The Great Divorce Lewis Character Analysis

1651 Words4 Pages

A Hybrid of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and Jesus’ Parable of The Sower:
Freely Choosing Where to be Sown
Ghostly characters of C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce (1946) come to life as the reader unfolds each scene. The entry scene is dingy, Hell on earth, full of characters on a journey to find answers to the after-life, or is there more to the afterlife. Next, while on their journey they will find a separation of Heaven and Hell. In addition, each character struggles with choices, choices that will destine their path of everlasting; everlasting Heaven, or everlasting Hell. Moreover, Lewis formed his characters to replicate everyday people on the street, at church, work and at the park, that is exactly who they are. With this in mind, do …show more content…

The first character chosen is The Big Ghost. The Big Ghost represents the wayside, a quick sprout up and burn out, wanting to deflect the things of God, and extinguish them quickly. That is his temperament and his way of life, albeit hitting people without a second thought–––a big bully. Moreover, his belief is: it is his right to quickly be judge and hands out the sentence that he declares fit for the person he judged. Len, an ex-employee of the Big Ghost, explains some information about the Big Ghost; that during his earthly life [he was disgruntled, dominating his employees, and being a dictator to his wife, and children.] When the Big Ghost realized that Len was a murderer, who killed a man named Jack. The Big Ghost could not, and would not believe, or even try to understand that; Len the murderer was in heaven, and he was in hell. The big man being embittered from his idea of Heaven, he therefore, developed a wall to separate himself from God and Heaven because of ignorance, not looking beyond his pride to see that God is a forgiving God, and God loves the sinner, not the sin. The Big Ghost believed himself to be a favorable person when he said “I am an acceptable person”. In Hells Best Kept Secret, Ray Comfort, author, director, and the commentator said: “One function of God’s law is to stop the mouth. To stop sinners justifying themselves and saying, ‘There are plenty of people worse than me. I’m not a bad person, really.” David Clark, author of C.S. Lewis Goes to Heaven said: “Len does his best to persuade the Big Ghost to acknowledge his faults, but the Big Ghost wants no part of a Heaven that allows murders to become citizens of Heaven.” Thus, the Big Ghost freely and foolishly chose to reject heaven, a true decision of

Open Document