This book is delightfully insightful in it is content. Lewis is the narrator of his story, which begins in Hell, a dreary town full of empty streets. Lewis uses a dream as the vehicle to carry his ideas. Lewis boards a bus for Heaven with other ghosts from the town. It is not until the last chapter of the book that the reader finds out that Lewis is actually having a dream.
Lewis finds himself in a dark and dreary place, where the houses are gray and empty, a dismal rain never stops, and time is eternally stuck in the bleak period just before sunset. Walking through this abominable town, he happens to find a bus stop, which takes inhabitants out of this gloomy place and into a much brighter happier world. Slightly bewildered, Lewis boards the bus and begins a journey out of a city named Hell and into another city called Heaven. When he arrives at his destination, Lewis discovers that Hell’s inhabitants do not enjoy the beauty of this new land.
In heaven, these people become ghosts because they are not strong enough to endure the substantive things of this world. The grass and water cut through their feet and even the tiniest object is to heavy for the ghosts to pick up. The rain would penetrate them like bullets would from a machine gun. The concept of Heaven being incredibly large and Hell being considerably small, smaller than a grain of sand is quite a comparison. The ghosts refused any help from the residents of heaven. One of the major mistakes the ghosts made was trying to conquer their struggles with their own powers.
Time and again, Lewis sees the ghosts fail, but they still will not let go of what is holding them back. While Lewis is walking he meets George MacDonald who aids him in his journey through heaven. MacDonald tells Lewis that this journey is a dream, which will make clear to him that souls have a choice between Heaven and Hell and what that choice is. Lewis, at first, is unable to understand why the lost souls must be damned. However, he is finally persuaded that Hell is the only merciful solution for the lost souls. Passing by many sad spectacles of people from Hell, Lewis begins to understand, with the help of MacDonald, that these people must throw away everything and commit their lives to Christ.
Whether a warning to or a reflection on society, the book stimulates thought and forces the reader to look inward at his or her own...
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...ce too? Should not Christians weep over the lost? Should not we ask the Lord of the field to send laborers into His harvest (Luke 10:2)? Certainly!
Lewis gives the reader a vivid account of how Heaven and Hell look like and what will happen once souls get there. I believe Lewis, through this book, was trying to show that people have a choice in whether or not they go to Heaven or Hell. People don't choose Hell with a full understanding of what they are doing. They don't have a clear picture of the eternal happiness they will miss or the everlasting separation and darkness they will endure. According to the Bible, Hell is a place of choice.
As a result, the Bible repeatedly appeals to its readers to choose the way of life rather than the path of death and judgment. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul (Mark 8:36,37)? So, what must one do in order to get to heaven? Jesus says in order to go to Heaven you must be born again (John 3:7). Lewis never comes out directly and tells them you must be saved. He does it in a way that leaves the reader thinking the only way is through Jesus Christ.
A human being is a complicated entity of a contradictory nature where creative and destructive, virtuous and vicious are interwoven. Each of us has gone through various kinds of struggle at least once in a lifetime ranging from everyday discrepancies to worldwide catastrophes. There are always different causes and reasons that trigger these struggles, however, there is common ground for them as well: people are different, even though it is a truism no one seems to able to realize this statement from beyond the bounds of one’s self and reach out to approach the Other.
Lewis is now talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness sounds easy until you find yourself having to forgive someone who has done you wrong. When forgiving someone you don’t have to like them or agree with what they have done, but you do have tell yourself to stop holding a grudge when you think about what that other person has done. But when forgiving someone you have said that you no longer hold that against them. Also God says that we should forgive others like he forgave us and we have done more wrong to him that the other way around.
