YMMV / Perelandra

• Values Dissonance:
  • When Ransom first sees the Queen of Venus, he notes her status as a Human Alien and immediately (correctly) assumes she's the dominant sapient species. It then occurs to him, however, that she may simply be a nonsapient human-looking bipedal animal; while most people today would merely consider this a neat little clever concept, the idea of such an animal actually inspires existential dread in Ransom himself.
  • Similarly, Ransom spends several days trying to formulate arguments against the demonically possessed Weston's encouragements for the Queen of Venus to break the rule against sleeping on the Fixed Land. He eventually gets told by God Himself that they can't beat Satan in a debate, since he will always twist the terms to favor himself and even use previously failed arguments, so they should just physically attack and kill his host. A stirring example of a call to arms against the inexhaustible mendacity of the Devil to Lewis himself surely, but which ends up coming off as a display of God as the most brutish and un-selfaware form of Tautological Templar to anyone that isn't a militant fundamentalist.
    • Alternatively, one could simply interpret it as Necessarily Evil; Ransom must preserve the innocence of this world, at all costs.
    • The whole point is that the devil isn't debating at all, he's just lying. There's no sense in arguing with him because he's completely insane, irrevocably evil, and isn't worried about how long it takes.
    • The point of debating is search for the truth. The Un-man isn't after truth (note that the Green Lady really wants to learn as much as she can) — it's after bringing people down with it.
    • When Ransom brings this point up in their discussion, God also points out that the Green Lady has made the choice to follow God's rule, many times over. Now the Devil must be made to honor that choice.
    • God, when speaking of the Green Lady to Ransom, refers to her as "your sister" — so when you get down to it what Ransom is doing is protecting his sister's innocence; and in the end he has to use (deadly) force against someone who really wishes to do her ill. Although it usually takes a slightly different form; the concept isn't quite unheard of outside a mythological context, either.

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