‘The Great Divorce’ and C.S. Lewis’ Fiction

I’m reading and enjoying C.S. Lewis’ adult fiction (again after many years), The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters. Whereas J.R.R. Tolkien developed an epic saga with many characters with extended history and events, Lewis’ approach was for simpler, shorter tales, yet still in this approach bringing out different character types that we can relate to. (One thing that Tolkien objected to, in his review of Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet, was that it was too short!) Lewis’ approach is more direct, of course, that of one who is still considered the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century. Lewis also expressed the same ideas in multiple different ways, in different fiction writings and styles, as any great writer and communicator should — as is true of Holy Scripture itself, where the same doctrinal ideas are brought forth in so many different Bible books of varying genres and time periods.

Through a fable (as Lewis described it), The Great Divorce presents brief looks at many different characters who rode the bus up from hell, with very focused dialogue that strikes at the heart of the matter, of the soul and the person’s attitude toward God and what it is that they love instead of God. What comes up repeatedly is how the vast majority of hell’s inhabitants are too much in love with their own vices, that they are unable to think outside of the box of their preconceptions, and heaven is not to their liking. These stories illustrate the well-known quote of C.S. Lewis (the quote attributed to the narrator’s guide, George MacDonald, in The Great Divorce), that there are some people who say to God, thy will be done, and others to whom God says thy will be done, as well as the familiar saying that people who do not love God now in this life, who do not love God’s people and church now, would be bored and unhappy and not fit to enjoy God’s presence in heaven.

As the “ghosts” (the characters from hell) continue to focus inwardly and see only their own misery, their own self-focused thoughts or even misplaced and out of proportion love of a mother to her son, the heavenly guides try their best (and generally fail) in this one last opportunity for them to see the wonder and joy of heaven. This exchange, for instance, with an intellectual atheist apostate:

‘If the thirst of the Reason is really dead…,’ said the Spirit, and then stopped as though pondering. Then suddenly he said, ‘Can you, at least, still desire happiness?’

‘Happiness, my dear Dick,’ said the Ghost placidly, ‘happiness, as you will come to see when you are older, lies in the path of duty. Which reminds me…Bless my soul, I’d nearly forgotten. Of course I can’t come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there. Oh yes! there is plenty of intellectual life. Not of a very high quality, perhaps. One notices a certain lack of grip—a certain confusion of mind. That is where I can be of some use to them.

Followed up by The Screwtape Letters, the underlying idea that was indicated in conversation between Dick and the Ghost, is described more directly by Uncle Screwtape.  From letter #13:

… allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks about it to his new friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there—a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures. …The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality.

How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn’t you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value? And that the sort of pleasure which the book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel off from his sensibility the — kind of crust you have been forming on it, and make him feel that he was coming home, — recovering himself? … To get him away from those is therefore always a point gained; even in things indifferent it is always desirable to substitute the standards of the World, or convention, or fashion, for a human’s own real likings and dislikings. …

I would make it a rule to eradicate from my patient any strong personal taste which is not actually a sin, even if it is something quite trivial such as a fondness for county cricket or collecting stamps or drinking cocoa. Such things, I grant you, have nothing of virtue in them; but there is a sort of innocence and humility and self-forgetfulness about them which I distrust. The man who truly and disinterestedly enjoys any one thing in the world, for its own sake, and without caring twopence what other people say about it, is by that very fact fore-armed against some of our subtlest modes of attack. You should always try to make the patient abandon the people or food or books he really likes in favour of the “‘best”’ ‘people, the “right” food, the “important” books. I have known a human defended from Strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions.

Reading The Great Divorce also brings to mind the rebellious Dwarves of Narnia in The Last Battle: having been deceived once by the ape, they hardened their hearts and decided not to be “taken in” by the real Aslan. The group of dwarves sit on the ground, under the open sky of a sunny day in Aslan’s New Narnia, and yet they cannot see it and believe that they are in a dark and dirty stable and interpret every interaction within that mindset: it is dark, it is night, and the fresh flowers that Lucy tries to hand them, they reject as “filthy stable-litter.”

In The Great Divorce, other memorable images abound:

• The man with the lizard, and then the lizard was killed but transformed into a great white Stallion — one of the few successes among the ghosts.

 

• The woman who placed love of her son above all other loves, leaving no room for God, and in the end had neither. “He who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Ref. Matthew 10:37-39)

 

• The tragedian and the dwarf as personifications of an unsaved husband, who literally shrink in size and finally vanish away, after the efforts of his Christian wife to explain true joy to him — but he could only be NEEDED by her and was undone because she did not NEED him in that self-consumed way.

Another great section, the guide’s (George MacDonald) interpretation of the woman’s love for her son:

‘But am I to tell them at home that this man’s sensuality proved less of an obstacle than that poor woman’s love for her son? For that was, at any rate, an excess of love.’

‘Ye’ll tell them no such thing,’ he replied sternly. ‘Excess of love, did ye say? There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But it may well be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it. No, no.

This is so true, and something brought out frequently in the stories of the early church martyrs. Many of the saints lives, in the calendar of saints honored throughout the year in Classical Christianity, tell of pagan friends who supposedly loved them, who strongly desired to have the Christian — such as the pious young woman, to have her as wife. Yet when the woman expressed her strong desire of a life lived in service to Christ, instead of marrying him — such hatred and cruelty and brutal torture measured out to the one supposedly so loved.

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Christian Audio Free Book This Month: George MacDonald Classic

A reader recently recommended a few George MacDonald fantasy fiction and longer length novels for my reading.  Interestingly enough, one of these titles, The Wise Woman, is the current monthly free offer at Christianaudio.com.  For the last few years I have collected the monthly free audio books at ChristianAudio, and have read several of the more interesting ones.  The George MacDonald title is a little over 5 hours, and good audio quality.

MacDonald’s books are in the public domain, here at Project Gutenberg in several formats, as well as at Librivox.org, a great source for free audio recordings of books in the public domain.  Since Librivox works with volunteers, not all the recordings are of the best quality, but many I have listened to over the years have been good quality.

As is well known, George MacDonald’s stories were a great influence on several 20th century authors, especially C.S. Lewis, and others such as G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle, such that he is now known as the “grandfather” of the Inklings.  See this article regarding Tolkien’s earlier and later views regarding George MacDonald

The Wise Woman is a parable (as indicated in the full title), a story about two very spoiled and undisciplined little girls, one a wealthy princess and one a rural commoner, and how a mysterious character, the wise woman, takes them away from their surroundings, to her cottage, and through many lessons teaches them self-control and character.  It reads as much closer to allegory, at places reminding me of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” type of allegory; it is not quite in that pure, formal form of allegory, but at many places the characters and events clearly have a particular meaning, about our actions and behavior.

MacDonald is also much more focused on morality lessons for children.  This story certainly fits in the tradition that had been established earlier in the 19th century by the efforts of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect, including the morality tracts and books of Hannah More.   The fantasy elements are within the context of this world, not fully developed into a separate world such as Narnia or Middle Earth, and C.S. Lewis clearly improved on the fairy story in his generation.  I recall some of the children’s moral lesson aspect in Chronicles of Narnia, but in Lewis’ writing this is toned down compared to MacDonald.  But as an influence on Lewis’ imagination, MacDonald can be appreciated in his own right, and as a step along the way to the 20th century fantasy writing.  Another key feature of MacDonald’s The Wise Woman, which Lewis and Tolkien also continued, is the use of poetry and songs and appreciation for beauty in nature.

The Wise Woman is certainly worth reading, a short read and especially in a good audio recording.

 

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