Hell Is [Waiting in Line With] Other People - Ch. 1

I think this is where I first learned the word "queue" (which has greatly helped my Scrabble game over the years!). The Narrator in Lewis' Great Divorce sees a line and gets in it, as there doesn't seem to be anything better to do in gray town where he finds himself. Lewis intends for us to realize much later that this gray town is hell and the bus the line is waiting for offers a visit to heaven, but nervous publishers always give that away on the cover or inside flap, doubting that the title or even Lewis' name will sell the book if people don't know "what it's ABOUT;" it is doubtful anyone ever reads the story without having this sort of "spoiler" from the beginning.

If I did first learn the word "queue" from this book, it means I read it before the many other British novels I have read since, and before I'd seen much British TV or film. Consequently, the various characters and accents I now recognize were totally new to me, and I missed a good deal of the subtle humor and social criticism Lewis offers here. But I think I must have picked up the fact that hell was depicted, here at the beginning, as waiting in line. And though the line is moving, it is due to the fact that various people in it get disgusted with the line--or more often with each other--and leave.

It also means that when I first read this book, it was near to the time I first read Jean Paul Sartre's play No Exit, which gives us the line "Hell is other people." Though there is far more that Lewis and Sartre would disagree on, to some extent they seem to agree on this. Though Sartre's hell is a closed room and Lewis' hell is an ever-expanding suburb, one of the things that makes hell hell is the company, and neither would agree with the flippant statement often made, "Sure I want to go to hell; that's where all my friends are!" One's friends, if not unbearable in this life, certainly will be once they've become hellions!

Back on the Bus

I first read The Great Divorce when I first read all of Lewis' fictional works, in my late teens and early twenties (which would have been the late 1970s and early 1980s). As with much of my reading at that time, I remember the idea of the book more than the actual book itself. Like most evangelical Christians of that time, I had a largely utilitarian approach to art and creative things in general; the form (and to some degree the artistry itself) was unimportant, so long as it made a point (and the point was some spiritual truth which the audience needed to know for the sake of their souls). At some point when I was even younger and less mature, I had read Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" and had been appalled by its heresy and I saw this book of Lewis' as its refutation (though Lewis starts off his preface denying that very fact). My memory of the book was that its point was to prove that everyone who ends up in hell chooses to be there, and even if they were given the opportunity to go to heaven, they would choose not to stay. In re-reading the book now, I see that Lewis would say most would choose not to stay, but some actually do. And, frankly, I'm not sure what to make of that...

At any rate, the point of this post is that it is high time for me to re-read the book, to wrestle anew with the ideas expressed in it, and to freshly appraise it as a work of literature (something I was just beginning to understand at the time I first read it). In other words, it's time to get back on the bus.

The Great Divorce (Preface)

Re-reading The Great Divorce sounded like a great reason to start this blog, a place where friends can gather to talk about this book...and maybe to talk about other Lewis books too, on down the line!

It's been fifteen years (at least) since I first read this book, and I thought I'd kick off our conversation by beginning at the beginning -- with the preface.

There are a lot of books where I'd probably just skip an introduction or preface, or at least skim them, but that's never true of a book by C.S. Lewis. If he wrote it, I want to read it. You've heard the old line about certain actors you'd listen to if they were quoting the phone book? Well, Lewis is that kind of writer for me!

And there's a lot to like in this little preface. Lewis' humility when comparing himself to "so great a genius" as Blake. Lewis' gratitude to the unknown author (of a magazine short story) who gave him one of his key ideas for the book. And a couple of wonderful quotes, which ring with major echoes from other Lewis writings:

"You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those two into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision."


So true, and so important for any storyteller to contemplate when writing!

And then there's this one:

"Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to be have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself."

Which reminded me of "Ask for the Morning Star and take (thrown in) your earthly love." I know that's a Lewis quote...and it's one that comes back to me a lot...but I couldn't remember where he said it. (I went looking, and apparently it's one of his poems.) I think there's also a "higher up and further in" feel to that quote. One reason I love Lewis so much is for the repeated meaningful themes/motifs that pop up all over his work.