Lawyer of Denver

The Great Divorce

Description

What if anyone in Hell could take a bus trip to Heaven and stay there forever if they wanted to?

In The Great Divorce C. S. Lewis again employs his formidable talent for fable and allegory. The writer finds himself in Hell boarding a bus bound for Heaven. The amazing opportunity is that anyone who wants to stay in Heaven, can. This is the starting point for an extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment. Lewis's revolutionary idea is the discovery that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. In Lewis's own words, "If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell."

The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis's Divine Comedy: the narrator bears strong resemblance to Lewis (by way of Dante); his Virgil is the fantasy writer George MacDonald; and upon boarding a bus in a nondescript neighborhood, the narrator is taken to Heaven and Hell. The book's primary message is presented with almost oblique tidiness--"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" However, the narrator's descriptions of sin and temptation will hit quite close to home for many readers. Lewis has a genius for describing the intricacies of vanity and self-deception, and this book is tremendously persistent in forcing its reader to consider the ultimate consequences of everyday pettiness. --Michael Joseph Gross

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-09-07
Summary: "Wonderfully imaginative & thought provoking"

A short fantasy about various souls being sorted out after death. He specifically says he's not trying to describe what he thinks happens immediately after you die, but instead gives you examples of other people's troubles and how they make choices (even those choices made by people who think it's an option to not make a choice) about their afterlife; don't try to make theological sense out of it. He's instead trying to show you that the choice is yours to make now, before you die. You don't have to, and shouldn't, wait for purgatory (if you happen to believe in purgatory). It's definitely worth reading, especially since the investment in time isn't that great (under 200 pages).

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-09-06
Summary: "Awesome allegory of life after death"

If you aren't familiar with C.S. Lewis, he has an amazing way of turning seemingly complicated topics into understandable truths. In the Great Divorce, the reader gets a short, sweet and spectacular glimpse into what heaven and hell might look like.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-04
Summary: "Amazing insight"

I listened to this book on cd by Lewis quite some time ago. I have read several of his works. The Screwtape Letters, excellent book, was, however, difficult to digest. I found that I had to take that one on in bites to get the full benefits of its insights. This book, however, was something I could just wrap my mind around and indulge my imagination with. Rather than read the book I tried the cd's on a whim and was not disappointed. The narration is so well done. Lewis is such a gifted writer and minister of the Word of God. He presents it in a way that is understandable and engaging in this particular piece.

Anyone could benefit from the lessons taught. It is essentially a battle between good and evil no matter how you spin it. As individuals we face a choice in every moment as to which side we are going to pick. The latter is made out to be so appealing...an addiction that plagues your thoughts and actions, clinging on for dear life. The Great Divorce plots out a course to free yourself of that wolf in sheep's clothing and be free to experience something so much greater.

Give it a try. You will not be disappointed.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-30
Summary: "Great book"

I highly recommend this book. It was in good condition, and the book itself is very well written. It's a compelling visualization of heaven and hell, in a somewhat symbolic manner. C.S. Lewis is a genius.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-24
Summary: "Insightfully poignant"

In the preface, Lewis suggests that this book is a sort of response to Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Now, I haven't read that particular book, so I can't say how adequate this particular response is, but overall, I really enjoyed the themes, presentations and thoughts brought out in this book.

The basic premise is that Lewis finds himself in a strange gray town where he boards a bus with a number of other passengers. After a somewhat strange trip, he finds himself in a beautiful, but strange location. He follows some of the other passengers as they explore the new land and are met by the inhabitants. TO "spoil" the premise a bit, the "gray town" represents HELL and the shining land at the end of the bus ride represents HEAVEN. The passengers are ghosts who have taken a trip from Hell to Heaven...and as they are greeted by the brilliant beings in Heaven, we learn that the inhabitants from Hell are given the option of staying in Heaven. Naturally there are some rules in order to stay (they must give up remaining vices, pride, animosity and embrace the everpresent and all important love of God).

The book is broken into a series of vignettes as the narrator watches the behavior of the visitors from Hell and their interactions with Heaven and with the angels they find there.

At first, the narrator wanders alone through Heaven but after a time he encounters an angel who engages him in conversation. The remaining chapters then reminded me a bit of the interaction between Dante and Virgil while Dante wandered through the various levels of Hell/Inferno and made observations on the inhabitants there.

This book is another great example of Lewis's thoughtfulness and insight into religion, heaven, hell, God's love and other elements of Christianity. It's not as scholarly as "The Four Loves" and isn't as allegorical as his Narnia series. It's more akin to his work with Screwtape and shares many similarities. We are again shown examples of how the human mind gets caught up with pride, offense, lust, greed and other elements that hold us back from attaining our eternal potential. Where Screwtape is very tongue in cheek and has the humorous voice of a devil, Divorce is humorous at times but also has a certain sadness in its poignancy. In Screwtape we were distanced from the actual temptation and fall of humanity. Here we get to see individual humans who have fallen from Grace and (sadly) hold fast to their fallen state even while sitting on the borders of Heaven itself.

I really enjoyed this book. It had a lot of very thoughtful segments and passages. I found real examples in each of the character sketches he presented. There are a few points of religion on which I vary quite significantly from Lewis's proposal, but from a high level, I found this exploration very intriguing, well crafted and (although certainly a fiction) of the general feeling and spirit of the concepts of Heaven and Hell.

I want to share one particular passage really stuck with me in pointing out the importance of our own agency and choice:


"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose 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."


In God's plan for us, He truly wants us ALL to return to Heaven to partake of His presence, but He will not force us. The choice is always ours. But He cannot modify the laws that dictate who may and may not enter Heaven and His presence. If we choose the path that takes us away from Heaven, that is our choice. He will present us opportunities again and again to repent of our choices and choose His path. But in the end, it is a matter of choices and the consequences of those choices.

I found this book very thoughtful, insightful and inspirational. It shows great insight into the human mind with relation to the eternal. It also does a great job of illustrating how our own failings may hold us back even if we don't acknowledge them.

Well worth reading.