The Great Divorce

infobox Book |
name = The Great Divorce
title_orig =
translator =


author = C. S. Lewis
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series =
genre = Speculative fiction, Religious, Christian
publisher = Geoffrey Bles (UK)
release_date = 1945
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 118 p. (hardback edition)
isbn = ISBN 0-02-570550-4
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"The Great Divorce" is a work of fantasy by C. S. Lewis that portrays Christian perceptions of the life after death allegorically, specifically one individual's journey from hell ("the grey town") to heaven and salvation. It is complementary to Lewis' earlier book "The Screwtape Letters", which portrays an individual still in life being subjected to demonic mental manipulation in order to secure him for hell.

Although less renowned than "Narnia" and the "Space Trilogy", it is considered one of his finest works of fiction by many Lewis fans. As with many of Lewis' works, it is of particular appeal to Christians, but people of other belief systems have also found it interesting.

The working title was "Who Goes Home?" but the name was changed at the publisher's insistence. The title refers to William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". "The Great Divorce" was first printed as a serial in a religious publication called "The Guardian" (not connected in any way to the modern British newspaper of the same name) in 1944 and 1945, and soon thereafter in book form.

Introduction

"The Great Divorce" is speculative fiction frankly presented as an allegory and the specific details of the fantasy do not tally with the beliefs of any known church nor did Lewis regard it as other than an imaginative attempt at depicting realities which can otherwise not be expressed at all.

In the introduction, Lewis frankly disavows any claim to actual knowledge of the reality embodied by such theological concepts as heaven or hell, and says that even were he to have such knowledge - which he denies - it would, in his opinion, be inexpressible in ordinary human language.

Nonetheless he asserts that even tentative maps of heaven and hell, based merely on what may be inferable by human reasoning about revelation, may prove useful to the believer; and it is with that understanding that he writes.

ources

C. S. Lewis's diverse sources for this work include the works of St. Augustine, Dante Aligheri, John Milton, John Bunyan, Emanuel Swedenborg and Lewis Carroll as well as the anonymous American science-fiction author C.S. Lewis mentions in his preface. George MacDonald, whom Lewis utilizes as a character in the story, Dante, Prudentius and Jeremy Taylor are alluded to in the text of chapter 9. The works of Aristotle appear to be alluded to negatively in chapter 1 as being the sort of books sold in the bookstores of the "grey town."

The inconsistencies between Lewis' sources' descriptions of the afterlife, however, do not affect "The Great Divorce" as much as may be supposed. Of all the writers cited above, only Swedenborg claimed literal - as opposed to poetic - truth for his works. All the others were explicitly and consciously in the position of trying to describe the indescribable - as was Lewis himself.

The portions of the work derived from Swedenborg (the idea that hell is quite similar to earth, indeed, almost indistinguishable from it, and that the dead do not realize that they are, in fact, dead) occur at the very beginning of the story and are not meant to be taken "literally" but merely as a convenient framework for the development of Lewis' story.

Plot summary

In "The Great Divorce", the narrator suddenly, and inexplicably, finds himself in a grim and joyless city (the "grey town", representative of hell). He eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place (and which eventually turns out to be the foothills of heaven). He enters the bus and converses with his fellow passengers as they travel. When the bus reaches its destination, the "people" on the bus — including the narrator — gradually realize that they are ghosts. Although the country is the most beautiful they have ever seen, every feature of the landscape (including streams of water and blades of grass) is unbearably solid compared to themselves: it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass, and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any of them to lift.

Shining figures, men and women whom they have known on earth, come to meet them, and to persuade them to repent and enter heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become acclimated to the country and will feel no discomfort. These figures, called "spirits" to distinguish them from the ghosts, offer to assist them in the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise.

Almost all of the ghosts choose to return instead to the grey town, giving various reasons and excuses. Much of the interest of the book lies in the recognition it awakens of the plausibility and familiarity, along with the thinness and self-deception, of the excuses that the ghosts refuse to abandon, even though to do so would bring them to "reality" and "joy forevermore".

The narrator is met by the writer George MacDonald, whom he hails as his mentor, just as Dante did when encountering Virgil in the "Divine Comedy"; and MacDonald becomes the narrator's guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dante's. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to remain in heaven despite having been in the grey town; for such souls, their time in hell has been a period of testing, and the goodness of heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sorrows into joy, and changing their experience on earth to an extension of heaven. Conversely, the evil of hell works backwards also, so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiness on earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on earth would have been hell. None of the ghosts realize that the grey town is, in fact, hell. Indeed it is not that much different from the life they led on earth: joyless, friendless, and uncomfortable. It just goes on forever, and gets worse and worse, with some characters whispering their fear of the "night" that is to eventually come.

According to MacDonald, heaven and hell cannot coexist in a single soul, and while it is possible to leave hell and enter heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance); or as depicted by Lewis, giving up paltry worldly pleasures and self-indulgences — which have become impossible for the dead anyway — and embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself.

In answer to the narrator's question MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a dream. The use of the chess game imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrator's waking life are reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass".

The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and its ghostly inhabitants are minuscule to the point of being invisible compared with the immensity of heaven and reality. This is illustrated in the encounter of the blessed woman and her husband: she is surrounded by gleaming attendants while he shrinks down to invisibility as he uses a collared tragedian to speak for him.

Toward the end of the narrative the terror of the dreaming narrator of remaining a ghost in the advent of full daybreak in heaven is that of the man with his dream of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter of "The Pilgrim's Progress". The book ends with the narrator awakening from his dream of heaven into the unpleasant reality of wartime Britain, in conscious imitation of "The Pilgrim's Progress", the last sentence of the "First Part" of which is: "So I awoke, and behold, it was a Dream".

Main Characters

*The Narrator (it is implied that this is Lewis himself) — main focus of the narrative
*George MacDonald — the writer, who acts as guide to the narrator.
*And also many other small characters that play some pretty important roles in explaining Lewis' ideas.

Allusions/references to other works

Lewis consciously draws elements of the plot from Dante ("The Divine Comedy") and Bunyan; for example, comparing his meeting with MacDonald to "the first sight of Beatrice." He also credits the idea that hell exists within heaven but is "smaller than one atom" of it to his scientifiction readings; travel by shrinking or enlargement is a common theme in speculative fiction, and the narrator alludes to its presence in Alice in Wonderland. In the preface, Lewis explains the origin of his idea that heaven is immutable to the ghosts from hell, referencing an unnamed science fiction work which gave him the notion of a character being unable to affect matter around him because he had traveled back in time to the 'unchangeable' past.

Music Inspired by "The Great Divorce"

"The Great Divorce" has served as the inspiration for several pieces of music:
*A string quartet piece entitled "The Great Divorce" by Matt Slocum of Sixpence None the Richer.
*"The Great Divorce", a song by Callisto from their album True Nature Unfolds
*The song "The High Countries" by Caedmon's Call on their album Back Home
*Phil Woodward's 2007 rock album [http://www.ghostsandspirits.net/ "Ghosts and Spirits"] .
*The songs "Part One" and "Endless Day" by Wavorly was greatly inspired by this book, as several songs on Conquering the Fear of Flight.