The Great Divorce

I tried to get into this literary classic and just couldn't quite understand it. It came highly recommended to me by a friend of mine because he knew I had just read and enjoyed Rob Bell's, "Love Wins". Apparently Lewis and Bell think similarly on issues relating to Heaven, Hell, and the afterlife. But, there was just too much use of allegory and symbolism in "The Great Divorce" that I couldn't bring myself to finish it simply for a lack of understanding on my part. If I can't understand a book then I don't see the sense in continuing to read it. And, so I reluctantly stopped reading this one about halfway through. If you have no problem understanding allegory, then I recommend this book. But, if you are like me and find it difficult to understand allegory, then save yourself the time and read Love Wins instead. ( )

"[T]he damned have holidays - excursions," where they may choose to take a shuttle bus from Hell to Heaven. It allows the damned a sort of second chance, a space in which to reconsider the fundamental choice that determines a person's relationship with eternity.

Our narrator is a curious tourist who speaks with, among others, the ghost of George MacDonald, Scottish fantasy novelist and Christian:
"'Son,' [MacDonald] said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand eternity: when Anodos [protagonist of MacDonald's book PHANTASTES] looked through the door of the Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but THIS and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'" pg. 69

Getting off at the bus-stop in Heaven: "The light and coolness that drenched me were like those of summer morning, early morning a minute or two before the sunrise [this dawn before the sun rise is one's last opportunity to choose Heaven], only that there was a certain difference. I had the sense of being in a larger space, perhaps even a larger SORT of space, than I had ever known before: as if the sky were further off and the extent of the green plain wider than they could be on this little ball of earth. I had got 'out' in some sense which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair. It gave me a feeling of freedom, but also of exposure, possibly of danger, which continued to accompany me through all that followed....
".... It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison. Moved by a sudden thought, I bent down and tried to pluck the daisy which was growing at my feet. The stalk wouldn't break.... The little flower was hard, not like wood or even like iron, but like diamond.... I noticed that I could see the grass not only between my feet but THROUGH them. I also was a phantom. Who will give me words to express the terror of that discovery?" pp. 19-21

"[A]t the end of all things," those who have chosen the solid, light-filled eternity of Heaven must let go of the damned and allow them their Hell. Otherwise, "the loveless and the self-imprisoned" will "be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to VETO Heaven." pg. 135

An interesting book, even though there are many things I don’t agree with in it. It’s overly preachy, full of straw man arguments, and generally full of the idea that you should never question or stray from strict Christian dogma or you are a damned fool. Other than that it has some good, thought provoking ideas that you can take in ways the author may not have intended. It is very short, and that’s a good thing, I wouldn’t have wanted too much of it. ( )

I am not a religious person, but I don't think one has to be in order to enjoy this work...

This book describes a man's dream about what is necessary to progress to Heaven. I hope I do not spoil your read by telling you that the dreamer does not actually reach Heaven in this story. All he accomplishes is to catch a flying bus from Purgatory/Hell to a place where new arrivals exist as ghosts who cannot yet fully interact with their surroundings. And this is where the story became interesting to me.

To help the ghosts become more real, each one is met by a resident of the new place. The dreamer overhears many of the ghost-resident pair conversations, and even has one with his own personal resident helper. Each ghost tells a life story which reveals some character fault that was holding them back from being a better human.

I hope you will forgive my translation of this Christian work into a-religious terms, but to me, the C.S. Lewis title of "The Great Divorce" means that we should endeavor to divorce ourselves from our selfish/proud/greedy/etc habits. I don't mean to imply that I embraced every 'lesson' in this tale. But I surely did cringe at how many of the life stories included details that reminded me of my own less savory behaviors.

Bottomline: Not as fun as some of his Chronicles of Narnia books, which give a kid-friendly allegorical representation of Christianity. I suppose this is the adult version: a straightforward consideration of what sort of life a good person should lead. ( )

The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis (?)