It is through living a life filled with change and experience that Clive Staples Lewis was able to confidently proclaim, “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire” (Quotable 223)? Without the events that led C.S. Lewis to this mindset, his famed novels would probably be nonexistent. The various aspects of Lewis’s life inspiring his works are especially prominent in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, an installment in his series The Chronicles of Narnia. These occurrences allowed Lewis to learn, mature, and grow as a person. Additionally, Lewis was able to draw from these experiences as vast inspiration for unique ideas and themes. An imaginative and free-thinking childhood, a collaborative friendship
A picture frame, some water, a little bit of magic—that was all it took for Eustace Scrubb’s journey of a lifetime (pattern 6). Some journeys through life have caused pain; others, a revelation (pattern 2). In C.S. Lewis’s novel The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Eustace Scrubb was swept away into Narnia with his cousins Lucy and Edmund. Eustace’s excursion through Narnia altered him physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Gertrude’s limited substantive involvement in the play creates difficulty for understanding her relationship with Hamlet. Of the nearly four thousand lines in the work, Hamlet takes almost half while Gertrude has a meager 157. Before the climatic “closet scene” (III, iv), she speaks only 18 times – usually in brief sentences. Why does Shakespeare devote so few lines to Hamlet’s mother? The answer is not clear; however, although the queen is detached verbally from the play, she maintains a significant presence during the ten scenes in which she appears.
One of the first things noticed is how Lewis portrayed the appearance of the Narrator and MacDonald. To the Narrator, MacDonald appears as a huge, powerful spirit
Gertrude is a kind and loving mother, the kind that watches after her son through thick and thin and loves him unconditionally. Hamlet had suspected her of aiding in the killing of King Hamlet. She is shown to be a quiet, “stand with your man” type person who is influenced easily. However, there is a slight change in her personality that isn’t too noticeable. At the end of the play, the King and Laertes have plotted to kill Hamlet. One part of the plot was to have Hamlet drink out of a poisoned cup but in the confusion of it all, the Queen ends up with the cup in her hand. Even after the King's warnings not to drink from it she does. She does this and completely defies her husband's wishes by saying before she drinks from the cup, “I will, my lord, I pray you pardon me.” I think this shows that if she wouldn’t have died from the poison, Gertrude may have been a completely different woman had she found out about Claudius’s plot about killing King Hamlet and young Hamlet as well. I believe that she would have stood up for her son if she had a chance to. Hamlet meets with his father’s ghost who tells him of Claudius's plot to kill him. After the ghost is done telling his story, he tells Hamlet to punish only Claudius, but "Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven". He was trying to tell Hamlet to only punish Claudius. The one other time in the play that we see the Queen standing up for herself or actually arguing is when she and Polonius decide to confront Hamlet on his behavior toward the King. Since the revealing of Claudius's involvement i...
When Lewis says that Christians are in for a rough time, he means it. Just because we are Christians and begin to see some transformation in our lives from the past, does not mean everything is going to be easy from there on out. God is always with us, but sometimes he does things that make us uncomfortable in the moment to make for a better tomorrow. When we are going through something of this sort, we do may think that it is unnecessary, but we cannot see down the road that God is taking us
I agree, it is extremely unfortunate that the foster care system has so many disadvantages to work with and that Child Protective Service agents take such a bad rap for all the hard work they do. Child Protective Service agents do what they feel is in the best interest of the child with the resources they have available, but there are not always enough of those resources. There are still so many children who fall through the cracks in the child welfare system because the agencies who work to help them are understaffed and underfunded, which makes it hard to save all the children who need help. Plus, there are not enough foster families, foster families with proper training, or residential treatment centers for children, which is why so many
I thought the most profound aspect of the book was the way in which Lewis cleverly teaches his readers to fight the devil’s schemes and stay spiritually strong with respect to having a relationship with God. Sun Tzu, the author of an ancient influential book on Chinese military strategy wrote, “To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.” This book puts the reader into the mindset of a demon attempting to lure a man’s soul to hell. In a sense, by examining the mind of the demon, we become the demon; by becoming the demon, we know the demon; and by knowing the demon, we know how to fight against his perpetual temptations that pull us away from the light of God and into the darkness of
