The Great Divorce: Chapter 8
Summary
After his interaction with the Hard-Bitten Ghost, Lewis is left sitting on a stone by the river feeling utterly miserable at the thought that the Solid People may, in fact, be malevolent, and he wrestled with the question as to why the Solid People did not do more to help those in the Grey Town. Could it be that they just came down to the plain to mock the ghosts?
He thinks of the punishment of Tantalus in deepest Hades, who is made to stand in a pool of water underneath a fruit tree’s branches, with the fruit always just out of reach and the water receding before he could drink it. He thinks of Revelation 14:11. He thinks of William Cowper who, upon realizing that he is dreaming and is, in fact, doomed to perdition says “These are the sharpest arrows in His quiver”.
The sense of danger he felt upon coming to this land returns with full force. “Terror whispered, ‘This is no place for you'”. He walks away from the river towards a thicket of trees in the hope of some kind of safety.
Thirty minutes later, he comes into “a little clearing with some bushes in the centre”. A Ghost enters, “a well-dressed woman…but its shadows of finery looked ghastly in the morning light”. She tries to hide by pressing herself against the bushes.
One of the Bright People enters and the Ghost squeals at him to go away. The ghost points out that she’s heading in the wrong direction, away from the mountains. He suggests that she could lean on him in the journey to ease the hurt of her feet.
The ghost responds that she can’t go “out there among all those people, like this” and says she’d “never have come at all if I’d known you were all going to be dressed like that”. When asked to explain herself she says “How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been
on earth. Have everyone staring through me.”
The Solid Person explains that “we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived, you know. That’ll wear off. Just come out and try.” The ghost says she’d “rather die”. She says she wish she’d never been born and asks “What are we born for?”, to which the ghost responds “For infinite happiness… You can step out into it at any moment”
The ghost continues to protest, but the Solid Person compares shame to liquids too hot to touch, but not too hot to drink: “Shame is like that. If you will accept it-if you will drink the cup to the bottom-you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”
Although momentarily tempted to trust the Solid Person, but returns to her complaining. The Spirit asks “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not
yourself?” but to no avail. He therefore blows a horn which results in “A herd of unicorns came thundering through the glades: twenty-seven hands high the smallest of them and white as swans but for the red gleam in eyes and nostrils and the flashing indigo of their horns” The Ghost screams and Lewis says he thinks she makes a bolt towards the Spirit, but he himself fled from the scene.
Questions
Q1. Why is Lewis feeling dejected at the beginning of this chapter? What questions does he have?
Q2. What is the problem with the ghost he sees in this chapter? What is her primary concern?
Q3. What does the Solid Person offer to the ghost? What does he say will happen in time?
Q4. Why does the Solid Person call the unicorns?