Lewis' fictional account of heaven and hell, in The Great Divorce, is painted as surreal, yet completely imaginable. By forcing us out from behind our own defense mechanisms, we are faced with a mirror image of our own traits represented thoroughly in the characters in this illusory tale. Lewis' reinforces his theological discussion of heaven and hell from an allegorical point of view, further echoing the ideas presented in his book The Problem of Pain.
Dismissing the stereotype metaphors of heaven as a gilded paradise with harps and clouds, or hell as a fiery place with pitchforks and pointy-tailed demons, Lewis imagery is truly of his own invention. Here, heaven is presented as a place where the broken self-will and ultimate surrender to the love of God is what gives us fulfillment, and makes us more real than we had ever been on the physical earth.
Hell, on the contrary, is depicted as the place where all human misery is combined, and all the licentiousness, selfishness, and even misdirected "love" directs the entire focus on ourselves. Even so, the love of heaven is described as so gigantic that hell and all its gloom are dwarfed into infinity. In fact, the book seems to begin in what is later on described as hell: a gray town with endless streets, desolation, and unchanging weather, where the inhabitants grow tired of one another so quickly that they keep relocating farther and farther away from one another, until they have spread out millions of miles.
Thus, in this gray town, the narrator, Lewis himself, boards a bus, not knowing where he is going, but finds the bus ascending higher and higher, while visiting with strangers next to him. By the time they arrive at their destination, which is later revealed as the outskirts of heaven, Lewis has already witnessed several particularly irritating and priggish characteristics in his fellow travelers.
Once in heaven, it is discovered that every passenger on the bus is, in fact, a ghost who has been given temporary leave from hell to journey to heaven. While this is not particularly Scriptural, it gives Lewis an opportunity to examine whether or not those who are in hell would even find heaven appealing. Each character exchanges dialogue with Spirits that come to greet these visitors from hell. Every story unfolds in snippets of conversations, but it becomes obvious that they are blinded by their own egomania so much that they are unable to perceive the pleasant existence of heaven.
In this manner, Lewis' thesis gradually takes shape as an easily identifiable idea. He makes the assertion that hell is really a concentration of people who would not enjoy heaven, even if they were allowed to go there. Only one of the characters in the heavenly realm finally surrendered in desperation, and allowed the Spirit to kill the lizard-creature that was tormenting him. During this interlude, Lewis' descriptive words create a beautiful and touching scene between the redeemed ghost and the Spirit that guided him to his point of surrendering.
It is not only the element of eloquent story weaving, but even more so the manner in which his tales become thought provoking meals to chew on for days and weeks. Having read the Narnia Chronicles multiple times as both a child and an adult, it is reinforced that in each of Lewis' works he finds ways of intertwining the most awe-inspiring truths into sumptuous, and rich plots. With each read, themes- that perhaps are not as obvious the first time- emerge from the backdrop of colorful characters, and fantastic settings. One would suspect that it would be the same with The Great Divorce. The dialogue alone might need to be readdressed and contemplated at great lengths.
It would be difficult to find someone that would deny Lewis' mastery at storytelling. Whether it is his knack for touching on the raw nerves of humanity by bringing us into realization of our own flaws, or by delighting us with the depth of his evocative and languid prose, his ability to weave a story into a deeply theological, yet poetic form is rarely surpassed.