In the preface to The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis presents his allegory  as a kind of counterpoint to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.  Blake, a celebrated artist and poet, supported the idea of ‘spirituality,’ and was a fierce critic of organized religion. According to the British Library, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,  Blake develops the idea that the sensual world can lead to the spiritual, and that the repression of desire destroys the spirit. He says, ‘Man has no Body distinct from his Soul … Energy is the only life, and is from the Body.’ [1]

Lewis declines to  launch a full frontal attack on Blake’s ideas–he isn’t even convinced that he knew what Blake meant [2] — but he does take issue with the idea that there may be a direct path between carnal desire and the spiritual, and by extension, between Heaven and Hell–that there is a way by which both alternatives can somehow be reconciled without a rejection of past sinful behavior, where ‘mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain.’ [3] Lewis categorically rejects these ideas. He argues we live in a world  where all roads do not eventually lead to a common destination, a centre if you will, where some degree of good coexists with a tinge of evil; instead, all roads diverge, leading to distinct destinations of  good or evil—where good and evil continually diverge, grow farther and farther apart: ‘Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good’ [4], that is, where Good is definitively and categorically  divorced from Evil—where Heaven is divorced from Hell. 

This does not mean that those who chose the wrong roads inevitably perish, but to be put back on the right path requires finding one’s errors and correcting them. ‘Evil can be undone, but it cannot develop into good.’ [5]

At the centre of The Great Divorce is the idea of  a second chance, that those in Hell (or Purgatory, depending on their life choices)  are given an opportunity to reject  the wrong path, and return to the correct one.  Lewis accomplishes this through the idea of the Refrigerium,  an idea propagated in a sermon by the English clergyman Jeremy Taylor. The Refrigerium describes a brief respite from Hell, where  the departed are allowed a day in  Heaven. Lewis takes this idea  and introduces us to a group of the Departed, who take a bus ride to the outskirts of  Heaven and are met by former  family and colleagues, who offer them the opportunity to reject their ways and accept the opportunity to join them in Heaven.

Through these encounters, we learn about  former  relationships: relationships with family and colleagues, and with God. Lewis uses these events to examine several themes, including, self-interest, selfishness, pride, lust, love—love for self disguised as love for others—reliance on self vs. reliance on God.  Underlying many of these encounters however is Milton’s theme in Paradise Lost: ‘It is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ [6]

Chapter 1 — The Bus to the Outskirts of Heaven

Its raining and in a twilight that never progresses to night our narrator, Lewis himself, wanders the streets of an unnamed, nearly deserted town, a drab, grey town.  He comes across what appears to be a group of people at a bus stop. He joins the queue.  Ahead of him a man and a woman argue; two men get into a fight; a woman is bilked out of her spot in line to the amusement of the crowd.  The bus arrives and the group scrambles onboard, fighting ‘like hens’ though there’s lots of room. The bus literally takes flight.  So begins C.S. Lewis’ allegory, The Great Divorce.

Chapter 2 –Characters

We are immediately introduced to a group of characters whose interest in the trip to the outskirts of heaven is not to receive a shot of redemption, but an opportunity to replicate, even enhance, their current worldview in Purgatory (symbolized by the grey town). A ‘tousle-haired’ young man believes  his ideas of morality will finally be appreciated; a man wearing a bowler hat will bring back commodities that will improve the lives of the town’s  residents; a man with a cultured voice  believes that his acceptance of Purgatory and rejection of Heaven will be vindicated.

Reflection on Chapter 2

Here we see, I suggest, the self-interest, maybe even arrogance, of  humankind.   Implicitly the characters are saying:  ‘I will  use the idea, or even the gifts, of Heaven to my advantage.’ They see no reason to accept the opportunity they will be given to reject their  current lifestyles, and embark on an entirely different way of  living.

