I found the conclusion to THS unsatisfying too, and for the same reasons. It almost felt like Lewis was saying that he couldn't really see a plausible means of fighting back against the macrobes and their human cultists' deft cognitive infiltration of global society, so in the end he just threw his hands up, took off, and nuked it from orbit.
Not that I'm against a good thaumaturgical nuking, mind you; I just wish his protagonists had done more than hang out in stately manor homes.
I suspect part of the problem was in his choice of characters. They're all academics, Ransom included, or just regular folks. Hobbits, in other words. You can have hobbits as protagonists, but if you want to push the story forward you need some warriors, too. THS needed an Aragorn, a Legolas, and a Gimli. Had the cast included, say, a former paratrooper, the presence of a man of action would have provided the necessary raw material for a daring commando raid to accompany Merlin's final mission. As it was, the plot felt very static, for the unavoidable reason that none of the characters were particularly kinetic. Basically Lewis goofed in his casting, and then wrote himself into a corner.
Regarding 1984 depicting a civilization in decline, I quite agree.
It would be interesting to revisit that world a century hence, in 1984. Newspeak would have totally destroyed the ability of the Party to maintain a technological civilization. Party-controlled areas have shrunken from globe-spanning empires to small, crumbling cores around central urban areas. The population has died back. The military can no longer manufacture rifles or even ammunition.
Meanwhile, in the hinterlands of the North American plains and the Eurasian steppe, horse tribes formed from escaped proles are beginning to carve new empires out of the rotting corpses of the Party's dominions.
I found the conclusion to THS unsatisfying too, and for the same reasons. It almost felt like Lewis was saying that he couldn't really see a plausible means of fighting back against the macrobes and their human cultists' deft cognitive infiltration of global society, so in the end he just threw his hands up, took off, and nuked it from orbit.
Not that I'm against a good thaumaturgical nuking, mind you; I just wish his protagonists had done more than hang out in stately manor homes.
I suspect part of the problem was in his choice of characters. They're all academics, Ransom included, or just regular folks. Hobbits, in other words. You can have hobbits as protagonists, but if you want to push the story forward you need some warriors, too. THS needed an Aragorn, a Legolas, and a Gimli. Had the cast included, say, a former paratrooper, the presence of a man of action would have provided the necessary raw material for a daring commando raid to accompany Merlin's final mission. As it was, the plot felt very static, for the unavoidable reason that none of the characters were particularly kinetic. Basically Lewis goofed in his casting, and then wrote himself into a corner.
Regarding 1984 depicting a civilization in decline, I quite agree.
It would be interesting to revisit that world a century hence, in 1984. Newspeak would have totally destroyed the ability of the Party to maintain a technological civilization. Party-controlled areas have shrunken from globe-spanning empires to small, crumbling cores around central urban areas. The population has died back. The military can no longer manufacture rifles or even ammunition.
Meanwhile, in the hinterlands of the North American plains and the Eurasian steppe, horse tribes formed from escaped proles are beginning to carve new empires out of the rotting corpses of the Party's dominions.