George Talarico
Prof. Siewers
Foun098
9/27/21
Erroneous Perceptions
C.S. Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength introduces Mark Studdock, a young exuberant sociologist, who works at Bracton in Edgestow, and finds himself enthralled by the activities taking place at the corporation N.I.C.E. Mark falls into the corporation’s ploy by becoming one of its pawns and assists them in their attempts at achieving totalitarianism. C.S. Lewis emphasizes how, under N.I.C.E, the public’s hearts and minds are separated by the virtual reality N.I.C.E presents to them, therefore, causing the people to become encapsulated in the permanent lie of totalitarian rule. N.I.C.E uses Mark to manipulate the masses by instilling their distorted view on the reality of what goes on at N.I.C.E, causing the population to become victims of the false reality N.I.C.E set down before them. The majority of the people will accept what they are being told to be true because they would rather accept the information they receive as the truth rather than possibly facing a harsher reality, which would lead the people to find themselves caught in the permanent lie of totalitarian culture. Today, people indulge themselves in social media, news sources, big internet search engines, and release their personal information to programs, unknowingly allowing the corporations behind the programs to grow in their form of totalitarianism known as technocracy.
Mark is aware that publishing the articles on behalf of N.I.C.E is immoral and wrong but ignores his morals and does it anyway in order to advance his position at N.I.C.E. By disregarding his morals and assisting in the manipulation of the masses, Mark strays away from the tao, henceforth falling into a void in which he loses his sentimental value. In his book The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis emphasizes that a man must follow the tao and stay loyal to his moral values, he believes the man who strays away from the tao loses their sentiment towards other people and finds themselves in a void in which they lose themselves. Mark embodies the struggling of men, when faced with sticking with their morals and how easily those morals can be abandoned when facing opportunities that may advance one’s career or social status. Through the part he plays in manipulating the people, Mark himself, becomes a victim of a false reality. Mark becomes so invested in advancing his position, he loses sight of other important things in his life and accepts his new role as his reality, no longer giving notice to anything outside of his role at N.I.C.E.
The Higher-ups at N.I.C.E have full authority over those who work at N.I.C.E and have the ability to portray themselves as an unassuming corporation that works on behalf of the people. N.I.C.E is free to operate on their own terms because the people give them the power to do so. In Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil, she describes the recurring tactic used by totalitarian leaders of coming off as nice and boring, all the while implementing horrific acts of terror and destruction. Although the public is unaware, N.I.C.E has been planning to implement its insidious plans on Earth. The Higher-ups at N.I.C.E continuously exercise their authority as conditioners on the people and on Mark. In Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis describes conditioners as “those with the power to shape others at will.” The goal of the conditioners is to control all by the power they hold. N.I.C.E is a perfect example of C.S. Lewis’ description of the conditioners in The Abolition of Man. The conditioners do not see themselves as equals to other humans, they believe they are of a higher being; similar to how those at N.I.C.E view themselves. N.I.C.E uses Mark as an example of Solzhenitsyn’s “only material results matter”. They do not care for Mark’s well being, they only care about whether or not he does what is requested of him.
Mark asks the head of N.I.C.E police, Miss Hardcastle, whether or not the papers he will be publishing are going to be Right or Left. Miss Hardcastle explains to Mark that some of the papers will be right and some will be left in order to keep those who favor the left or right on their toes in fear of the other, thereby, inciting George Orwell’s work on “Double Think”. Orwell believes that to doublethink is to believe two contradictory beliefs as true. Half of the papers released by N.I.C.E depict it as being right in some papers and left in the others in order to cause the people on one side to outbid those on the other side in support of N.I.C.E out of spite of their opposition. Mark argues that the educated readers of their papers will not be so easily gulled by what is written. Hardcastle corrects him, stating that it is the educated readers who find themselves blindly, almost unconsciously, believing the news. They have been conditioned to believe what they are reading to be true. Orwell believes that being overly supportive of a certain party will lead the supporters who read into the news to become continuously unconscious, leading them to blindly believe what they read as the truth.
Originally, Mark disagrees with what N.I.C.E is trying to do to the public, but when they threaten his career at N.I.C.E and any future jobs he would like to pursue, he is left with no choice. The threat Mark receives leads him to reluctantly accepts what he must do, therefore depicting Mark as a victim of the terror N.I.C.E instills. Instilling terror, whether it be physical or social, is a tactic that is used by those who either intend to achieve totalitarianism or have already achieved it. N.I.C.E pushes its incentives on Mark and makes him fear what terrors they could unleash upon him if he disagrees with them. The threats isolate Mark, they threaten him and warn him to not tell anyone about the conversation they have about his role, this isolation Mark experiences relate to Hanah Arendt’s argument on “Isolation”. The isolation Mark experiences change the condition of his mind, leaving room for N.I.C.E to implement whatever they pleased into his mind in order to have Mark produce what he was requested to produce. Due to these threats, Mark exemplifies Solzhenitsyn’s idea on the ethos of “survive at any cost”, which he goes into further detail about in The Gulag Archipelago. Hannah Arendt discusses the factors of instilling fear and the ways it contributes to totalitarianism in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Arendt believes the use of terror forces people to conform to the laws and ideologies forced upon them through ostracism empowered by technological and economic means. N.I.C.E does not exercise terror onto the people, they exercise it on Mark in order to make him do their bidding. By making Mark convince the public that N.I.C.E is a corporation working on the behalf of the people, they are able to work without attracting any unwanted attention. As opposed to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago which incorporates the suffering of the society under Soviet Russia as a whole, That Hideous Strength uses Mark as a portrayal of the suffering that society endures under Totalitarian rule.
