Perelandra

The novel’s protagonist, Ransom is a professor and philologist. Of him, Lewis says, “Even if the whole universe were crazy and hostile, Ransom was sane and wholesome and honest” (13). Ransom goes to Perelandra at the behest of the Oyarsa of Malacandra. We see at the beginning of the book that this journey changes him. He claims to see life as a “coloured shape,” and, when asked about the experience, claims that it can’t be fully expressed because words are too vague and the experience was “too definite for language” (29-30). As a philologist, he is an expert on language, and so these moments when he is unable to put his thoughts into words speak to the sense that our intellect is limited to what we know, and that language limits the speaker to that which they are aware of. Ransom also becomes a Christ figure, his name referring to Maleldil’s, or Christ’s, sacrifice for the world. This speaks in part to predestination, but also to Lewis’s Christian concept of the purpose of humanity, which he perceives is to serve a greater power. Ransom realizes, “If he were not the ransom, Another would be” (126).