C. S. Lewis: The Great Divorce

My introduction to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce came when I was a senior in college, up to that time I my experience with Lewis  had been limited to his Mere Christianity and The Chronicles of Narnia. The Great Divorce came to me in a most unexpected way. On my 21st birthday my then girlfriend gave me a copy of The Great Divorce as a not too subtle message that it was over. I was devastated, but in hindsight it as one of the best things that ever happened to me: within a month I met the girl who has been my wife for the past 41 years. The Great Divorce? I actually read it and was profoundly affected by it. During the past four decades I have re-read it about four more times. For me the experience is always one of profound self-examination as I see aspects of myself in several of the various characters.

The book’s title itself conjures up images of a tale about a bitter, nasty, marital breakup with the emotional impact of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? But titles can be deceiving. Lewis wrote the book as an answer to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which Blake proposed an ultimate resolution of the differences between good and evil. The Great Divorce was Lewis’ response.

The book begins with a diverse group of individuals standing in the bus station awaiting the arrival of the bus that will take them on a day trip from their homes in hell to the outskirts of heaven. This hell is not Dante’s hell. It is not an inferno and there are no flames. Rather it is a gray dreary thinly populated city whose outskirts press outward for thousands of miles. The city is shabby and lonely and the residents are petty, suspicious and quarrelsome; can’t get along with one another. The travelers boarded the bus which flies upward through the clouds and ultimately stops on the outskirts of heaven. Here the travelers are in turn met by friends who live in heaven and who try to convince the visitors to join them in the eternal glory that they experience. In nearly every case the attempt is unsuccessful and the visitors returned to the bus preferring to live in the self-centered isolation and the self-deification that they have chosen for themselves.

Lewis described this work as a fantasy as opposed to being theology. His point was to answer Blake. There is no final resolution between good and evil. People who are in hell are there because they want to be. They have chosen petty and venal self-deification over the love of God. The Gates of Hell are locked from the inside.

Several months ago I learned that the story had been adapted into a stage play that would be touring the country . One of the venues would be local. I resolved to take the opportunity to see the production.

Last Saturday night we made our way to Walnut Creek to see the show. We were not disappointed.

How do you transform a book about a journey from hell to the outskirts of heaven, a book containing many vignettes about the travelers’ independent experiences into a story that can be performed in a mere 90 minutes? With great difficulty! The book contained many different vignettes which taken together would have required four and a half hours to produce on stage! Several of the most representative stories told throughout the book were chosen with the narrator giving it continuity.

The entire cast consisted of three actors who portrayed 19 different characters. Tom Beckett, Joel Rainwater, and Christa Scott-Reed are all Broadway veterans. Throughout The Great Divorce, they switch roles and accents as easily as they slip in and out of the robes and hats that identify different people on their journey to heaven.

The adaptation and the acting were brilliant. The stage was sparse. Focus was upon the actors rather than the set.

The time flew by and I hardly noticed that 90 minutes had passed as the play ended.

One reviewer, himself critical of the Christian agenda stated:

As I left the theater, theater-goers talked heaven and hell. As I walked to the parking deck, they talked about the play’s merits and faults.

If art is supposed to be beautiful, this production of The Great Divorce is certainly art. And if art is meant to stimulate discussion, to make you think, to make you wonder and talk to your neighbor about your doubts and fears, then I have to admit: The Great Divorce is certainly art.