Chapter 3 – Diamond Flowers

The bus comes to rest on a large grassy plain with a wide river running through it. Now in the light, Lewis’ fellow passengers are revealed to be ghosts, fully transparent in the light, ‘smudgy and imperfectly opaque’ when in the shadow of a tree.  The grassy plain is different from Earth. ‘The light, the grass, the trees…were different, made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison’. Lewis attempts to pluck a daisy, but the stalk won’t twist or break. ‘The little flower was hard, not like wood nor even like iron, but like a diamond.‘ A leaf was as heavy as a sack of sand. [7] One ghost screams and darts to the bus.

 ‘Solid’ people, or spirits, approach. (Those from the grey tow/ Purgatory/ Hell are called ghosts; those from Heaven are called spirits, ‘bright people’ or ‘solid people.’) ‘The earth shook under [the tread of the spirits]  as their strong feet sank into the wet turf. A tiny haze and a sweet smell went up where they had crushed the grass and scattered the dew. Some were naked, some robed. But the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh. Some were bearded but no one in that company struck me as being of any particular age.’ [8]

Chapter 4 – The Murderer

One of the ghosts from the bus, named the ‘Big Ghost’ meets a bright spirit named Len.  The Big Ghost is incredulous that Len has made it to Heaven, for on Earth Len had committed a murder. The Big Ghost contrasts his life on Earth with Len’s: ‘“I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t say I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see. I done my best by everyone, that’s the sort of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn’t mine by rights. If I wanted a drink I paid for it and if I took my wages I done my job…”‘

Len had worked for the Big Ghost on Earth. He responds to the Ghost’s justification, comparing his own actions to the Ghost’s: ‘“Murdering old Jack wasn’t the worst thing I did. That was the work of a moment and I was half mad when I did it. But I murdered you in my heart, deliberately, for years. I used to lie awake at night thinking what I’d do to you if I ever got the chance. That was why I have been sent to you now: to ask your forgiveness and to be your servant as long as you need me, and longer if it pleases you. I was the worst. But all the men who worked under you felt the same. You made it hard for us, you know. And you made it hard for your wife too and for your children.”‘ [9]

Paradise offered

Len asks his old boss to go with him to the mountains, back to Heaven, since he “will never get there alone”.   

Paradise lost

To accompany Len, the Big Ghost realizes he must humble himself  and surrender his moral outrage to enter Heaven. He flatly refuses and, with ‘triumph’ in his voice, says: ‘“Tell them I’m not coming, see. I’d rather be damned than go along with you. I came here to get my rights., see? Not to go snivelling along on charity tied to your apron strings. If they’re too fine to have me without you, I’ll go home…I didn’t come here to be treated like a dog. I’ll go home. That’s what I’ll do. Damn and blast the whole pack of you…”‘ [10]

Reflection on Chapter 4

Its interesting that the man for whom the Big Ghost has the utmost contempt has become the means through which he can enter  Heaven. It is not someone with whom the Ghost had felt some degree of respect, or even equality. He must therefore revoke his old way of thinking in order to enter Heaven—a price, he’s convinced, that is  much too high to pay.

Chapter 5 – The Intellectuals

Lewis then overhears an exchange between the ghost–described in Chapter 2 as having a ‘cultured’ voice–and a spirit named Dick.  Dick describes the grey town as Hell—if the ghost choses to return–and Purgatory, if he does not.

On Earth, they were fellow intellectuals who at times discussed matters of faith. We learn the cultured ghost had been  both a priest in the Anglican Church, [11] and an apostate. [12]  He argues that opinion, born of intellect, is not sinful, but heroic. Additionally, he postulates the ‘doctrine’ of Jesus’ Resurrection vitiated against the ‘critical faculties which God had given me’, and therefore rejected the Resurrection.

