The Great Divorce

A very convicting novel. I just got around to reading it, even though my senior bible teacher recommended it to us months ago (shame on me!).
This short novel should be read alongside Dante's Inferno as *the* book on hell. Lewis recognized the truth that we all overlook: "good" people go to hell. Hell might be full of murderers and thieves, but it is a place mostly populated by "normal guys", just like us. One thing that really struck me was the philosopher who had overlooked Christ in his intellectual pursuits. He spent so much time working to prove that God existed that he missed seeking God for Himself. Another was the mother who had poured her life into her son, and made him the center of her world instead of Christ.
Shit like that show more just messes with me. We spent a good amount of time in senior bible talking about Christ's critique of the church and religious people. I'm from the South, and a community were everyone is Christian, so it really struck a cord with me to realize that religious people need Christ even more than your stereotypical sinner. Wow.
I'm sorry for how awkward this review is! I wish I knew what to say and how to say it :/ show less

When Blake wrote of the Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Lewis thought it would eventually end in a Great Divorce. In this book, Lewis shows Heaven and Hell, but in a way, they are subjective. If you choose the Earth over Heaven, you find the Earth is a suburb of Hell. If you choose Heaven over Earth, you instead find that Earth is a neighborhood on the outskirts of Heaven. Kinda. Likewise, those in Hell can visit Heaven whenever they like, and can stay in Heaven, only they have to give up all of their Earthly ways, and realize what's really important.

While not a Biblical view of the afterlife, I found that Lewis' depiction of this afterlife to be quite imaginative and interesting: Hell is a place that you make your own, but what you make show more is not real, while Heaven, to a denizen of Hell is so real that you cannot even move the blades of grass or make ripples in water. I'm not sure how I feel about it from a theological point of view, but as a story that raises intrigue and thinking, especially of metaphysical things, it certainly does that fairly well.

I would recommend this book alongside others by Lewis, specifically those theological fictions of his, such as Screwtape Letters (though, not necessarily, alongside Narnia). It may be too radical for some Christians, and too preachy for some non-Christians, but for everyone else, it's definitely thought-provoking. show less

The Great Divorce is Lewis' supposal of what would happen if a busload of souls from Hell was given an excursion to Heaven. Lewis is quick to point out in his foreword that the book is not supposed to be a theological work speculating on what really happens in the afterlife. The setup of the story is just a frame to contain the ideas. People in Hell do not have the ability to suddenly repent and choose Heaven after a field trip to the latter!

The book is a little confusing at first if you go into it, like me, without knowing much about it. Is the narrator in Hell with the others? He doesn't seem to know what is going on, but why else would he be there, and in the same state as the other Hell-dwellers? It's somewhat explained at the end, show more but I found the ambiguity distracting in the beginning.

The narrator observes several conversations between the Hell-dwellers and the people in Heaven who have come there specifically to reason and plead with the tourists.

A recurring idea in Lewis' Platonian mind was the notion that everything we have and are right now is insubstantial mist in light of the real that is perfect, and which we will experience on reaching Heaven. This same idea is in the Chronicles of Narnia, where Narnia becomes sharper and more real than it ever had been in the last book. Every blade of grass is sharper, every mountain is more like a mountain, every tree and sparrow and stream is suddenly invested with a weight and substance they never before possessed. It is the same in Heaven in this book. The people from Hell appear as insubstantial ghosts and hurt themselves walking on the real grass. They cannot lift anything in Heaven; they are too weak. Trying to pick a flower is like trying to pluck a full-grown tree with one hand.

Lewis imagines himself taken in hand by George MacDonald, his literary and spiritual mentor. One thing I found rather unsatisfactory was Lewis' attempt to have MacDonald explain his belief in universalism. The result is a page of near-incomprehensible confusion.

Some of the images that Lewis conjures up in this book will stick with me forever, like the Dwarf and the Tragedian. The Dwarf is a man who is slowly being diminished, word by word, by the tall Tragedian he holds on a chain. The Tragedian does nothing but feel sorry for himself and urge the Dwarf to feel the same. As the Tragedian's hold grows stronger, the Dwarf gets smaller and smaller until he disappears, and then the Tragedian swallows the chain. He has won.

One striking thing about that part was Lewis' discussion of the tyranny of pity. The Dwarf's wife was a denizen of Heaven and had been pleading with him to shake off the Tragedian and stay with her. But when her husband fails to do so, and instead listens to the Tragedian's ridiculous selfishness, the Lady feels no pain for him. Lewis writes that in Heaven, the pain of other people's bad choices will no longer be allowed to torment us. It seems heartless, but should the eternal joy of the saints be marred by the selfish decision of a miserable soul? Should Joy itself be captive to the caprices of a cosmic dog in the manger? By no means.

