The Unman and the Fair Lady

What Literature Can Teach Us About Dealing with Sin

This post has plot spoilers for Perelandra and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Beware!

Two of my favorite works of Christian imagination are C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra and the unknown medieval poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Tolkien’s translation is fantastic). Despite the fact that these stories enjoy substantially different settings, Venus and early Medieval England, both stories have something very important to teach us about the Christian’s duty to resist evil and sin.

Perelandra is the second of three books in what have variously been referred to as Lewis’ “space trilogy” or “Ransom trilogy.” These interplanetary tales consider many compelling philosophical and theological questions while Lewis imagines what sin and salvation might look like on other planets. Would God always save a race of creatures in the same manner as he did us? Indeed, would every race fall as we humans did or is this by no means inevitable? In the midst of exploring such fascinating questions Lewis also makes his readers think about the nature of language (his main character, Ransom, is a philologist…sort of like someone else Lewis knew), pleasure and pain, friendship, cosmology, and many other themes and concepts of nearly universal interest to reflective people.

On Perelandra, Venus by earthly reckoning, Ransom finds himself on a newer world with a population of two. Indeed, Perelandra is an un-fallen paradise which presently only hosts its first man and woman (its “Adam and Eve”). Ransom has been sent to Perelandra for a purpose which he does not at first understand. Maleldil (another name for God in the story) has a purpose in all of it, but it is a mystery as the story begins. He meets the woman, who for a time has been separated from her husband “the King” (these things can happen easily enough in a world with islands that float unfixed upon the ocean top). It’s not a matter of concern to her, though, because the beautiful green lady (yes, green) knows that Maleldil has his reasons for these things and that they will be together again in due time.

Ransom engages in an interesting conversation with this future “mother of all the living” and though he enjoys the time he is befuddled as to what his purpose is there. She doesn’t seem to need a thing from him, she’s perfect, but then someone else shows up in a spacecraft. Weston. The old primary antagonist from the first novel, Out of the Silent Planet, has come to Perelandra. It is not long after his coming, however, until Weston undergoes… a change. The man of science had begun to pursue a kind of untethered “spirituality” in the past few years and, in so doing, he opened himself up to some dark forces. Weston’s body becomes possessed by the serpent of old, Satan himself. Indeed, it seems that maybe Weston is altogether gone. What stands before Ransom and the lady is rather more like a marionette than a man. He is the unman.

As with the familiar old story, in the greatest of great books, the devil has come to tempt the woman. Finally, Ransom realizes why he has been sent. He has been sent to intervene and to prevent the fall of this world. He has been sent to speak truth contrary to falsehood. He is to counteract and contradict the devil and to help pull back the Lady from the brink of destruction. But how?

As time wears on it becomes apparent that Ransom is at a severe disadvantage. Evil literally never sleeps. The devil of old has all of human history and knowledge at his disposal. He has thousands of years of experience in tempting, lying, manipulating, and tantalizing people to draw them away from what is true, good, and beautiful. He knows how to dress up sin so that it looks far better than lipstick on a pig (even if that’s all it is in the end).

As days and weeks go by Ransom observes that he is losing the battle. A brilliant man, he has won some points here and there and he has successfully undermined this and that argument, but the devil never tires and he just switches to a new tact instantly and begins again. Little by little, the unman draws the affections of the woman away from her husband and away from Maleldil in the name of teaching her how to be the kind of woman both of them would most want… a self possessed, strong, and independent woman who makes her own choices, even if that means disobeying the commandment.

The turning point of the story comes when Ransom realizes that evil cannot ultimately be reasoned with. “‘This can’t go on,’ thought Ransom for the second time. But all his arguments proved in the long run unavailing, and it did go on.”¹ Ransom finds himself confronted with the reality that something more than argument is called for. He must actually confront evil head on and try to kill it.

The unman, mind you, is not a man. It is sin embodied. Lewis wrote,

Then an experience that perhaps no good man can ever have in our world came over him—a torrent of perfectly unmixed and lawful hatred. The energy of hating, never before felt without some guilt, without some dim knowledge that he was failing fully to distinguish the sinner from the sin, rose into his arms and legs till he felt that they were pillars of burning blood. What was before him appeared no longer a creature of corrupted will. It was corruption itself to which will was attached only as an instrument…. The joy came from finding at last what hatred was made for. As a boy with an ax rejoices on finding a tree, or a boy with a box of colored chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper, so he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion and its object.²

A good man cannot feel such unmixed hatred for his fellow man, it’s true, but he can feel it for sin itself. Though our neighbors, even as wicked as they may be in some cases, are not perfect embodiments of evil for us to kill (like the Unman), we ought to violently oppose sin, evil, and temptation in our own life. As John Owen once put it, “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.”