Dick admonishes the ghost, charging his writings and lectures were for popularity, prestige, and book sales, adding: ‘“We were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with  the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule,  afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes.”‘

The ghost insists that his ideas were honestly formed, but Dick returns that, even so, they had drifted so far away from their faith, they began to believe their own lies, the way a drunk believes he has no problem with alcohol. [13]

Paradise offered

Dick implores the ghost to ‘repent and believe.’ ‘“We are not playing now,”’ he says, ‘“I have been talking of the past in order that you may turn from it forever. One wrench and the tooth will be out. You can begin as if nothing had ever gone wrong. White as snow…You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?”’ [14]

Paradise lost

The ghost considers the spirit’s request, and responds with a series of demands –including a ‘wider sphere of influence’ where he can, he believes, exercise the talents that ‘God’ has given him.  

Dick replies that there is no need for his ‘talents’ in Heaven; instead, he can receive ‘forgiveness’ for perverting them. [15]

The Ghost refuses to give up his intellect, his ‘inquiring mind’. To return to the childishness of ‘faith’ is ‘preposterous.’ Suddenly he remembers he can’t go with the spirit to Heaven anyway, he must return to a Theological Society (in Hell), where, he implies, he is a member of some status. He will be delivering a paper that examines what Jesus’ ‘mature’ views would have been had he lived. The ghost turns away, back to Hell, humming softly to itself. [16]

Chapter 6 – Apples of Gold

Lewis walks along a river of solid water, painful to the feet. He happens upon an area resembling an amphitheatre, with green slopes, and a waterfall tumbling into a lake. There is a tree of golden apples. With much effort, a ghost — the bowler-hatted one mentioned in Chapter 2 who intended to  bring commodities back to the grey town and sell them — attempts to steal a handful of apples that have fallen to the ground. He is unable to do so but, with great ‘agony’, pockets a small one.

Paradise offered

A voice commands him to put it down. It’s the voice of the waterfall, which is also an angel.  ‘“Fool…put it down. You cannot take it back. There is no room for it In Hell. Stay here and learn to eat such apples. The very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you.”‘

Paradise lost

The ghost continues on his tortuous way until he is out of sight. [17]

Chapter 7 — The Cynic: The ‘Hard-Bitten’ Ghost

At the river Lewis encounters the ‘Hard-Bitten’ Ghost. The ghost automatically dismisses the new environment, ‘“You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass.”‘ Humans couldn’t live there; it was no more than an ‘advertisement stunt.’“ He claims he’s been all over the world, seen several of the Great Wonders and was suitably unimpressed–they, too, were nothing more than ‘advertisement stunts.’  [18]

He sees little difference between the grey town—his ‘Hell,’ and his present location, the outskirts of Heaven. They’re managed by the ‘same old Ring’ and the managers are ‘just laughing at us.’

When asked about becoming ‘more solid’ and enjoying the soft grass and liquid water like the spirits do–in short, change his ways and enter Heaven—his response implies that its not he, but this new environment,  that should change, should accommodate him: ‘“What would you say if you went to a hotel where the eggs were all bad and when you complained to the boss, instead of apologizing and changing his dairyman, he just told you that if you tried you’d get to like bad eggs in time.”’   [19]

Paradise lost

He wanders off and is not seen again.

Reflection on Chapter 7

Does the  hard-bitten ghost represent the person with no self-awareness—he’s got ‘it’ all figured out? Anyone who does not see life his way is wrong and needs to change?

Chapter 8 — Riches to Rags

Lewis leaves the river and walks towards a cluster of trees.  As he enters a clearing a ghost hobbles across. Her Earthly clothes now appear ‘ghastly in the morning light’ and she runs from bush to bush, trying desperately to avoid being seen.