Mark is now able to think freely without the imposed ideologies of N.I.C.E. Mark had been forced into believing the ideology of N.I.C.E because they were the elite. Philosopher Roger Scruton brings forth the idea that “perception is reality”. Scruton believed in the “fear of place” which would cause the people living in a certain area to believe the false reality that has been given to them because they do not want to accept the idea that where they are is being corrupt by totalitarian leaders. Mark could have backed out of N.I.C.E when he first found out that their work was undeniably immoral, but due to his previous engagements at Belbury he believed that N.I.C.E would ultimately benefit them. Up until this point in the novel, Mark was unable to have his own perception of reality because he was blinded by his need to be accepted into the inner circle at N.I.C.E. Although Mark had finally escaped the tyranny of N.I.C.E, his mind was not yet at ease because he is anxious for what his reunion with his wife will be like.
On his way to St. Anne’s, Mark looks to the west towards Edgetow and sees a light looming above it and feels the earth throbbing and shaking, as he thinks of the recent destruction of Belbury and N.I.C.E and feels free. Mark’s body feels at ease for the first time in a long time, because he is no longer consumed by the permanent lie and terror of totalitarianism that N.I.C.E held over him. Mark knew that now that N.I.C.E was now destroyed, the people would have the freedom to perceive reality without the influence of N.I.C.E. The lights in the west fade, bringing Mark the feeling of freedom from everything he had gone through. As he ran and watched, his mind raced, everything now felt strange to him, for he had walked through the horrors of the totalitarian juggernaut that was N.I.C.E, and came out nearly unscathed on the other side. He was finally fully conscious of his actions, no longer under the looming darkness that N.I.C.E cast over him. With his struggle and torment finally finished, Mark only thought about reuniting with his wife.
As Mark makes his way toward St. Annes with great haste in hopes of seeing his wife Jane, he begins to feel things for his wife he had not felt in quite some time. He was enveloped in feelings of love and longing for his wife, which seemed to shock him because he had not felt such feelings for his wife since before his involvement in N.I.C.E and their corruption of his heart and mind. C.S. Lewis believed that totalitarian culture separated man’s heart from their mind, causing them to constantly live inside their own heads, almost unaware of what is happening in the world around them. Now that Mark is free from N.I.C.E, he has finally escaped the void as described by Lewis in The Abolition of Man, causing him to regain his sentiment and humanity towards other people to come back to him. As he ran he reflected on his failings as a husband, in doing so, reconvening with his tao and coming to terms with his failure to stay true to his morals. Mark completely regains he previously lost love and affection for his wife and gains new feelings for her. C.S. Lewis iterates that although man may fall from the path the tao sets before them, it is still possible to return to the path and reconnect with one’s sentiment.
Mark converses with himself about what his interaction with Jane will be like, he feels as if she will be unaccepting of him. He thinks about how he wants their marriage to be filled with all the love and loyalty it had previously been missing because that is what any traditional marriage should be. During his duration at N.I.C.E, Jane has been part of a group of free thinkers who see past the disguise N.I.C.E wears and are committed to revealing what N.I.C.E truly is. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis explains how man seeks to break free from nature by breaking tradition. N.I.C.E tried to interfere with the forces of nature and it ended in their destruction. Due to his previous interactions with N.I.C.E Mark now understands that the forces of nature should not be attempted to be broken free from, instead they should be accepted and should be used to guide man. Mark’s new understanding of nature leads him to want a traditional marriage with his wife. C.S. Lewis ends his novel by showing that no matter how far one falls from morality and humanity, there is always time to crawl back from the void and into the light.
Through That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis is able to show the horrors that totalitarian leaders can unleash onto the public. He uses Mark to portray the suffering that the societies that live under totalitarian rule endure in their daily lives. Authors such as Solzhenitsyn and Arendt provide further insight into the inhumane ideologies that totalitarian leaders enforce onto their people. Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago shows Soviet Era Russia and how the people who lived there at the time lived in constant fear of what might happen to them if they were to be disobedient to their government, just as Mark fears for his career because of the threats he receives from N.I.C.E. Arendt focuses on “Banality of evil” and “the permanent lie”, both of which integrated the fear of the government instilling a reality in which society has no other choice other than to agree with. C.S. Lewis shows how easily it can be for the perception of the public to be negatively manipulated. Through the part Mark plays at N.I.C.E, Lewis shows how easily one news provider can shape how the people receive and interpret information willingly without proof of whether or not the information they are reading is true. Even today people can be seen becoming engulfed in the permanent lie of social media. Social media platforms have the capability of only showing the public only what they want to be seen, inducing their own form of virtual reality onto the public. The usage of social media and search engines has conditioned the public to accept what they read as fact. Before the internet was as accessible as it is today, people were much more skeptical about the news they received. C.S. Lewis incorporates Mark’s free-thinking wife Jane to show that, although the majority may be easily convinced by what they read in the news, it is important to keep an open mind, help others whose reality is being distorted by big corporations, and keep people from falling under the influence of the permanent lie of totalitarianism.
Lewis, C.S. “That Hideous Strength”, “The Abolition of Man” samizdat university Press Québec
https://tolkienlewistotalitarianism.wordpress.com/totalitarianism/ 9/27/21
https://tolkienlewistotalitarianism.wordpress.com/essay-1/ 9/27/21
Solzhenitsyn “The Gulag Archipelago” Haper and Row Publishers
Zuboff, Shoshana “Age of Surveillance Capitalism” Profile Books
Arendt Hannah “The Origins of Totalitarianism” Schocken Books