Out of the Silent Planet - Bent - Kevin Crowley

Get Bent

There are many interesting elements in Out of the Silent Planet; one in particular is this idea of being bent. Bent, as oppose to evil, denotes a certain quality that term evil is devoid of. The terms good and evil put each at complete odds with one another, while bent and or straight does not suggest polar opposites in the same way. Whereas if something is designated to be “evil” than there seems to be no going back. However, what is bent can always be unbent. Even the term “bad” doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head like “bent” does. Bad, like evil, has a connotation of being placed on the opposite spectrum of good. The reason bent doesn’t work like evil or bad is because you can have a straight bar of metal, which is the way you are intended to be, and someone bends the metal, wherever the bend is in the metal does not put it in complete contrast with the rest of the metal. No, in fact, there are parts of the metal that can still be considered straight after all, which makes it if you are not looking at the whole metal bar you can be deceived into thinking it is completely straight. This is what makes the word bent far more effective of a word, showing the malleable nature of humans at the same time showing the danger of the bent in its deceptive ability to pose as the straight.