That Hideous Strength's Omnicompetent State

Abstract

That Hideous Strength is clearly connected to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, where he writes of the conditioners who seek to create a new society via the rejection of universal moral law and the rise of an educational and scientific elite. For Lewis, That Hideous Strength was a way to communicate the concerns expressed in The Abolition of Man in a story format that would appeal to those who might not read a treatise on the subject. This paper examines his concerns about a totalitarian threat as expressed in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength, and then shows how those concerns appeared in his post-war correspondence. Were his fears and concerns valid? How, in particular, did he communicate his concerns to his many correspondents? How predictive did he consider That Hideous Strength to be as he experienced the reality of post-WWII Britain?

Keywords

• Lewis
• elite
• scientific
• totalitarian
• conditioning