The Great Divorce

CHAPTER 1

Reading Check

1. Somber/dismal/depressed (chapter 1)

2. A bus queue (Chapter 1)

3. Reading his manuscript (Chapter 1)

Short Answer

1. The abrupt beginning without preamble, exposition, or warning has the confusing effect of a dream. Considering it is an allegory related to Christian theology, one reasonable explanation is that the narrator has recently died and is in the afterlife. (Chapter 1)

2. Grey Town is somber, dismal, and interminable, populated with quarrelsome people who are so absorbed in their own miseries they become comical and childish when observed by the staid narrator. Grey Town is symbolic of the kind of life humans lead in the absence of God. (Chapter 1)

3. The Poet is convinced there are no intellectuals in Grey Town. As he is eager for an audience for his manuscript, he boarded the bus in hopes of finding recognition for his talents. This goal contrasts with the narrator’s reasons for getting on the bus, which was a vague desire to escape the gloom of Grey Town and a belief that the bus would show him something better. Allegorically, this offers two contrasting reasons for seeking Christianity or Heaven. (Chapter 1)

CHAPTERS 2-3

Reading Check

1. Forgotten spectacles (Chapter 2)

2. Fighting among passengers (Chapter 2)

3. Living too easy/lack of scarcity (Chapter 2)

Short Answer

1. The Poet’s belief that he is an unrecognized genius whose talents were never appreciated in human society and whose intellect kept him moving from institution to institution looking for answers reveals a truth about human misery. Rather than taking setbacks as a sign that there is a deficiency within his character, the Poet is content to blame others for their inability to recognize his greatness. In this way, the poet has made his own misery by creating an illusion that the world will always be against him, and that his role is to suffer unfairness. (Chapter 2)

2. Ikey’s plan is to entice everyone with physical goods and then use the desire for these physical goods to foster cooperation and, eventually, to establish laws enforcing better behavior. However, this does not address the core issue, as the people are quarrelsome by nature and isolated by their own voluntary actions. Secular fixtures such as laws, customs, and economies cannot fix the spiritual defects of humankind. (Chapter 2)

3. The light of the grassy plain reveals how insubstantial and stricken the passengers look as they leave the shadows of Grey Town. The shadows were the protection of their personal delusions, and these shadows are challenged when exposed to the light and weight of greater truths. (Chapter 2-3)

CHAPTERS 4-5

Reading Check

1. Heaven (Chapter 4)

2. The Big Man (Chapter 4)

3. The Apostate (Chapter 5)

Short Answer

1. The back-and-forth dialogue between the first Spirit and his former employer reveals a didactic narrative pattern that Lewis uses throughout the rest of the story to expose and undermine common misconceptions about Christian Theology. (Chapter 4)  

2. The Big Man believes that he should be in Heaven because he has been “good,” and he believes the Spirit should not be in Heaven, because the Big Man knows that the former employee killed a man. This directly challenges the idea that entry to Heaven is about good acts; the Spirit claims that no man is good enough to enter a place of perfection and can only do so via God’s mercy. (Chapter 4)

3. The Spirit implores the Apostate to rejoin him in faith, but the Apostate cannot imagine enjoying a world in which all his questions are answered definitively. The Apostate is too in love with the pursuit of knowledge to value the knowledge itself, revealing a flaw not with God’s laws and creation, but with human perception. (Chapter 5)

CHAPTERS 6-8

Reading Check

1. A golden apple tree (Chapter 6)

2. Hard-Bitten (Chapter 7)

3. To prove heaven exists (Chapter 8)

Short Answer

1. Representing Truth, the apples cannot fit into a place of illusion and self-deception, and though he has found Truth itself, Ikey in his own delusion tries to take what he himself does not understand to others. Though he has good intentions, he cannot accept that he lacks the capacity to do what only God can and makes himself a martyr when he is only human. Like the others, his misery is a result of his own skewed perception of reality. Even holding truth, he cannot get it to himself, or to others, without Divine aid. (Chapter 6)

