When Elwin Ransom finds himself alone on the strange world of ‘Malacandra’ in C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, he is running from wicked men, from monstrous beasts in the water, and from elongated ogrish creatures called ‘sorns’.

Amid all the fear, the nervous running, the panting breaths, something marvelous unfolds: a renewed affection, a love lost long ago, for his own body. He begins to feel “a strange affection towards himself” so much so that he has to check “himself on the point of saying, ‘We’ll stick to one another’” (49).