Too many times Christians try to reason within themselves about their sin. We make excuses for the things we do. We justify a sinful action because it is for “the greater good.” We befriend evil and become unequally yoked in relationships of all sorts and we look the other way when out business partners make shady deals and our lovers entice us to blur lines of intimacy before marriage, etc., etc. But we must, like Ransom, kill the sin where it lies and make no excuses for it.

Gawain also learned the limits of reasoning with sin. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight this noble man has his Christian virtue and chivalry pitted against one another. While seeking to honor his host, avoid offending a Lady and show her courtly deference, and uphold his own chastity, he finds himself in a difficult spot. Three days in a row he tries to fleetly fence the forays of the lady without offense. Though she is married to the Lord of the castle (Gawain’s host) the beautiful Lady craftily entices Sir Gawain to sleep with her. Her tactics change each day as she hunts her prey, trying first by the wiles of her beauty and delicate grace, next by her cunning craftiness to use his chivalry against him, finally in boorish fashion she presses the point boldly and offers her body freely and openly.

For she, queenly and peerless, pressed him so closely, led him so near the line, that at last he must needs either refuse her with offence or her favors there take. He cared for his courtesy, lest a caitiff he proved, yet more for his sad case, if he should sin commit and to the owner of the house, to his host, be a traitor. ‘God help me!’ said he. ‘Happen that shall not!’³

The ugly Unman and the lovely Lady both represent for us the dangers of sin and temptation. Both stories masterfully teach us the same truth. At the end of the day you cannot reason with sin. You only have two options, attack it and kill it or run from it and put distance between you and it. Don’t tolerate it. Don’t flirt with it.

Year after year as I teach Sir Gawain to a new set of students I get to see them realize that Gawain needs to “pull a Joseph” and flee from a seductress and adulteress woman.⁴ They get a powerful story to reinforce the warnings offered by a father to his son in Proverbs 7 “Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths, for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.” We ought not to even go near such temptation, let alone playfully engage it.

The unman teaches us that sometimes we must smash our idols, the Lady teaches us that sometimes we must turn and run and never look back. This may variously mean smashing our devices (as Ransom smashed the head of the Unman) so we cannot look at porn, or it may mean completely removing ourselves from certain friendships and relationships (as Gawain finally decided to do with the beautiful Lady). By no means, however, are we to simply let sin linger in our presence. We cannot simply reason with it and about it, we must give it the “hi thee hoe.” It has to go…or we do.

Sometimes sin is ugly and powerful and we aren’t sure we can beat it. The Scripture tells us,

“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”⁵

Sometimes it’s beautiful, dare I say sexy, and we want it offers us. Again the Scriptures say,

“they entice by sensual passions of the flesh those who are barely escaping from those who live in error. They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.”⁶

But the Christian, imbued with power of God’s Spirit can overcome in both cases. The apostle Paul writes by the Spirit,

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”⁷

Further he writes,

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.⁸

For the Christian sin is always beatable. There is no temptation to sin wherein the believer is helpless to resist. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”⁹ Our victory, however, always starts with the same realization Ransom had, “This cannot go on.” I cannot reason with sin. Like Gawain finally realized, I cannot flirt with sin. I must kill the Unman or flee from the Lady, but either way my time of simply dwelling in the presence of sin must come to an end.

Perhaps even now you have some sin in your life dominating you or drawing you in with loving caress. Let me tell you that Christ is greater! Christ has already defeated sin and death by his death and resurrection. In you he can affect any escape, and offer you greater powers and pleasures than anything else this world has to offer. “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”¹⁰ So in the name of Christ, crush the head of the snake like Ransom or remove yourself from temptation (even if it means offending others like Gawain) and follow Jesus! Victory awaits!

The Prince of Darkness grim,

We tremble not for him,

his rage we can endure,

for lo, his doom is sure!

One little word shall fell him!

That word above all earthly powers

no thanks to them abideth.

The Spirit and the gifts are ours

through him who with us sideth!

Let goods and kindred go,

this mortal life also!

The body they may kill,

God’s truth abideth still!

His Kingdom is Forever!

-Martin Luther

1. Lewis, C. S.. Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) (The Space Trilogy 2) (p. 100). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

2. Lewis, C. S.. Perelandra, p. 116.

3. Unknown. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (Annotated) (p. 85). Kindle Edition.

4. C.f. Genesis 39.

5. 1 Peter 5:8

6. 2 Peter 2:18-19

7. Romans 8:1-4

8. Romans 8:9-11

9. 1 Corinthians 10:13

10. Romans 8:37