A Bright Spirit appears and offers to help her. ‘“If you have the least trace of decent feeling left…you’ll keep away,”‘ she replies. ‘“I don’t want help. I want to be left alone. Do go away.”‘

Paradise offered

The Spirit implores her to go with him to the mountains, to Heaven. ‘“You can lean on me all the way. I can’t absolutely carry you, but you’ll have absolutely no weight on your own feet: and it will hurt less at every step.”‘

She hesitates, ashamed of her appearance compared to the Spirit’s. ‘“Can’t you understand anything?”‘ she asks. ‘“Do you really suppose I’m going out there among all those people, like this?”‘

He asks why. She replies,  ‘“How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? Its far worse than going out with nothing on would have been on Earth. Have everyone staring through me.” (Lewis’ italics.)  He replies: ‘“Don’t you remember on Earth—there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it—if you will drink the cup to the bottom—you’ll find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.” [20]

Paradise unknown

She initially considers accepting his offer, but then refuses: ‘“No, I can’t. I tell you I can’t…You’ve no right to ask me to do a thing like that. It’s disgusting. I should never forgive myself if I did.”‘

‘“Friend,” said the Spirit. “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not yourself?”‘ She again refuses. ‘“Then only one expedient remains,”” he says.  He puts a horn to his lips and blows. A herd of unicorns thunders through the clearing. Lewis flees and hears the ghost scream, but is unsure if she runs towards the spirit or away from him. [21]

Reflection on Chapter 8

My takeaway. Chapter 8 contrasts the love of Earthly possessions with the beauty of  Heaven.   While alive the woman was probably a  member of the upper-class–the ‘elite’, fashionably dressed— but now appears ghastly in Heaven, so much so that she is ashamed to be seen, and it is unbearable. She’s challenged to swallow her pride, discard her past lifestyle, i.e. her once beautiful, now  ‘ghastly’ clothes—even though it will initially be difficult—and enter Heaven. This is a choice that is  agonizingly difficult for her.

Chapter 9 – The Teacher: George MacDonald

Lewis’ flight from the unicorns takes him to a little knoll with pine trees and large rocks. On one of the rocks sits a man for whom he has had the greatest admiration– a ‘very tall man…with a flowing beard’—George MacDonald. He appears as both an ‘enthroned and shining god’ and an ‘old weather-beaten’ man. MacDonald asks Lewis to sit and talk. Lewis recounts the life-changing impact MacDonald’s writings has had on his life.  Phantastes, to him, was what ‘Beatrice’ was to Dante.[22]

Lewis then asks a series of questions. [23]

Do any of the ghosts stay? Can they stay? MacDonald refers him to the Refrigerium. ‘“It means the damned have holidays—excursions…[to the outskirts of Heaven].”‘ He adds that ‘of course’ most of the ‘silly creatures’ don’t take the opportunity.

Is judgement not final? Is there a way out of Hell into Heaven?  ‘“it depends,”‘ MacDonald replies.  For those who chose to leave, it was not Hell, it was Purgatory. Those who chose to stay, it was always Hell. This goes for the Earthly past as well: For the Saved, all of their Earthly past would have been Heaven—even suffering will be turned into glory; For the Lost however,  all of their past will have been Hell – ‘damnation will spread back and back and contaminate the pleasures of their sin.’

Heaven and Hell are a state of mind, then?  ‘“Hell  is a state of mind…[a]nd every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of  the creature within the dungeon of its own mind…is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains.”’

What do they choose, those who go back (to the grey town)? And how do they choose it?  ‘“Milton was right…The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’  There is always something they insist on keeping even at the price of misery.”

There is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir? Through mere sensuality? MacDonald warns of the pursuit of pleasure. The pleasure becomes less and less and the cravings become more and more fierce, so great in fact, that even though he knows that true joy cannot be achieved he yet prefers the ‘mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him.’  These snares of obsession are not limited to sensuality. For example, the Christian is so obsessed with spreading Christianity ‘they never give a thought to Christ’ or an organizer of charities becomes so caught up in  his charity he forgets about the poor.