I thought Lewis' treatment of the apostate and liberal bishop was absolutely word-perfect. He captures the man's arrogance and self-delusion so neatly. Lewis' exploration of the perversion of motherly love — to the point where God Himself becomes nothing more than a means of the mother getting to her son — is also striking. The insights on why people reject God and choose Hell instead are profound.

One thing becomes clearer as the story goes on: the people in Hell are there because they want to be. What did Satan say in Paradise Lost — "Better to reign in Hell than in Heaven serve"? Lewis says that there are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "Thy will be done." I think he's right; people don't suddenly repent when they die. An unrepentant heart can only be changed by the action of the Holy Spirit, and that action will not be taken after physical death.

I enjoyed this book. It was a quick read, just over an hour for me, but I think it will hold up well to rereading. Recommended. show less

I read this book again every few years. Even the Preface is a treasure, reorienting my thinking about God and Heaven.

Is Hell a real place or a state of mind? Is Heaven a real place? Will we like what we find in Heaven? What if there is no further intellectual pursuit because we finally meet the real and complete Truth? What is we have no further service to provide and in fact we are not needed there at all? Is Mother-love truly the most honorable of all emotions? Is it wrong to evoke pity in others?

This is a great book with some very challenging images. When I get into a grumbling mood, I have to stop to see if I am becoming one big grumble. Reading this book always makes me pause and rethink what I mean when I love someone. How much of show more that is a craving to be loved? I have to admit many of my relationships (or lack of relationships) are colored by my fear and concern that I be loved rather than an honest love of the other person.

And what would I hesitate to give up for joy? How can I hold those things, needs, and fears loosely, ready to let them be torn away, killed, and replaced by something so much better?

Highly recommended show less

In this fantasy tale, Lewis explores the nature of heaven and hell and the ramifications of salvation and redemption. In the introduction, he points out that this is an imaginative exploration of these locations, not to be taken as gospel or even as his own beliefs, but a simple fantasy that explores what could be.

Hell is a drab place, where fights break out and people are drawn into deeper and deeper solitude. It is always gray, that fading light that just precedes night time, and the weather is damp and drizzly. The narrator, presumably Lewis himself, isn't at first aware of the true nature of his surroundings, and neither are we. Through vivid descriptions and cryptic dialogue we piece together an idea that this is hell that he is show more traversing (which is later confirmed by an angel). By chance he sees a queue, and for want of anything better to do he joins it, later discovering that it is a bus line, and he hops on board. The bus, however, is no ordinary means of public transport: it flies.

The dull gray drops away, light percolates through shut window blinds, and the bus approaches cliffs that loom over the riders. The top of the top of these sheer rock walls reveals a lush green valley, and beautiful mountains in the distance. The light is the soft brilliance of early dawn, just before day breaks. Of course, this is heaven.

While the physical settings of heaven and hell are, in themselves, fascinating, Lewis's inventive mind has more to offer. The denizens of hell become mere ghosts in the bright land, so insubstantial that even the smallest stalk of grass pierces them, water is solid, and an apple weighs a ton. The angels that descend upon the bus riders have come with a purpose, one angel to one ghost, in a last attempt to break through their worldly walls and win them to repentance and salvation. The exchanges between the angels and the ghosts, still stubbornly clinging to their flawed ideas that placed them in hell in the first place, become philosophical debates where Lewis has a chance to refute some common criticisms of Christianity.

I've always liked Lewis, because he has a touch for explaining theological conundrums in simple terms, and because he has a rich imagination. This book combines both. Clearly, the fantasy is just a vehicle to delve into those philosophic exchanges, but since his intention is clear from the introduction I didn't feel like he was playing a trick. On the contrary, I thought it was a clever way to make subject matter that could otherwise be dry become very entertaining. show less

Title: The Great Divorce
Series: ----------
Author: C.S. Lewis
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Allegory
Pages: 113
Words: 30K

Synopsis:

The narrator gets on a bus with a large group of people, many of whom end up never even making it onto the bus. The bus flies to another country which seems to be some sort of hinterlands of Heaven. The narrator overhears many conversations between the occupants of the bus and people come from the main land of Heaven to help them. Most of what he overhears are reasons why the bus occupants don't want to really go to heaven and why it just makes more sense for them to get back on the bus and go back to the grey town, even though rumors of a final night time fast approaching keep cropping up.

