Description: Hardcover. 8vo. The Macmillan Company., New York. 1946. viii, 133 pgs. Maps. First US Edition/FIrst Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (spine ends are lightly chipped and worn). Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. Small bookplate present to the FFEP. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is a classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment, Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’ The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil. C S Lewis 1st US Ed 1946 The Great Divorce Theological Fantasy Allegory HC w/DJ Click images to enlarge Description Up For Sale Today is The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis Hardcover. 8vo. The Macmillan Company., New York. 1946. viii, 133 pgs. Maps. First US Edition/FIrst Printing. DJ has light shelf-wear present to the DJ extremities (spine ends are lightly chipped and worn). Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine. Boards have light shelf-wear present to the extremities. Small bookplate present to the FFEP. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is a classic Christian allegorical tale about a bus ride from hell to heaven. An extraordinary meditation upon good and evil, grace and judgment, Lewis’s revolutionary idea in the The Great Divorce is that the gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis’ The Great Divorce will change the way we think about good and evil. FROM WIKIPEDIA: The Great Divorce is a work of theological fantasy by C. S. Lewis, in which he reflects on the Christian conception of Heaven and Hell. The working title was Who Goes Home? but the final name was changed at the publisher's insistence.[citation needed] The title refers to William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. The Great Divorce was first printed as a serial in an Anglican newspaper called The Guardian in 1944 and 1945, and soon thereafter in book form. Lewis's diverse sources for this work include the works of St. Augustine, Dante Aligheri, John Milton, John Bunyan, Emanuel Swedenborg and Lewis Carroll, as well as an American science fiction author whose name Lewis had forgotten but whom he mentions in his preface (Hall, Charles F, The Man Who Lived Backwards[1]). George MacDonald, whom Lewis utilizes as a character in the story, Dante, Prudentius and Jeremy Taylor are alluded to in the text of chapter 9. The narrator inexplicably finds himself in a grim and joyless city, the "grey town", which is either Hell or Purgatory depending on how long one stays there. He eventually finds a bus for those who desire an excursion to some other place (and which eventually turns out to be the foothills of Heaven). He enters the bus and converses with his fellow passengers as they travel. When the bus reaches its destination, the passengers on the bus — including the narrator — are gradually revealed to be ghosts. Although the country is the most beautiful they have ever seen, every feature of the landscape (including streams of water and blades of grass) is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves: it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass, and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any to lift. Shining figures, men and women whom they have known on Earth, come to meet them, and to urge them to repent and enter Heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more solid and thus feel less and less discomfort. These figures, called "spirits" to distinguish them from the ghosts, offer to assist them in the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise. Almost all of the ghosts choose to return instead to the grey town, giving various reasons and excuses. Much of the interest of the book lies in the recognition it awakens of the plausibility and familiarity, along with the thinness and self-deception, of the excuses that the ghosts refuse to abandon, even though to do so would bring them to "reality" and "joy forevermore". An artist refuses, arguing that he must preserve the reputation of his school of painting; a bitter cynic predicts that Heaven is a trick; a bully ("Big Man") is offended that people he believes beneath him are there; a nagging wife is angry that she will not be allowed to dominate her husband in Heaven. One man corrupted on Earth by lust, which takes the form of an ugly lizard, permits an angel to kill the lizard and is saved. The narrator is met by the writer George MacDonald, whom he hails as his mentor, just as Dante did when encountering Virgil in the Divine Comedy; and MacDonald becomes the narrator's guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dante's. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to remain in Heaven despite having been in the grey town; for such souls, the goodness of Heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sorrows into joy, and changing their experience on Earth to an extension of Heaven. Conversely, the evil of Hell works so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiness on Earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on Earth would have been Hell. Few of the ghosts realize that the grey town is, in fact, Hell. Indeed, it is not that much different from the life they led on Earth: joyless, friendless and uncomfortable. It just goes on forever, and gets worse and worse, with some characters whispering their fear of the "night" that is eventually to come. According to MacDonald, while it is possible to leave Hell and enter Heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance); or as depicted by Lewis, embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself. In answer to the narrator's question, MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a dream. The use of chess imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrator's waking life is reminiscent of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and its ghostly inhabitants are minuscule to the point of being invisible compared with the immensity of Heaven and reality. This is illustrated in the encounter of the blessed woman and her husband: she is surrounded by gleaming attendants while he shrinks down to invisibility as he uses a collared tragedian — representative of his self-punishing emotional blackmail of others — to speak for him. Toward the end, the narrator expresses the terror and agony of remaining a ghost in the advent of full daybreak in Heaven, comparing the weight of sunlight to having large blocks fall on one's body (at this point falling books awaken him). This parallels that of the man with his dream of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter of The Pilgrim's Progress. The book ends with the narrator awakening from his dream of Heaven into the unpleasant reality of wartime Britain, in conscious imitation of The Pilgrim's Progress, the last sentence of the "First Part" of which is: "So I awoke, and behold, it was a Dream." OUR MISSION STATEMENT: Our goal is to provide the best books for the lowest prices. 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Price: 350 USD
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia
End Time: 2024-11-24T03:02:33.000Z
Shipping Cost: 5.99 USD
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Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Seller
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
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Author: C S Lewis
Binding: Hardcover
Character Family: The Great Divorce
Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
Language: English
Original/Facsimile: Original
Place of Publication: New York
Publisher: Macmillan
Region: North America
Special Attributes: 1st Edition, Dust Jacket, With Dust Jacket, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce is a classic Christi, The Great Divorce, Christian Apologia, Theological Fantasy
Subject: Literature & Fiction; C S Lewis
Topic: LIterature
Year Printed: 1946