Why don’t the Solid people, full of love, go down to Hell and rescue the ghosts? MacDonald replies that the Solid people have come as far as they can, i.e. the green plain, the Valley of the Shadow of Life, the outskirts of Heaven. It would do them no good to go any further: ‘“The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”‘

What about the ghosts who never get to the omnibus?  ‘“Everyone who wishes it does…All that are in Hell chose it. Without that self choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find.  To those who knock it is opened.”‘

They are interrupted by the grumbling of a ghost, who in rapid fashion complains about her former life – people she despised (and, presumably, still does), the unfairness of life, her hardships.  Lewis is perplexed as to why she is here. MacDonald  replies that she may not be damned, she may yet  enter Heaven, but it depends on whether she  is in control of her attitude, or is controlled by it. [24]

Several ghosts cross their path. Some wish to tell the ‘Celestials’ about Hel,  as if their misery conferred a sort of superiority to the ‘sheltered’ lives of the spirits. Other ghosts include decaying ghosts eager to frighten,  ‘grotesque phantoms’ who came to the Valley of the Shadow of Life to spit ‘hatred’, ‘envy’ and ‘contempt for joy.’ Nonetheless some of these may be converted, says MacDonald, because those that ‘hate goodness are sometimes nearer [to Heaven] than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it already.’

An artist wishes to paint the Valley of the Shadow of Life but is constrained by a spirit, who warns of conflating his gift with the love of the recognition he receives: ‘“Every…artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till…they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him…They sink lower—become interested in their own personalities and then  in nothing but their own reputations.”‘ [my italics]  [25]

Reflection on Chapter 9

My takeaway. We all have free will,  and even after a second chance to escape the consequences of past bad decisions,  many will prefer to remain as they are. Lewis seems to argue that for some, ‘misery’ is seen as a form of maturity, even superiority.  Does this resonate in a society and culture where the negative is often seen as serious, credible; the positive is often considered light, childish, Pollyannaish?

Chapter 10 — The Overbearing Spouse

Lewis and MacDonald overhear another exchange.

Paradise offered

A ghost receives an offer to enter Heaven if she agrees to meet with her former husband who is already there. She refuses, considering how ungrateful the husband, Robert, had been. She speaks, without interruption, of how she had made him the ‘success’ he’d been on Earth, of how she’d made ‘a man’ out of him. She was the driving force behind a higher paying job; she spent many hours making their home a nice place to live–with  no appreciation from him;  she broke up friendships because they were ‘no good’ for him;  she initially disavowed him of his ‘silly idea’ of writing a book;  she prompted him to buy a larger house though  it was ‘a little more’ than they could afford. He had become a ‘richer man than he’d ever dreamed of being.’ His subsequent emotional withdrawal and sulking were nothing short of  ‘wicked, senseless hatred,’ and even though he eventually suffered a nervous breakdown her ‘conscience [was] clear.’

On reflection, she has a change of heart and agrees to stay in Heaven and meet with Robert—if she is given a ‘free hand’ to ‘take charge’ of him again. ‘“Give him to me, do you hear…There’s lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him…Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to—to do things to. Its simply frightful down there.”‘

Paradise lost

Like a ‘towering candle-flame’ she suddenly ‘snaps’ and disappears, leaving a ‘sour, dry smell’ in the air. [26]

Chapter 11 – Selfish ‘Love’

Lewis overhears another ‘painful’ exchange between a ghost, Pam, and her bright spirit brother, Reginald, who has come to meet her. Pam confronts him about her beloved son, Michael., who is in Heaven, but did not come to meet her. 

How dare God take Michael away from her, she asks.   She will do whatever it takes to see her boy. But her attitude is futile. Reginald replies: ‘”You’re treating God only as a means to an end”’ and ‘”You cannot love a fellow creature until you love God.”‘  ‘“[Mother-love] is the highest and holiest feeling in human nature,”‘ she says.  Reginald replies, ‘“[n]o natural feelings are high or low in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”‘

The obsession with her dead son eventually ruined her relationship with her husband, Dick, and daughter, Muriel. The spirit, Reginald, makes clear that the relationship with her husband and daughter did not fall apart because of their indifference to Michael’s death as she believes. No, they revolted against her, ‘“against having their whole life dominated by the tyranny of  the past: and not really even Michael’s past, but your past.”’

