What name does C.S. Lewis give the protagonist of his Ransom Trilogy?

Elwin Ransom is the protagonist of C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy.

Ransom is a Cambridge philologist who becomes the central human figure in Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. His knowledge of languages and medieval literature makes him unusually prepared to communicate with nonhuman civilizations and to interpret the moral and spiritual conflicts he encounters.

In the first novel, Ransom is abducted and taken to Malacandra, Lewis’s name for Mars. In Perelandra, he travels to another planet and confronts a powerful tempter. In That Hideous Strength, the conflict returns to Earth and takes a more political and institutional form.

Readers sometimes confuse Ransom with Mark Studdock, who is a major character in That Hideous Strength, or with characters from Lewis’s other fiction. The trilogy is also called the Space Trilogy, although its final volume is set primarily on Earth rather than in outer space.