The Great Divorce - Calvin College.pptVIP

By C.S. Lewis Hell The Valley of the Shadow of Death As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there for twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbor. Before the weeks over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move. The Valley of the Shadow of Life “I had the sense of being in a larger space, perhaps even a larger sort of space than I had ever know before: as if the sky were further off and the extent of the green plain wider than they could be on this little ball of earth. 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.” The Metaphysics of Heaven “They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air. One could attend to them or ignore them at will as you do with the dirt on a window pane. I noticed that the grass did not bend under their feet: even the dewdrops were not disturbed.” Self-Surrender “’I had given up myself… and that was how everything began.’” Another prominent theme in the Great Divorce, and in many of Lewis’ works, is the idea of self-surrender. In a series of ‘conversations’, Lewis explores the various manifestations of this vice, namely, self-centeredness. The Big Man Repented and saved vs. Led a good life “I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t say I had no faults, far from it. I done my best by everyone, that’s the sort of chap I was… I always done my best and I never done nothing wrong. And what I don’t see is why I should be put below a bloody murderer like you.” The Skeptic Sins of Intellect: “’Do you really think that there are no sins of intellect?’ There are indeed, Dick. There is hide-bound prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinion fearlessly followed – they are not sins.” “[My opinions] were not o