 Pam is undeterred. She must have her son. ‘“No one has the right to come between me and my son. Not even God…I want my boy, and I mean to have him. He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine. Forever and ever.”’ [27]

Shortly after, the Teacher, George MacDonald, places a hand on Lewis’ arm, and escorts him away. Then comes a contrast between Pam’s ‘mother-love’ (which has turned into a ‘poor, prickly, astringent sort of thing’) and lust, presented in the next encounter.  MacDonald: There is one good, which is God. Everything is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher it is in the natural order, the more demonic it is when it rebels. Archangels become demons, not ‘mice or fleas.’  ‘“The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”’ [28]

They come across a ‘dark oily ghost’ with a ‘red little lizard’ on his shoulder. The lizard is twitching its tail and incessantly whispering in the ghost’s ear. The ghost starts on  its way back to the bus, apparently aggravated by the lizard, which won’t stop needling him. [Later, we learn that the lizard symbolizes the ghost’s struggles with lust.]

A ‘flaming spirit’ appears and turns out to be an angel. The angel asks the ghost if he’d like the lizard to be quiet. When the ghost replies, yes he would, the angel responds: ‘“Then I will kill him.”‘  Clearly ambivalent about the lizard’s demise, the ghost meets the declaration with several awkward excuses: I’d just like it silenced…Maybe some other time…It’s going to sleep of its own accord…I’ll be able to keep it in order now.

Paradise offered

Each excuse is met with the question: “May I kill it?”

The lizard challenges the ghost: ‘“Be careful. He can kill me…and you’ll be without me forever and ever…How could you live…You’d only be a sort of ghost, not a real man as you are now.”‘

‘“Do I have your permission [to kill it].”‘

“‘ It will kill me,”‘ the ghost replied.

‘“It won’t, but supposing it did?”‘

‘“You’re right. It would be better to be dead than to live with this creature.”‘

‘“Then may I?”‘

Paradise accepted

“Damn and blast you! Go on, can’t you!  Get it over! Do what you like…”‘

The angel grabs the lizard, and while it was yet twisting, biting and writhing, breaks its neck and throws it to the turf.

The ghost quickly becomes solid and is transformed into  a man. The lizard is magically transformed into a magnificent stallion–‘[s]ilvery white…with a mane and tail of gold.‘ The man throws himself at the angel’s  feet, then rises,  his face shining with tears.  He jumps onto the stallion and they gallop into the sunrise, to the mountains of Deep Heaven.  The whole plain shook with the sound of the very ‘earth’ and the ‘woods’ and the ‘waters’ rejoicing.

The lizard had to die before it became the stallion, MacDonald says to Lewis. ‘“Nothing…can go [to Heaven] as it is now.”’ Anything can go to the mountains if it submits to death. ‘”What is a lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering, whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”‘ [29]

Reflection on Chapter 11

MacDonald reflects on the two encounters.  The man’s sensuality was destroyed. He was delivered and given a beautiful stallion instead of a lizard; the woman’s  ‘love’ for her son–which was not love at all, but a form of selfish control—was not destroyed, and she quickly met her demise. [30]

Chapter 12 – The Joy of Sarah Smith

A procession approaches. Spirits, ‘youthful shapes’ of boys and girls dancing, young men and women, animals, celebrate one woman, Sarah Smith.  She was apparently an ordinary but faithful  woman on Earth, and is celebrated in Heaven. MacDonald reminds Lewis: ‘“[F]ame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”‘ The abundance of her life in Christ flows outwards, like ripples in a pond. ‘“There is joy enough in the little finger of a great saint  as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.”‘

In the procession’s  path are two phantoms – one tall, ‘horribly thin and shaky’, reminiscent of an ‘old school’ Tragedian actor; the other no larger than an ‘organ grinder’s monkey.’ The ‘Dwarf’ holds a chain attached to a collar around the Tragedian’s neck. The Tragedian addresses the lady, but she responds only to the ‘Dwarf’.  Later, we learn the two phantoms are in fact the remnants of one person, Frank, (we assume} Sarah’s husband.

