Exact Opposites in The Great Divorce
Andrea Townsend

            Plato was the first to explain ultimate reality: our reality is simply shadows on the wall of a cave, silhouettes provided by the light of a large fire. Ultimate reality, on the other hand, is concrete, nothing we can grasp, or even begin to grasp by our poor, earthly standards. Ultimate reality is perfect, is the essence of an idea before it is destroyed by the act of creation. C. S. Lewis, in his allegory The Great Divorce, provides us with this Platonic view of the ultimate reality, Heaven, in direct contrast with the insubstantiality of Hell by explaining the two as divorced from each other in such a way as they are direct opposites.

            Hell is presented first in the book. It is, of course, dark, gloomy, dirty, and populated by citizens who are incessantly quarrelsome and self-centered. Upon first glance, one may assume this city is simply any dark, smoggy city on Earth. Yet soon enough, we learn the city is but a Hell, a place where unrepentant sinners reside, people who may or may not know they are sinners. This land is one of seemingly unlimited size, for the people in their self-centered desires to be alone and their quarrelsome natures are constantly moving outward from the center of the city, much like the suburbs of our modern cities. Because these citizens are so wrapped up in their own selfish desires, the city itself is practically empty. And it is easy to move repeatedly further and further away, for as the Intelligent Man says to the narrator:

[A citizen of the city is] sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he’ll move on again. Finally he’ll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it’s easy here. You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps on growing. (20)

            This Hell (and for some, only the pit stop known as Purgatory) is quite insubstantial. One only needs to think of something one wants, and there it is – but only in shadows. Nothing is truly real, and, as the Intelligent Man says of the reasons behind building unreal houses, "Safety… At least, the feeling of safety" (24). Later we find that Hell is so insubstantial that it is only as big as an atom compared to the reality of Heaven.

            Thus Heaven is the ultimate reality, so real, in fact, that the transparent ghosts visiting from the Dark City are almost unable to handle the hardness, the concreteness, the vivid brightness, of Heaven. It is so real and so huge the ghostly narrator feels completely vulnerable and describes it as follows:

I had a sense of being in a larger space, perhaps even a larger sort of space, than I had ever known before…. I had got "out" in some sense which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair. It gave me a feeling of freedom, but also of exposure, possibly of danger, which continued to accompany me through all that followed. (28)

            Heaven is portrayed as a beautiful, natural setting surrounded by mountains, streams, and waterfalls. Everything, including the trees, the blades of grass, the water, and even the people (the Solid People), is so completely real it is solidly hard and immensely heavy to the visiting ghosts. The substantiality of Heaven is difficult and even frightening to those ghosts used to the insubstantial city of Hell. It is as if their realities are composed of falsities, hatred, distrust, and darkness; and the realities of Heaven are composed of all those wonderful, almost concrete ideals which stem from God Himself: truth, love, trust, and brightness. The ghosts who find Heaven more of a grotesque fright certainly belong in Hell, for those who wish to live a subdued lie, as a sinner, and in isolation, do not belong in Heaven where people lovingly congregate in perfect honesty and openness.

            C. S. Lewis paints us two perfectly opposite pictures: one of the darkness and transparency of Hell – the shadows of Plato – and one of the brightness and solidity of Heaven – the ultimate reality. Through his almost over-simplified examples, we get a better idea of the concept of Heaven as our ultimate reality and of Hell as a city in which we’d rather not dwell due to the absence of God and His substantial realities of truth, trust, light, and unadulterated love.

Works Cited

Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.