MALELDIL AND READER RESPONSE IN C.S. LEWIS'S OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET

[...]Lewis comments on the positive sound of Maleldil to his ear: [...]most significantly, in The Discarded Image Lewis explains how the planets, each guided by an unfallen Intelligence, could have come in the medieval mind to be thought to exert malign influence on earth: 'bad' or 'malefical' planets [...] are bad only in relation to us. [...] The word malediction seems oddly out of keeping with the narrator's usual word choice and with the dialog of the opening pages. Since Ransom is a philologist, the word choice could be explained as free indirect discourse, but malediction is close enough to Maleldil to invite notice. [...]Weston's drugging of Ransom's drink to facilitate his kidnapping, an image of perverted hospitality, heightens the significance of Ransom's first contact with the hross, Hyoi, who offers him a shell filled with water infused with a few drops from his pouch: "Hesitantly, almost shyly, he advanced and took the cup. [...]