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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
It’s about choice - God and Self. Good or bad. Known or unknown.
I think the 3 stars is really a rating of my ability to understand the book. I think basically I’m not smart enough to grasp all the abstract-ness. It’s clearly a very clever book.
As always, I love his extended thought experiments. They are completely fresh to me and faith affirming.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
The Great Divorce has been on my TBR pile for what seems like eons and I'm so glad I finally got to it. There's a good reason that this little fable about souls from hell (or perhaps purgatory – Lewis plays fast and loose with eschatology) on a day trip to heaven is so iconic in bookish Christian circles.
It's a brief little book – you could knock it out in one sitting if you had a few hours to spare – but it doesn't lack for depth. In fact, it holds up a mirror to the reader in a way that's not always comfortable, challenging me to ask myself what pieces of hell I'm clinging to. The central drama of the story is that the souls from hell are invited to stay in heaven, on the condition that they renounce their self-love, in whatever form that may take. Some must give up their intellectual pretensions, others their self-pity and others again their obsessive, possessive love for spouses or family members. As ever, CSL has a great knack for drawing out the blend of comedy and tragedy that always exists in the human condition: in their struggles with themselves, the in-between souls are often laughable (like the bishop who doesn't actually believe in God), but their rejections of heaven are also desperately sad (in particular, the damned soul who was married to a saint in life and cannot overcome his self-pity enough to join her in heaven).
In many ways, the book is like a companion piece to The Four Loves, as Lewis goes over much of the same territory, demonstrating by fiction rather than arguments that our natural loves, even those that seem inherently good and holy, will actually result in our damnation unless we voluntarily give them up. That's a daunting prospect, of course, but Lewis also gives us a glimpse of hope: a soul who does manage to give up his attachment to earthly sensuality is not only freed from the suffering it caused him, but his weakness is transformed into a strength. It's a wonderful exemplification of one of our greatest mysteries, that inverted Divine Logic whereby living requires dying and giving is the only way to receive.
My one caveat in all this is that while The Great Divorce is ostensibly about the afterlife, it only really makes sense if read as an allegory for our spiritual lives here in this life. CSL seems to find the idea of a choice remaining after death reassuring; however, for my part, I find the idea of our earthly struggle going on even after death quite horrifying. Even the Holy Souls in purgatory, for all the pain of separation and waiting that they suffer, know that the end of their exile is in sight. To quote St. Catherine of Genoa: "Apart from the happiness of the saints in heaven, I think there is no joy comparable to that of the souls in purgatory."
It's a brief little book – you could knock it out in one sitting if you had a few hours to spare – but it doesn't lack for depth. In fact, it holds up a mirror to the reader in a way that's not always comfortable, challenging me to ask myself what pieces of hell I'm clinging to. The central drama of the story is that the souls from hell are invited to stay in heaven, on the condition that they renounce their self-love, in whatever form that may take. Some must give up their intellectual pretensions, others their self-pity and others again their obsessive, possessive love for spouses or family members. As ever, CSL has a great knack for drawing out the blend of comedy and tragedy that always exists in the human condition: in their struggles with themselves, the in-between souls are often laughable (like the bishop who doesn't actually believe in God), but their rejections of heaven are also desperately sad (in particular, the damned soul who was married to a saint in life and cannot overcome his self-pity enough to join her in heaven).
In many ways, the book is like a companion piece to The Four Loves, as Lewis goes over much of the same territory, demonstrating by fiction rather than arguments that our natural loves, even those that seem inherently good and holy, will actually result in our damnation unless we voluntarily give them up. That's a daunting prospect, of course, but Lewis also gives us a glimpse of hope: a soul who does manage to give up his attachment to earthly sensuality is not only freed from the suffering it caused him, but his weakness is transformed into a strength. It's a wonderful exemplification of one of our greatest mysteries, that inverted Divine Logic whereby living requires dying and giving is the only way to receive.
My one caveat in all this is that while The Great Divorce is ostensibly about the afterlife, it only really makes sense if read as an allegory for our spiritual lives here in this life. CSL seems to find the idea of a choice remaining after death reassuring; however, for my part, I find the idea of our earthly struggle going on even after death quite horrifying. Even the Holy Souls in purgatory, for all the pain of separation and waiting that they suffer, know that the end of their exile is in sight. To quote St. Catherine of Genoa: "Apart from the happiness of the saints in heaven, I think there is no joy comparable to that of the souls in purgatory."
Ultimately what I liked most were the metaphors. If a skilled author uses nature to illustrate the woes of hollow consumerism, I listen.
Quite possibly my favorite fictional work on eschatology - because it is so short, it is all the more of a forceful concise punch. Divine Comedy is fantastic, but partly lost to time due to the irrelevance of certain aspects. This book rivals the Purgatorio of Dante, I think. But Dante’s Inferno are matchless among any book of read.