Use Of Imagery In The Great Divorce

No one wants to talk about the end times, but it’s important to! In the Catholic Church, we believe that at our death we receive eternal retribution for our actions during our life on earth. This is referred to as “particular judgment”. The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts that at the moment of death, we receive “either entrance into the blessedness of heaven…or immediate and everlasting damnation” (CCC 1022). Let’s look into those a bit more.
I. Hell
A. “We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him” (CCC 1033). As we spoke about before, God has given us free will in order that we might choose to love. If we do not choose to love Him, we sin. If we continually choose to abuse our free will and live in a state of
mortal sin, failing to acknowledge and accept God’s love, we exclude ourselves from His communion (CCC 1033). The Catechism defines this “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (CCC 1033) as hell. The author C.
S. Lewis, in his novel The Great Divorce, uses beautiful imagery to paint a picture of, perhaps, what Heaven and Hell might be like. In describing Hell and human freedom he articulates: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it” (Lewis 75) . This character in The Great Divorce is speaking of our capacity to choose God and the characteristics of individuals who do or do
not.
B. It is important to note that, contrary to what many believe, God is not waiting to “zap” people to Hell when they have made a poor, sinful decision. Those who are in hell have freely chosen to be there through their actions and by failing to acknowledge God’s love. To sum up, “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence, in it until the end” (CCC 1037).
II.
Heaven
A. On the other hand, “Those who die in God’s grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ” (CCC 1023). We define heaven as “[The] perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity” (CCC 1024) and brings us absolute happiness, being the ultimate end of our human longings (CCC 1024). The properly oriented use of our free will, doing the will of God and offering up our own, helps open us up more fully to God’s grace and friendship.
B. A gift given to men in heaven is the “beatific vision”, which is the ability to see the transcendent God as He is. Our human capacity is unable to see God on our own, and thus it is because of Him that we are able to contemplate God and all of His glory (CCC 1028).
C. In heaven, we find our true selves and our God given identity (CCC 1025).
The Great Divorce paints a picture of these last two points when he depicts the narrator’s acquiescence to leaning on the “God figure” for support. He writes, “I obeyed… and with this support I found the going tolerable: so much so…that I flattered myself until my feet were growing more solid, until a glance at the poor transparent shapes convinced me that I owed all this ease to the strong arm of the Teacher…I noticed scents in the air which had hitherto escaped me, and the country put on new beauties” (Lewis
78).
In heaven, the setting of passage, the narrator chooses to rely on the “God figure” and, because he obeyed (or opened himself up to God and chose to accept God’s love), God began to transform him from a weak, shadow of ghost, corrupted by sin, to a strong, full person that finds fulfillment in his God-given identity. The author also reveals that the support of the “God figure” allows him to see things about heaven that otherwise he was unable to behold, a parallel to the beatific vision.