Hating our own species

C. S. Lewis loved the animal kingdom. In his space trilogy, he missed no opportunity to demonstrate his profound distaste for animal cruelty. As Lewis scholar Gerald Root has examined, he often linked such cruelty to evil characters—such as Professor Weston, a vivisectionist described in the books as “the unman.” In the Chronicles of Narnia series, Lewis illustrated how mistreating animals often leads to mistreating human beings. Recall that in The Magician’s Nephew, the callous Uncle Andrew’s grotesque experiments on guinea pigs are a prelude to his experiments on the children Digory and Polly.  

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