Perelandra: Ch.4
Ransom lands and begins to experience the wonders of Perelandra. As alien and strange in its own way as the ancient planet of Malacandra had been, Ransom felt no fear or discomfort, though, as he had there. In part it was that very experience that helped him deal with his encounter with Perelandra. On Malacandra he had had an adventure. But because of that, on Perelandra he “had a sensation not of following an adventure but of enacting a myth”(3270). Perhaps even more important, that earlier experience had made him realize “that he was part of a plan. He was no longer unattached, no longer on the outside” (3318). And that’s a good thing he had this sense of enacting a myth too. Because when he meets the Green Lady near the end of the chapter he comes face-to-face with a smorgasbord of mythologies. “Opposites met in her and were fused in a fashion for which we have no images. One way of putting it would be to say that neither our sacred nor our profane art could make her port...