Daily children who come from broken families are put under the states foster care system. Children who come into the foster care system want to believe the state got their back, but how will they believe when the system is broken. The reality of these children is that as soon as the state takes them away from what they have known. They will be immediately be separated from their siblings. The children’sright’s.org page states that, “Others will be
The position of Gertrude’s character in the play raises numerous questions about her involvement with her former husband’s murder, along with her reasoning for marrying Claudius. Failing to question Claudius’ intentions with her son, Hamlet, Gertrude includes herself in the corruption. She is present at various meetings discussing her son’s whereabouts and plots to spy on him (83). Though she is conscious of the corruption in the court, she does not seek to resolve the matters. But rather, she involves herself in the conflict and schemes. Claudius’ ways definitely influence her judgment, which is seen when she allows Polonius to spy on her private conversation with Hamlet (169). Furthermore, when confronted by Hamlet, she admits, “Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grainèd spots, As will not leave their tinct” (175). Her response to Hamlet’s raging interrogative and accusatory speech insinuates that she too has in some fashion contributed to the corruption in Denmark, though the specific circumstance is never revealed. Shakespeare’s portrayal of Gertrude shows a woman who is more concerned about self-preservation and remaining in power so much so that she involves herself with the plots of a man, who murdered her
Towards the end of the play, Hamlet becomes enraged and accuses his mother for marrying his uncle in such a short time after his father’s death. The incestuous relationship suggest that his mother might have been involved in her husband’s murder, which is more reason to kill Claudius. Gertrude is a loving figure that is unable to understand Hamlet’s delicate state. Her way of solving problems is by isolating those that confront her, instead of analyzing her own mistakes and owning up to them. When Hamlet walks into his mother’s bedroom, he kills Polonius who is hiding behind the arras, and compares the murder to his mother’s guilt. “A bloody deed! Almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king, and marry with his brother” (3.4.28-29). The queen cannot handle and truth and tells Hamlet to stop speaking. “O Hamlet, speak no more: / Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, / And there I see such black and grained spots / As will not leave their tinct” (3.4.89-92). It’s a similar reaction of guilt, like Claudius who didn’t want to continue seeing the murder play because he didn’t want to accept the reality of his crime. In another instance, the queen decides to send Hamlet to England to prevent another death. Here, her solution is cowardly and says a lot about her character. She is inclined to go for the easy way out, rather than finding a solution to the huge mess she’s caused. In this scene, the reader can apply Gertrude as the antithesis to Hamlet. Unlike Hamlet who considered ethical and an innocent young man, Gertrude is described as traitor, wicked woman, and an adulterate. Her lust and external pleasures have impacted her family greatly and those she governs over. She is a shallow woman who does not see the consequences of her decisions. Even though she is at the highest level of authority, she seems to lack the most important qualities of a royal ruler: integrity and
Gertrude was Hamlet’s mother. She was a selfish and evil woman. She cheated on Hamlet’s father with Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. She married Claudius a month after her husband’s death. Gertrude wanted Hamlet to stop his grieving. She told Hamlet, “thou know’st ‘tis common, all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity” (I.2.72-73). When Hamlet was depressed and grieving, it reminded Gertrude of the terrible sin she had committed. She wanted Hamlet to be happy just so she could feel better about herself. Throughout the play Gertrude’s motives do not waiver; she looks out for her own well being.
Before, he felt that he belonged among the community but now he fells alone, isolated, and different from everybody else. He becomes an outcast, mainly because he chose to stay longer and come back home years later after the war was over. It is unfair that his choices lead to evitable consequences. At first he did not want to talk about the war, probably because he was unsure if anyone wanted to listen. But when the time came that he felt safe again, nobody was there to listen to him. Imagine the feeling of alienation that he must’ve felt when he went to Germany and France, and now, he still feels the same way even though he is in his homeland. He had no choice but to lie to sound more appealing to people, but he felt disgusted with his self and began to think that his memories are just too pathetic to listen too. It’s interesting how society pressures us to be of the same level with others. He got stuck into a routine lifestyle, separated from people, physically and emotionally. It’s very hard to fathom that he couldn’t even able to relate with others to think that the main reason why we live is to connect and sympathize with people. It is clear that he is depressed, not