She explains their relationship on Earth. Theirs was not a relationship based on love, but on a ‘need’ to be loved. She says to the Dwarf: ‘“[W]hat we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.”‘

She is now truly ‘full.’  ‘”in Love Himself, not lonely. Strong, not weak.”’ ‘“We no longer have a ‘need’ for one another, ‘we can begin to love truly.”‘ [31]

Chapter 13 — The Light and the Darkness

Sarah Smith implores the Dwarf to let go of the chain, to experience joy with her: “”Here is all joy. Everything bids you to stay.”‘ ‘“Yes,”‘, the Tragedian responds. ‘“On terms you might offer to a dog.”‘ The Dwarf has begun to shrink, growing ever smaller and smaller. 

MacDonald makes clear Sarah Smith’s dilemma. She was tormented by her husband while on Earth.  Her husband chose misery, wretchedness, symbolized  by the pathetic ‘Tragedian.’ Her husband solicited her compliance through Pity. Now, she implores him: ‘“Stop it. Stop it at once.” Stop ‘“[u]sing pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who chose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.”‘  She  can no longer live under a blanket of misery and wretchedness:  ‘“You made yourself really wretched…But you can no longer communicate your wretchedness…Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our joy can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot infect our light. No, no, no. Come to us. We will not go to you. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs?”‘  [32]

By now the Dwarf has .shrunk so much that it is indistinguishable from the chain to which it has clung for so long. Finally, it disappears, and  the Tragedian vanishes.

Lewis (as the narrator) is unsure of the exchange he has just witnessed. Should Sarah Smith not have been touched by Frank’s misery, his wretchedness?  Should she have had no pity at all? MacDonald responds by differentiating between the ‘action’ of Pity and the ‘passion’ of Pity.

The passion of Pity is ‘the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth…”‘ That form of pity will die, MacDonald says. ‘“The ‘action’ of Pity ‘brings healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good.”‘’ [33]

The Great Divorce of Heaven from Hell

Then George MacDonald contrasts the infinite vastness of Heaven and the infinitesimal smallness of Hell. He bends down and, using a blade of grass, identifies a crack in the soil. He surmises—he can’t be sure—that crack is where the bus had come through from the grey town.

Similarly, all the ‘loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies’ of Hell, when weighed against the least moment of joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all.

Who can enter Hell? Only the Greatest of all can make himself small enough to enter Hell.  For the higher the thing is, the lower it can descend—a man can sympathize with a horse, but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell. [34]

Chapter 14 – A Dream

Lewis is told that all he has seen and learned is just a dream.  If he relates his experiences to anyone, MacDonald instructs him,  he is to make clear that it was a dream. He is not a philosopher, clergyman, or ‘spiritualist,’ nor is he to act like one.  

He awakens on the floor, at  the feet of his study table. [35]

A Note on the Real-Life George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a clergyman, college professor,  poet and writer. Lewis was a great admirer of  his fantasy work and his Christian lectures.

In his anthology of MacDonald’s work, Lewis writes:  ‘I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself…Nowhere else outside the New Testament have I found terror and comfort so intertwined. [36] ‘I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. [37]

Of MacDonald’s 1858 fantasy novel,  Phantastes, Lewis writes:  I bought…the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew I had crossed a great frontier…What it actually did to me was to convert…even to baptise my imagination…[T]he quality which had enchanted me in his imaginative works turned out to be the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic reality in which we all live. I should have been shocked in my teens if anyone had told me that what I learned to love in Phantastes was goodness. [37]

The real-life student-teacher relationship Lewis had with MacDonald is echoed in their relationship in The Great Divorce. In the story, though,MacDonald does not teach with words, but through a guided tour of the Valley of the Shadow of Life,  as Virgil guides Dante through hell in The Divine Comedy, a comparison Lewis scholar, Walter  Hooper, makes in his book, C. S. Lewis, A Companion and Guide. [38]

Final Thoughts

In the preface to The Great Divorce  C.S. Lewis makes clear that the work is not speculative, it does not attempt to predict what  awaits us after death. Instead, it is an allegory,  and does not claim to be anything more.

