We are told that humans kill other races for many different reasons, like pleasure, fear, and hunger, but also “if they thought its death would serve them” (87), highlighting these necessities as unnecessary and selfish at best. Ransom is also embarrassed to talk about the “wars and industrialisms” that humans participate in (73), since now we can clearly see that living without war and bloodshed is completely possible on Mars. The alien races, however, are free to take food from the Hrossa as needed (75), the Pfifltrigg build the ideas for inventions that the Sorns are incapable of physically making (105), and they do not kill each other over any disagreements. While it is possible for them to not agree on certain aspects, like how the hrossa see the world through a poetic lens while the sorns dabble in understanding things from a logical perspective, they are nonetheless content with each other and help each other, which takes Ransom’s human mind nearly the entire book to understand. The many reminders create a feeling of shame for the human race.

Once again, the reason for Ransom’s thought process is evolutionism taking form inside the limited perspective of humanity. Throughout Out of the Silent Planet Ransom struggles to see the many good qualities of the alien races, just like whites were socially judgmental of many nonwhite communities and countries. According to Sanford Schwartz in his essay “Race and Reason in Out of the Silent Planet,” Lewis portrays the “false ‘speciation’ through which a fallen creature denies its essential unity with others of its own type” (538). Or rather, humans fail to work with other humans to succeed because of one type prioritizing themselves over another. No example of this could be clearer than Nazi Germany, where Jews were picked out from the population and killed for their Jewish heritage. As noted before, Ransom stands for white humankind, in which he sees everything from his perspective. But in this instance, Lewis is using an extreme (aliens and space travel) to prove something just as important. The differences between an alien and someone from a different country are ridiculous to compare in theory, but he is essentially saying that the way society sees other human beings is much more shameful than that. “In this sense the harmonious relations of the several kinds of Martians, who are far more different in appearance than we are to one another, bears painful witness to the ceaseless strife and divisiveness within our own kind” (Schwartz 538). The evolutionary thought process only limits an already narrow human perspective of seeing the world, leading to a “narrowing of sympathies and even of thought” (Lewis 110). Through Ransom and possibly with Nazi Germany in mind, Lewis reveals how accepting and blind people are to the whole idea and how dangerous that prejudiced mindset is socially, scientifically, and politically.

Another practice that was common for countries such as Britain and Japan to expand territory was imperialism. Through imperialism, a country attempts to further its power through more physical means, at times depending on military force to invade territory and take it as its own. It might sound strange to switch subjects, but evolutionism and imperialism both take racism hand in hand, with the first ultimately instigating and justifying the second. They are closely related subjects because one fuels the other’s mistreatment of different races. In fact, Schwartz argues it to be the “most savage treatment of those we have deemed less than ourselves” in history (530). Lewis demonstrates imperialism through the character of Weston, one of the two other humans that kidnapped Ransom and took him to Mars. “He wants our race to last for always,” he describes Weston, “and he hopes they will leap from world to world,” very similar to how imperialism operates (Lewis 133). Weston demonstrates the common patriotic character that will honorably sacrifice himself for the greater good of humanity and do whatever he feels is necessary to the cause, even kill. But, in the process, he becomes less honorable than he believes himself to be as Lewis strips him down to what he really is: a biased man with no morals or social virtues in the slightest.

First, Lewis makes good comedic relief and ironic contrasts to Weston’s ideology of imperialism. Going back even to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species the ascent of least to most evolved was determined by the “primitive” to the most “civilized” (Schwartz 529), and Lewis was well aware of those expectations when writing this scene. Weston, on being surrounded by Oyarsa, the guardian angel of the planet, and all the local aliens, decides to try taking control of the situation in the only way he knows how: by treating them as primitive creatures. He pulls out a necklace with brightly colored beads and shakes them around, saying, “Pretty, pretty!” over and over again (Lewis 138). His plan was to persuade the obviously less-intelligent species with a handful of crude necklaces. We are told that “he was following the most orthodox rules for frightening and then conciliating primitive races,” and no one can blame him for thinking that it would work (139). After all, from the descriptions before, the races are portrayed as primitive in different ways, like the hrossa living very simple lives resembling the stone age, or the sorns being incapable of creating their own ideas. Also, this is what imperialists would do when in contact with natives as a way of negotiation before they decided to intrude by force. But the point that Lewis is trying to make here is that this mentality doesn’t work. If anything, Weston is the fool, “jerking the necklace up and down” in the same paragraph in a way that only makes Weston look ridiculous. And yet, he is the one who is “civilized” in the situation. Naturally, his expectations were that the aliens would take the beads and comply; what comes next surprises him more than he had thought it could have.

