The Great Divorce Essay Example for Free

The Great Divorce auditionThe Great Divorce, the storyteller suddenly, and inexplicably, finds himself in a grim and joyless city (the grey townsfolk, representative of hell). He eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place (and which eventually turns by to be the foothills of promised land). He enters the bus and converses with his fellow passengers as they traveling. 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 device characteristic 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 cognise on worldly concern, come to meet them, and to persuade them to repent and enter nirvan a 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, tenderize 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, bounteous 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 abjure 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, dear as Dante did when see to iting Virgil in the Divine Comedy and MacDonald becomes the narrators guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dantes. 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 realm to an extension of heaven.Conversely, the evil of hell whole kit and boodle backwards withal, 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 disparate 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 business organization of the night that is to eventually come.According to MacDonald, heaven and hell cannot coexist in a single soul, and firearm it is possible to leave hell and enter heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance) or as r epresent by Lewis, giving up paltry worldly pleasures and self-indulgences which have become impossible for the dead at least and embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself. In answer to the narrators question MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a daydream.The use of the chess game imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrators waking life are reminiscent of Lewis Carrolls Alices 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 invisibleness as he uses a collared tragedian to speak for him.Toward the end of the narrative the terror of the dreaming narrator of be 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 Pilgrims 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 Pilgrims 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 assign the idea that hell exists within heaven but is smaller than one atom of it to his scienti lying readings travel by shrinking or enlargement is a common them e in speculative fiction, and the narrator alludes to its front man 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.