2. Hard-Bitten, the skeptical ghost, is the most convincing the narrator has approached because the delusion of viewing the world and people in it as a series of broken promises and disappointments is easy to support during World War II. For the narrator, doubt becomes the biggest impediment in his quest for faith, because the bleakness of the world he has left seems to implicate God of some kind of negligence. (Chapter 7)

3. Desiring proof is not having faith, but humans with their own limited perspective naturally crave proof, just as the narrator wishes the woman would follow the Spirit to Heaven so he could see that there was a way. (Chapter 8) 

CHAPTER 9

Reading Check

1. To help the narrator recover his despondency (Chapter 9)

2. States of perception (Chapter 9)

3. Survival/eternal life/longevity (Chapter 9)

Short Answer

1. According to MacDonald, Heaven is reality itself, and people reject reality because they fear they will lose a vital part of themselves if they accept it, but the truth is all they will lose are their illusions and self-deceptions. (Chapter 9)

2. Sir Archibald spent his life studying survival and when he died, he rejected Heaven on the grounds that everyone in Heaven would have no trouble surviving, and thus, would not need or appreciate his life’s work. Sir Archibald exhibits distorted thinking because he claims to care about survival and yet rejects the only things enabling survival. Sir Archibald mistakes his immortal soul for his life’s finite work. (Chapter 9)

3. MacDonald argues that this human fear of changing something vital to the self is not entirely mistaken, because accepting reality changes perception, and with a change of perception comes a sort of spiritual death—that is, the death of the idea of the old self in favor of becoming the truest self. (Chapter 9)

CHAPTERS 10-11

Reading Check

1. To harangue her husband (Chapter 10)

2. A stallion (Chapter 11)

3. A choice/distorted perception (Chapter 11)

Short Answer

1. In life, Robert’s wife was completely dissatisfied with her lot. She cannot separate herself from her own dissatisfaction and thus is the instrument of her own suffering. (Chapter 10)

2. Like the lizard on his shoulder, the man let pleasure lead him without realizing it was a burden. When he recognizes the source of his suffering, like his perception, the lizard transforms from something burdensome to something that helps him carry his burdens. (Chapter 11)

3. The narrator does not understand why a grieving mother would be denied entry to Heaven. He reasons that unlike the haranguing woman, whose actions are not motivated by love, the mother is simply expressing a natural and innate love for her son. MacDonald argues that besides the fact that Heaven is not a means to an end, her love has become distorted in her own view of her grief as righteous, despite the harm her grieving has caused herself and others. (Chapter 11)

CHAPTERS 12-14

Reading Check

1. She misses him (Chapter 12)

2. Leaving him to suffer (Chapter 13)

3. A chess set (Chapter 14)

Short Answer

1. Because he craves control and in life gained it by manipulating people to pity him, Frank appears as a man bound to another who speaks so melodramatically that the narrator dubs him the Tragedian. Ironically, Frank has less control in death; as the scene with his former wife Sarah Smith concludes, Frank diminishes until only the Tragedian is visible. His desire for control leaves him at the mercy of his own tool of manipulation—his self-pity—which now prevents his clear understanding of reality. (Chapters 12-13)

2. To the narrator, Sarah’s happiness despite her husband’s suffering is inconceivable. MacDonald establishes that both fates—her happiness and his torment—came about by their own powers of choice. This illustrates the difficult truth that not everyone will accept grace. (Chapters 12-13)

3. While the symbolism of the chess set attempts to reconcile the concepts of free will and divine determinism, it has advantages and disadvantages. Like God, true chess experts can project moves into the future and guide the outcome, which is a good representation of divine determinism. However, the chess pieces in the vision move by themselves, miming the motions of others in the past, but they do not move by themselves in a real game of chess. Furthermore, the pieces have proscriptive movements aligned with their role in the game, tipping the balance more toward divine determinism and away from any sense of free will. (Chapter 14)