Ransom's Virtue Analysis

The great Aristotle declared, “We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly.” Virtue should be defined as perfect or righteous. However, it can be argued that because Ransom is a man, and man is sinful, he could not choose to be virtuous. Because this is the case, and man is inherently sinful as Jesus said in Matthew, “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Mark 10:18), we will adapt Merriam Webster’s definition of virtue, “Conformity to a standard of right, morality. A particular moral excellence” (merriam-webster.com). By this definition we can present our thesis; Ransom chose to be virtuous while on Malacandra. He chose to befriend Hyoi the hross, he chose to accept the

We can use Devine and Weston as our example of the opposite of virtue, as they wanted to sacrifice Ransom and selfishly steal the Sun’s Blood. While Weston and Devine would have undoubtedly been afraid of the hross or shot him, as they did later, Ransom chose to try to befriend it, seeing that it was not only intelligent but also friendly. “The creature was talking. It had a language… It seemed friendly” (Lewis, 56, 59). Not only that, but chose to learn their language and adapt to their manners, culture, and hospitality instead of running away as he thought

When Ransom overheard Devine and Weston talking about the sorns, he assumed “The sorns would be… would be… he dared not think of what the sorns would be. And he was to be given to them… given, handed over, offered. He saw an imagination of various incompatible monstrosities- bulbous eyes, grinning jaws, horns, stings, mandibles” (Lewis, 37). However, he found the seroni “turned out to be as amicable as the hrossa” (Lewis, 97). He became equally attached to Augray but in a quite different way. Still, his views of the seroni were drastically changed because he chose to accept them as they were instead of as he had originally thought of