C.S. Lewis Predicted Today’s World
The depiction of Hell in The Great Divorce
Imagine a place that’s perpetually dark and gloomy — a place where people just can’t get along and have no desire to be around one another.
Everyone you come across is only thinking of themselves.
They’re all preoccupied with how they’ve been wronged by someone else.
And they’re guarded because of it.
They’re hostile toward one another and treated with hostility as a result.
Any interaction is bound to turn into a quarrel.
People there spend most of their time seeking a place of solitude —
while yearning for an alternative.
But it’s also a place where there are no demands placed on your time.
There is no job to go to.
There are no obligations to others.
The only rule: others are bound to treat you the way you treat them.
Otherwise, you’re free to do whatever you please.
You have endless time to finally do whatever you always wanted —
with no natural constraints.
Many of the people there are engaged in vain or grandiose pursuits.
They aggrandize themselves with poetry no one is interested in reading,
or by delivering lectures no one is interested in hearing,
or by laboring over paintings no one will more than glance at.
Their work is ostensibly of benefit to others
but they’re perpetually frustrated
by a lack of recognition and appreciation.
It isn’t necessarily for lack of talent or skill on their part
but because they’re doomed by their intentions.
The poet is showcasing his depth and verbosity.
The lecturer is trying to dazzle his audience
with his charisma, prowess, or fluency.
The artist is painting to be congratulated.
The author is enraptured by the products of his own intellect.
They have nothing to offer anyone else.
They’re not communicating with anybody,
because there’s no one they see worthy of communicating with.
It’s a realm filled with people who have contempt for one another
but long for admiration.
And it’s a place without scarcity.
It’s impossibly vast and ever-expanding.
You can have anything you wish by merely thinking of it.
Imagine the house you’ve always wanted, and there it appears.
Think of your favorite meal or drink, and it’s there in your hands.
There is no shortage of food, water, or shelter.
However, the food doesn’t nourish you,
nor does the water sate you,
nor does the shelter shield you from the rain.
Because nothing is real in this place. It’s the land of the dead.
But it’s also not a place that you’re condemned to inhabit for eternity.
There is no one guarding the exit.
Quite the opposite:
busses frequently come to ferry people to another place —
one that’s filled with life.
It’s one of sunlight and green pastures.
There, people are peaceful and seek out each others’ company.
They enjoy the same freedoms,
but their reality is categorically different:
They are happy.
When the bus arrives at this better place,
the riders are greeted by missionaries and welcomed to stay.
However, there is a period of adjustment to these new surroundings that most cannot tolerate.
Some immediately turn around to board the bus,
shaking their heads and complaining that they knew:
it was too good to be true.
The people from the land of the dead are only ghosts
and are used to being surrounded by figments of their imaginations.
This new place is hard and solid.
Being in it hurts them at first.
This is why the missionaries have come,
to guide and reassure them.
Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.
Those who aren’t bothered by the physical discomfort turn back when they learn that there is no place for their vices.
An Episcopal priest loses all interest in being there
when he is told that there is no need for his preaching.
The spirit, a friend who had come to fetch him,
welcomes him but tells him that
everyone there knows the truth already.
They know because they’re in direct contact with it.
This bores the priest and he bids farewell
to return to his heretical musings.
He has papers to write
and sermons to give
and people to enlighten.
He doesn’t want to waste his talents
on people who won’t be receptive to his inquiry.
C.S. Lewis’s portrayal of Hell in The Great Divorce is one that in many ways exemplifies an ideal we envision for the world and are actively seeking to create via technology and political intervention:
a place where harmony is created artificially through the elimination of scarcity.
Lewis’s Hell offers unlimited freedom, abundance, and peace.
But the freedom is for nothing,
the abundance is imaginary,
and the peace is only achieved by self-isolation.
Why can’t this hell be a heaven? Doesn’t it have all of the basic ingredients?
There is a scene toward the end worth summarizing:
In it there is a woman who has been living happily in Heaven for some time.
Her husband finally joins her from Hell.
He is depicted as a dwarf who is chained to an odd creature
that Lewis calls “the Tragedian”.
The husband is angry and hurt to discover that
his wife has been happy without him.
Even though she is joyful to see him,
he pitches a melodramatic hissy fit that
makes her laugh with amusement.
This only wounds him further.
“You mean,” said the Tragedian, “you mean — you did not love me truly in the old days?”
“Only in a poor sort of way,” she answered. “…There was a little real love in it. But what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved. In the main I loved you for my own sake: because I needed you.”
“And now!” said the Tragedian with a hackneyed gesture of despair. “Now, you need me no more?”
“But of course not!” said the Lady. “…I am full now, not empty…Strong, not weak. You shall be the same. Come and see. We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”
For one moment, while she looked at him with her love and mirth, [the husband] saw the absurdity of the Tragedian…But the light that reached him, reached him against his will. This was not the meeting he had pictured; he would not accept it.
The husband accuses the wife of not caring about him at all,
that she doesn’t really want him there if she doesn’t need him there.
He goes on about how she would toss him out into the cold,
with no concern for his suffering.
The wife gets fed up and tells him to knock it off.
“…Stop it. Stop it at once.”
“Stop what?”
“Using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way…Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity…”
She continues to engage with him patiently for some time,
but to no avail.
“…Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?”
“Love? How dare you use that sacred word?” said the Tragedian.
“…Perhaps you had better leave me. Or stay, if you prefer. If it would help you and if it were possible I would go down with you into Hell: but you cannot bring Hell into me.”
“You do not love me,” said the Tragedian in a thin bat-like voice…
Toward the end, it is revealed that the infinitely vast hell all of these ghosts had come from was nothing but a tiny crack in the dirt. The reason they were so thin and ghostly in Heaven was because they had expanded with the bus that brought them there. It took time for them to fill in and adapt to the new environment. And once they had, they couldn’t ever return.
Heaven is orders of magnitude greater than Hell which, even though it might seem endless while you’re there, is a small and petty place.
Sorry if this looks weird. I was experimenting with the “white space”. I think I’m just going to stick to writing in paragraphs going forward, for better or worse.