Hooper, in his Companion to The Great Divorce, outlines three central ideas  of the work.

• There is a point beyond which a person cannot repent and be saved, but we cannot fix that point
• God cannot overrule free will
• Evil is fissiparous (reproduces itself)  and cannot arrest its own reproduction; hell is a tourniquet to  bind that reproduction

I argue the themes above are undergirded by George MacDonald’s reference to  Paradise Lost in Chapter 10—that is, man preferring to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. That the vast  majority of characters we meet on that grassy plain chose to turn their backs on Heaven and return to their lives  in the grey town, I believe, supports this idea.  Today,  examples of  Lewis’ message are ubiquitous. Popular culture,  social  constructs,  our economic and political structures,  notions of morality, science, justice,  all cater to the here and now,  of man-made fixes to the world’s problems, to the exclusion of a higher power—regardless of   how dire those challenges may be. The Great Divorce  warns us of such a worldview, and it does so in a way that is universal:  accessible yet cerebral, entertaining yet profound, timely yet timeless.

© 2020 Weldon Turner. All Rights reserved.

Images

C. S. Lewis

Flickr.com

Copyright: Public Domain

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Attribution: Levan Ramishvili

Accessed: April 13, 2020

George MacDonald

Wikimedia Commons

Copyright: Public Domain

Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_MacDonald_c1880.jpg

File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/George_MacDonald_c1880.jpg

Attribution: Robert White Thrupp

Accessed: April 13, 2020

References

[1] The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-marriage-of-heaven-and-hell-by-william-blake , accessed April 6, 2020.

[2] C.S. Lewis,  C.S. Lewis Complete Signature Classics, Harper Collins, 2007, p465

[3] Lewis, Signature Classics, p465

[4] Lewis, Signature Classics, p465

[5] Lewis, Signature Classics ,p466

[6] Lewis, Signature Classics, p504

[7] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp476-7

[8] Lewis, Signature Classics, p478

[9] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp479-81

[10] Lewis, Signature Classics, p481

[11] Lewis, Signature Classics, p486

[12] Lewis, Signature Classics, p484

[13] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp484-6

[14] Lewis, Signature Classics, p486

[15] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp486-7

[16] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp487-9

[17] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp490-2

[18] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp493-4

[19] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp493-5

[20] Lewis, Signature Classics, p498-9

[21] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp499-500

[22] Lewis, Signature Classics, p502

[23] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp503-6

[24] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp506-7

[25] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp508-11

[26] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp514-6

[27] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp518-20

[28] Lewis, Signature Classics, p522

[29] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp522-6

[30] Lewis, Signature Classics, p526

[31] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp529-32

[32] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp534-5

[33] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp536-7

[34] Lewis, Signature Classics, pp537-8

[35] Lewis, Signature Classics, p541

[36] Lewis, C.S., ed., George MacDonald: An Anthology, Harper Collins, 2001, pxxxv

[37] C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, pxxxvii 

[38] Hooper, Walter, C. S. Lewis A Companion and Guide,  Fount, 1997, p284

Bibliography

Hooper, Walter, C. S. Lewis A Companion and Guide,  Fount, 1997

Lewis,  C.S., C.S. Lewis Complete Signature Classics, Harper Collins, 2007

Lewis, C.S., ed., George MacDonald: An Anthology, Harper Collins, 2001

Links

The British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-marriage-of-heaven-and-hell-by-william-blake , accessed April 6, 2020