Very quickly, the aliens see his gestures for what they really are: hilarious at best and moronically shallow at worst. When Weston shakes his jewelry around, he expects to see the “savages” be won over by his gifts. Instead, “Such a roar of sounds as human ears had never heard before - baying of hrossa piping of pfifltriggi booming of sorns - burst out and rent the silence of that august place, waking echoes from the distant mountain walls.” At first, he thinks they are roaring at him in anger, but Oyarsa reveals that they aren’t roaring but “only laughing” (138). His ridiculous behavior continues, and he does not get any response other than comedic laughter. The irony is not only that he is too “primitive” to see that they are making fun of him, but he insists that he is the “civilized” one in this situation. “I’m inclined to think they have even less intelligence than we supposed,” he finally concludes after his failed offering (139). This scene reveals the perspective of the other races instead of the human one, provoking the notion that at best this is what natives see, think, and feel when other races advance into their territory trying to stoop down to their level of intelligence, and at worst they are an embarrassment to those around them, as the other man was during Weston’s “dance.” Lewis insinuates that it is the imperialists who become uncivilized when they treat other races as lower than themselves.

The author also goes deeper in the realm of perspective, using Ransom once again to shine a different light on the human species. Unlike the earlier passages, Ransom has now been with the aliens long enough to see through their physical forms and even enjoy their company. Suddenly, a new creature that he doesn’t recognize comes towards him:

The lower limbs were so thick and sausage-like that he hesitated to call them legs. The bodies were a little narrower at the top than at the bottom so as to be very slightly pear-shaped, and the heads were neither round like those of hrossa nor long like those of sorns, but almost square [. . .] Suddenly, with an indescribable change of feeling, he realized that he was looking at men.

(135)

Now in the perspective of the alien species, he describes the humans as irregular and disgusting in appearance. Notice how Ransom also uses the sorns and hrossa to compare with humans, a sign of his change of perspective. Not only is Lewis indicating how natives must feel with strange white men invading their lands, but he is also blurring the line between races, making them equally different. Yes, the other races do have characteristics different from the white population, but the white people also look strange in comparison to other races. One doesn’t come out as the better race here: they are all unique and strange, differing in many ways, also meaning that no one race is superior to the others.

In a similar way, the term “human” refers to all races; Lewis uses the term hnau to refer to all alien species from different planets, humans included, and this term has direct parallels to the many races of humankind and how imperialism treats those people as if they are aliens themselves (71). Weston, the stand-in for this form of evolutionary racism, makes clear the standards by which he judges humans as superior: “Your tribal life with its stone-age weapons and bee-hive huts, its primitive coracles and elementary social structure, has nothing to compare with our civilization—with our science, medicine and law, our armies, our architecture, our commerce, and our transport system. [. . .] Our right to supersede you is the right of the higher over the lower” (146). Just as Weston believes his race superior, so did the imperialists and evolutionists of Lewis’s day about their own white race. Using differences such as social and scientific structures, whites “proved” themselves as the “higher” race of the scenario and considered only themselves as truly human. Unlike the hnau that includes all species despite cultural or physical differences, some in the human race sought to exclude humans from other countries for those differences. While not the same as judging by appearances on the surface, it does serve the same function: to label an entire race lower than another based on the differences or contrasts between them. This idea of higher versus lower is the “iron law of evolutionary ethics” (Schwartz 542) and becomes prevalent in Weston’s imperialistic view, therefore allowing Lewis to take on both subjects at once.

What makes the final chapters so interesting and enjoyable to read is the back and forth translations that Ransom must perform in order for the aliens to understand Weston’s goal in invading Mars. The reason it grabs attention is because of how Lewis takes Weston’s prestigious speech and simplifies it to its truly disturbing purposes. Weston begins his speech in this way: “[Life] has ruthlessly broken down all the obstacles and liquidated all failures and to- day in her highest form - civilized man - and in me as his representative,” and show his goal is “to march on, step by step, superseding, where necessary, the lower forms of life that we find” from world to world (Lewis 148). Here, Lewis takes this eloquent speech and dismantles it. According to Ransom’s interpretation, Weston is saying that “the best animal now is the kind of man who makes the big huts and carries the heavy weights and does all the other things” mentioned before and that “it would not be a bent action [. .] for him to kill you all and bring [humans] here. He says he would feel no pity. [. .] He wants the creatures born from [humans] to be in as many places as they can” (148-149). What Weston describes as noble and virtuous to mankind is revealed to lead to the murder of every other living thing to make room for humans. Similarly, the imperialists of other countries used these very same standards to justify their conquering of other races’ land. Their culture and huts and technology all differed from them; therefore, it was okay to take their land by force and even kill them for the betterment of the more evolved species. Here, Lewis mocks the idea that seems honorable on the surface, but, when broken down, results in the loss of many innocent lives of other human beings, and he uses aliens to show how extreme those ideas are.