The narrator awakes as show more C.S. Lewis and he makes it clear no one should use this story as a guide to the afterlife.

My Thoughts:

This is technically a re-read, as I read this in Bibleschool in the late 90's. While I wasn't writing reviews or even keeping track of what books I read back then (that didn't start until April of 2000), this book stuck in my head, mainly because of the disagreement I had with Lewis about the subject matter. That was important because it was the first time I really had a disagreement with Lewis, before this I'd pretty much vacuumed up everything he said. So I knew going into this re-read that I was still going to have that disagreement. While that was the case, I was also able to better appreciate the many other points he made during this short little novel, hence the 4 stars.

So the disagreement mainly centers around 2 things. First, the immortality of the soul and soul sleep. While this wasn't an issue back in the 90's, my views have changed over the years and I've come into the 7th Day Adventist viewpoint, so that's something Lewis (and Protestantism in general) and I disagree on. I don't believe in the immortality of the soul and I believe that when you die you sleep, in some form or other, until the Final Judgement. Lewis believes differently, hence the very idea of the book. Secondly, Lewis seems to be proposing some sort of pseudo-purgatory with the Grey Town and the ability of the occupants of the bus to leave it and go to Heaven. He does directly address this issue and claims that isn't what he's doing, but it is really hard to accept any other interpretation. While God is outside of Time, humanity ONLY has its lifetime to make a choice of whether to accept Jesus Christ as Savior and go to heaven or to reject Jesus Christ and go to hell.

To put it plainly, once you die, that is it. You have run out of time to make a choice. While it sounds nice to talk about God being outside of time, blah, blah, blah, the Bible seems pretty clear on the issue of having to make your choice of whether to follow God or not in this life and having that choice in this life alone. Obviously, there are other interpretations and I'm not worried that someone who is a committed Christian is going to suddenly go off the rails and think they can somehow get right with God after they die. What I worry about with the purgatory style doctrine is that puts off the necessity of making a decision NOW. If they're wrong, then it is too late and they're going to hell. I'm playing super fast and loose here, but I don't think this is the place to have a Scripture session about why I think so and backing everything up with specific chapter and verse from the Bible. That type of talk is for someone who is already interested in the issue and has questions, not for a bleeding book review, hahahahaa.

With those issues out of the way, which while I talked about them a bit, were much smaller in my mind this time around, I was really able to focus on the rest of the book. Lewis does a fantastic job of showing a wide variety of reasons why people CHOOSE to not go to Heaven. He makes a real push to show that people are not kept out of Heaven who are clamoring to get it, but that people voluntarily choose not to go in because of Reason A, B or C. God and sin cannot co-exist and hence Heaven must be a place where there is no sin. If people won't give up their sin, they have in fact chosen their sin over heaven. While that sounds simplistic, it is that easy to spell out.

I didn't take notes on the various conversations recorded, so I'm not going to go through and talk about each one, but Lewis does an admirable job of showing in layman's terms, why people hold on to certain things even to their own detriment. He is also able to show the underlying narrative and self-deceptions that people twist themselves into to justify their rejection of God, Jesus and the inability of sin and God co-existing. It wasn't new or “eye opening”, but it was a timely reminder to me.

I think I will end this by saying that God is Good, God is Great and in the end, every knee will bow to His Sovereignty and acknowledge His Very Rightness. That is really awkwardly phrased but it seems to properly convey the end of the matter.

★★★★☆ show less

I've read many of Lewis' works and find his religious bent interesting. As a not particularly religious person myself, though having grown up in a very strictly religious home, I still find his work quite interesting, particularly in that it reflects much of what I have also observed about people's behaviors (never mind my religious beliefs.) The Great Divorce does not disappoint in that respect. Often those who think that they are better than, or less sinful, or more morally upright, or whatever thing we use to prop ourselves up in comparison of "Others" are often the ones outsiders look upon as being not very good people.

Although I enjoyed the Screwtape Letters more, The Great Divorce is much along that same vein, not pointing the show more finger at the obvious sinners (such as myself) but providing a reflection for those who are striving to be righteous and do not see their sins, or minimize them for the sake of their religious pride. Even for those who are not religious, we can see ourselves doing the same if we look deep within. And at a time where people seem so determined to be divided by their moral/ religious/ political causes, this is a good read to remind us to look inward first and to ask ourselves if our behavior is just, or just to prop ourselves up? show less