The Great Divorce

In The Great Divorce, Lewis depicts a man’s encounter of Heaven and Hell, where he interacts with and witnesses many different beings and opinions. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator is wandering around aimlessly through a miserable and dismal town. As he walks, he sees a bus stop and proceeds to get in line, not knowing where the bus would take him. The narrator quickly notices the hostility of the others in the line and observes the strife between the passengers as they struggle to board the bus, once on, the narrator begins to have a conversation with one of the passengers that quickly gets interrupted by other passengers and their quarrelsome behavior. Upon arrival, many of the passengers realize that they are no longer pure, however seem to have become…

After reading C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, I understand the different aspects of Heaven and Hell in his vision. The question is how C.S. Lewis describes Heaven and Hell in his book. Before describing what Heaven and Hell looks like, here is a brief description of the book. C.S. Lewis starts his book as the narrator, walking through the mean streets of an empty, grey city called Hell; he waits on a bus stop with other people (1-2). As he goes on a bus trip to Heaven, he encounters different…

that the sinful ghosts would never understand the true reality of Heaven until they released their worldly goals and selfish ambitions. When the ghosts renounced their sinful natures or haughty ideals and accepted God’s “Bleeding Charity,” as one ghost puts it, they gradually became solid. Their selfish justifications were the things holding them back from accepting heaven. Of course, this is not as simple as it may appear. People that have believed a lie their whole lives may never be willing…

The Great Divorce is a book filled with a series of many Christian theological ideas most of them revolving around the idea of life after death, specifically, the ideas of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. The way those theological ideas are portrayed is through the story’s setting with each location in the story representing some aspect of the afterlife. The book begins with the narrator travelling through a land that the readers are supposed to associate with either Hell or Purgatory however it is…

Lay theologian, C.S. Lewis, projects his own conception of Heaven and Hell most prominently in his work, The Great Divorce. Here, he depicts Hell as being a place that is not necessarily eternal, but a place where one chooses to be and has the option to leave. Lewis states, “They lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids… but when you get there it’s just like any other town” (53). Hell is not this fiery furnace that society often depicts, thus…

Monika Hilder makes “theological feminism” the lens through which she evaluates C.S. Lewis’ portrayal of women in his works. She discusses this term as the understanding that, according to Christian theology, that “the subordination of ego as well as of concerns of worldly power to the ultimate authority of divine love is liberating” (Hilder 21). Whereas in her essay “A Sword Between the Sexes,” Mary Van Leeuwen expresses her frustration with Lewis’ portrayal of “archetypal femininity and wifely…

In the Seventeenth Letter of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape starts to explain to Wormwood the fallacy of Gluttony when he is tempting his patients. Gluttony has the meaning to be overindulged in food and drinks. The gluttony of delicacy’s should be considered because people do not always car about how much food but, care about if it is properly spiced, overcooked, or if it looks pleasing to the eye. Screwtape provides a great example of Gluttony when he is talking about the…

A Familiar Character “The Screwtape Letters” is an epistolary novel written by C.S. Lewis in 1942 from the point of view of a senior demon writing to his nephew. Primarily written with Irony and Satire, this book is more than a literary masterpiece. The Letters are thought-provoking and inspiring, in that they are an interpretive description of what the Devil is trying to do through various situations in our lives. In the letters, the human character, referred to as “The Patient”, experiences…

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis portrayed evil in a way that I found extremely interesting. A demon named Screwtape writes letters to his nephew, Wormwood, to guide him on trying to keep a human away from God. He tells Wormwood that he should keep his “Patient” busy and never allow him time to get close with God. The way that evil is portrayed is interesting because it is never manifested to the human. It is just a force prompting them to do certain things that will eventually lead them to…

The Screwtape Letters Literary Analysis The Screwtape letters is a satire written by C.S. Lewis is a classic British literature novel in which many of the themes present are still used today. The letters are about two devils named Screwtape and Wormwood who are trying to steer a man whom they call “The Patient” away from believing in Christianity. Wormwood uses techniques to sway the beliefs of the patient like pointing out hypocrisy in the church. Wormwood and Screwtape also point out some…