If this wasn’t clear enough for the reader, evolutionism is revealed to be the most illogical thinking about race as the angelic being Oyarsa asks Weston what makes one human. After Ransom has interpreted Weston’s speech above, Oyarsa decides to question him further. “Then is it not the shape of the body that you love?” Weston surprisingly denies this claim despite assuming much about the hnau from the ways their bodies and heads look. Oyarsa then suggests that it is the mind that makes one valuable and human, like all hnau share. But Weston refutes this. “No care for hnau. Care for man” (Lewis 149). Oyarsa struggles to understand what makes a being human if it is neither the physical nor mental characteristics. As one would expect, Weston only cares about the humans reproducing more humans on other planets. Oyarsa says:

You do not love any one of your race. [. . .] You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, that what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left. (150)

Comparing it to the ideals of evolutionism, Oyarsa describes the white population’s concern with keeping their bloodline pure and the expansion of that bloodline as it wipes out other, “lesser” races through imperialism (Pressman). Despite Weston’s argument sounding genuine in the concern for his people, he really just wants universal domination and also the extermination of other life forms. In the same way, evolutionism may have sounded scientific and accurate at the time, but it ultimately called for the exclusion, discrimination, and even death of other races who were not of the white bloodline. Not only does Oyarsa point out the shallow view of Weston’s people but also the extreme beliefs that evolutionism was built on during that time.

Evolutionism was not the only reason for writing this book, but it was clearly one of the inspirations involved. One of Lewis’s concerns about society stemmed from the racism and hatred from those principles. He admits in his essay “The Seeing Eye” (1963), “I have no pleasure in looking forward to a meeting between humanity and any alien rational species. I observe how the white man has hitherto treated the black, and how, even among civilized men, the stronger have treated the weaker.” He continues to predict that “if we encounter in the depth of space a race, however innocent and amiable, which is technologically weaker than ourselves, do not doubt that the same revolting story will be repeated. We shall enslave, deceive, exploit or exterminate; at the very least we shall corrupt it with our vices and infect it with our diseases” (“The Seeing Eye” 173). Even when taking the theme of space out of both his book and this quote, Lewis was concerned about how the corruption of man and the cruel racism that ensued through evolutionism could possibly spread even further. To Lewis, no matter how civilized humans claim to be, or technologically advanced they become, the high profile they give themselves is nothing compared to the actions taken and the biased views they force on others. By using this extreme model of fiction, he creates a world that reveals these accepted ideas for the hateful, destructive, and inaccurate beliefs that they are.

Throughout Lewis’s novel Out of the Silent Planet, he shows a sharp contrast between the humans and the hnau the alien races living on the planet Mars. Using a vast amount of different techniques, such as basing his story around the advanced expectations of alien life forms, the animalistic descriptions of the races themselves, and Weston’s flawed perception of progress, he tears apart evolutionism and the foundation of racism dawning back to Darwin’s own work. Although the aliens look like animals and configured humanoids, they are more socially advanced than our own species, who are set on taking over other countries and races by force.

It is because of evolution-based ideology that other races have been viewed and treated so poorly when all that is needed is to look beyond what is initially visible and seek the connection of humanity that relies on all of us. For Lewis,

Works Cited

whether it be World War II’s white supremacy regime of the Nazis, or imperialism’s many raids of other cultures for land, he stood against the ideology of evolutionism.

Chayka, Kyle. “A Short History of Martian Canals and Mars Fever.” Popular Mechanics https://www. popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a17529/a-short-history-of-martian-canals-andmars-fever/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2021.

Hillegas, Mark R. “Out of the Silent Planet as Cosmic Voyage.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism edited by Carol A. Schwartz, vol 393, Farmington Hills, MI, Gale, 2020. Gale Literature Resource Center link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420128403/GLS?u=nclivechoc&sid=bookmarkGLS&xid=99ba179a. Accessed 30 Sept. 2021. Originally published in Shadows of Imagination, edited by Mark R. Hillegas, Southern Illinois UP, 1969, pp. 41-58.

Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet. New York City: Macmillan Publishing, 1943.

Lewis, C. S. “The Seeing Eye.” Christian Reflections. Ed Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967. 16776. Orig. “Onward Christian Spacemen.”

Mcgovern, Eugene. “C(live) S(taples) Lewis.” British Novelists, 1930-1959, edited by Bernard Stanley Oldsey, Gale, 1983. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 15. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/ H1200003196/GLS?u=nclivechoc&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=183080f3. Accessed 30 Sept. 2021.

Pressman, Lindsay. “How Evolution was used to Support Scientific Racism.” Trinity College, 2017. Trinity College Digital Repository digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1058&context=trinitypapers. Accessed 29 Oct. 2021. Working paper.

Schwartz, Sanford. “Cosmic Anthropology: Race and Reason in out of the Silent Planet.” Christianity and Literature, vol. 52, no. 4, summer 2003, p. 523+. Gale Literature Resource Center link. gale.com/apps/doc/A110730325/LitRC?u=nclivechoc&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=e1978ab3. Accessed 30 Sept. 2021.

Contributors

Crystal Bibbins, Integrative Studies (’22)

Dave Clark, Business and Design (’23): I’m from Houston Texas and a Senior Business and Design Student. I’m also on the Swim Team. Now I am at a loss for words. I am very involved on campus, and I personally love to think outside the box; I’m different, and that’s ok. As I'm writing this, I prefer my graphic design work to do most of the talking. Being a part of 2 great departments, I will always represent my Communication Arts. With having no idea of what I wanted to study coming to Chowan, I’m glad I found my passion for design with our amazing faculty and staff that helped me every step of the way. Also, I enjoy helping others when it’s needed and being there for everyone.

Hamilton Darden II, Graphic Design (’23)

Tre’yon Grace, Graphic Design (’23)

David Joyner, English (’22): When doing my capstone last year, I wanted to choose a topic that covered my Major in English and also my Minor in Religion. To do both, I chose a literary analysis of writer and theologian C. S. Lewis's book Out of the Silent Planet. This is that Capstone. In it, I discuss the symbolism of the book - how Lewis is referring to the real concerns of human value of his day and how it was determined using a naturalistic, Darwinistic view of the world. Not only did it challenge the views of his time, but it can also be applied to our current culture as well in how we interpret human value. Is it subjective to our own standards of race, orientation, and sex, or is it something objective far beyond our own opinions to decide?

Skadi Kylander, Biology (’22): Hello! I’m currently working on a Master of Science in Biology at East Carolina University. I am grateful every day that I have gotten to and continue to be able to learn about so many of the incredible, beautiful, and/ or wacky plants, creatures, and processes that occur on our planet. I like to try to capture little glimpses of our natural world in my photography to share with others who do not have the opportunities to go into nature like I have had—it’s amazing what you can find!

Amber Mann, Mass Communication and History (minor in English) (’25): My dream is to be a firefighter, but, the longer I am at Chowan and the more I learn, the more doors open. Shoot for the stars, because you never know where you will land.

Erica Mock, History, Pre-Law (’24): Erica is not only an exceptional student, but she is also quite the athlete, participating in both the Women’s Swim Team and Acro Tumbling Team. In addition to her involvement in the athletic department, Erica is also the acting President of the History Club, the Vice President of the Honors College, Co-President of the Student Athlete Advisory Council, a Presidential Ambassador, and a Ministry Chaplain on campus.

Sreshta Puducheri, Business Administration (’25)

Claire Revelle, General Studies (Exercise Science) (’23): After graduation, I will be attending chiropractic school, where I will likely focus on sports chiropractic. I’ve always loved reading and writing and am so grateful for the writing help I’ve received at Chowan.

Connor Smith, Biology (’26): I am a freshman from Virginia studying in the field of ecology with a passion for the outdoors and being on the water.

Corey Spruill, Graphic Design (’25)

Marshall Stevens, Biology (’23): Since being in a creative writing class, I have been writing as a form of therapy for feelings I’m not keen on sharing completely. A little disclaimer: the story does contain dark instances and strong language; please read with an open mind.

Destiny Vaughan, Graphic Design (’23)

Savion Woodley, Graphic Design (’24): My name is Savion Woodley and, when I made this art piece, it was an assignment for my graphic design class, and I never thought I was getting published. So how I made it was very simple: I used different fruit to make Wolverine. I just want to thank everyone that gave me the opportunity for this to happen; I’m truly blessed.