What name did C.S. Lewis use for the protagonist of his Space Trilogy?

C.S. Lewis named the protagonist of his Space Trilogy Elwin Ransom.

Ransom is the central character in Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. He begins as a Cambridge philologist and becomes involved in events that extend from Earth to the planets Malacandra and Perelandra. His linguistic expertise is important because communication and the recovery of meaning are recurring concerns in the trilogy.

The character is sometimes associated with Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien, but Ransom is not a direct portrait of Tolkien. Lewis drew on several literary and intellectual interests when creating him, including philology, medieval thought, and Christian ideas about creation and moral order.

Mark Studdock is another important figure in That Hideous Strength, but he is not the trilogy’s continuing hero. Orual belongs to Till We Have Faces, and Digory Kirke belongs to the Narnia books. These names can cause confusion because all are major characters in Lewis’s fiction.