PWJ: S2E2 – TGD 1 – “The bus stop in the grey town”

In today’s chapter we begin the actual story of The Great Divorce. Our protagonist, Lewis, finds himself in a grey town at twilight in the rain. He attaches himself to a queue at a bus stop and watches as people leave the line. Eventually the bus arrives and he begins his journey to his mysterious destination…

S2E2: “The bus stop in the Grey Town” (Download)

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Time Stamps

In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.

06:27 – Chapter 150-word Summary
07:21 – Chapter Discussion
28:05 – Haikus

Show Notes

• Matt and I compared our worst queuing experiences. I said mine was at the DMV getting my license after moving to the United States. Matt’s was an Emergency Room in England.

Matt shared a fun fact about himself, that he had visited the Emergency Room thirteen times before the age of thirteen…

I recommended the book Watching the English: The hidden rules of English behaviour. In it, she describes the rules behind “queue jumping”, or “cutting in line” as Americans call it.

• The quote-of-the-week was the opening line to the chapter:

“I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

Matt said that if he’d have got to choose, he would have chosen a line which soon follows it:

And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town.

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

• Since Matt was still in Michigan, for the drink-of-the-week he was drinking Bacardi and Coke. I was enjoying a nice Talisker.

• This past week had been Tolkien’s birthday, so my friend Nelson and I went out for a drink to toast “The Professor!”

• Matt mentioned our latest video to be released: What is the point of Christianity?

• This week Matt produced the summary of the chapter:

Lewis is standing near a bus stop in a drizzly, deserted Grey Town at twilight. As Jack joins the queue, a couple have an argument and leave. A short man gets punched and limps away. A young couple departs arm-in-arm. A woman attempting to buy a spot further ahead in the line is cheated out of her money and thrown out of the queue. When the bus arrives, it is stunning. The driver is “full of light”, but this raises the ire of those in the queue. They fight to get onto the bus, but there’s plenty of room. Lewis sits on his own at the back, but is joined by “a tousle-headed youth” who says that the others will not like their destination. As he pulls out his poetry, Lewis realizes that they are now airborne, and the Town is disappearing into the rain and the mist below.

• I pointed out that the opening lines to the Great Divorce are very similar to the opening of Dante’s Inferno:

“I seemed to be standing in a bus queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

These lines also reminded me of my time in Seattle, as well as any trip to the DMV. Matt said it made him think of the wandering, yearning for meaning of the millennial generation.

• We discussed Lewis’ motivation for joining the queue. Matt convincingly suggests that, when compared to the desolate nature of the town, Lewis was naturally attracted to a community:

But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty. I think that was why I attached myself to the queue.

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

• As Lewis waits, the queue starts to shrink as people leave. The first people to depart are a couple:

…a little waspish woman who would have been ahead of me snapped out at a man who seemed to be with her, “Very well, then. I won’t go at all. So there,” and left the queue. “Pray don’t imagine,” said the man, in a very dignified voice, “that I care about going in the least. I have only been trying to please you, for peace sake. My own feelings are of course a matter of no importance. I quite understand that”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

They are trying to play the martyr. They are being competitive in their “humility”! It’s really pride. As Lewis told us in Mere Christianity:

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If every one else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Next, a Short Man makes a snobbish remark and a Big Man ahead of him punches him.

• I said that some people view this entire work through lens of The Seven Deadly Sins: and we suggested that the Big Man suffers from wrath.

1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Greed
4. Sloth
5. Wrath
6. Envy
7. Pride

• Next up, an androgynous couple leave the line:

“They were both so trousered, slender, giggly and falsetto that I could be sure of the sex of neither, but it was clear that each for the moment preferred the other to the chance of a place in the bus”

– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 1

In the framework of the Seven Deadly Sin, this couple is probably guilty of Lust.

• Lewis then sees a woman trying to buy for herself a place further ahead in the queue. However, she is swindled and also loses her spot in the queue. Matt and I said that this could be interpreted as a number of different sins, but I commented that different vices (and virtues) often blend into each other.

• We then discussed what commonalities we see between all these characters. We described them as petty, competitive and lacking in virtue. I pointed out that the androgynous couple might be in a slightly better position than the others as they were at least looking outside of their own selves. Matt reminded me of Lewis’ statement in Mere Christianity about fleshly and spiritual sins:

Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity – it is enmity.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

I was reminded of Francesca and Paolo in Dante’s Inferno, whose love had become twisted. This, in turn, reminded me of a line from The Four Loves:

“…we all know now that this love [of country] becomes a demon when it becomes a god”

– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Chapter 2)

• I spoke for a little while about how Blake saw the religion of his day all about suppressing desire. He thought desire should be encouraged as it opened up the soul. Over the course of The Great Divorce, we’re going to see that Lewis somewhat agrees with this, but that desires need to be rightly-ordered.

All the people at the bus stop are self-involved. Matt suggested that, rather than asking which of the Seven Deadly Sins they’re committing, an interesting exercise might be to think about the good that they are each pursuing incorrectly.

This launched a conversation about St. Augustine’s theology of competing goods, that humans have a tendency to choose lesser goods rather than better goods. This is summed up in this phrase:

“Incurvatus in se” (Latin for “Turned/curved inward on oneself”)

– St. Augustine

• The bus arrives and looks incredible. However, its appearance makes people in the queue angry. Matt suggested that this was because they felt like challenged by its beauty. I compared it to Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where, due to his siding with the Witch, he was unable to enjoy the goodness of the Beaver’s food.

We both agreed that the driver was an angel.

• They all fight to get on the bus, demonstrating again their competitive nature, but there is plenty of room for all. Jack sits at the back of the bus, but is immediately joined by a tousle-headed youth (a young man with unkempt hair). He condescendingly says at everyone else isn’t going to enjoy the destination and that they prefer much smaller pleasures. This reminded me of The Weight of Glory where Lewis has something important to say about desire:

…Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lewis is horrified when he discovers the youth is a poet and wants him to read his work. I suggested that the Poet didn’t originally want to leave the grey town – it was simply that he couldn’t get enough attention for himself there, he decided to find a better audience elsewhere.

• Lewis realizes that the bus is now airborne! We’ll pick up the story next week…

• Finally, I shared my haikus for the chapter:

Waiting for the bus

The line is a nightmare

Is it worth the wait?

Haiku #1

Joining the bus stop

Petty souls want their own way

The line grows shorter…

Haiku #2

Hiding here at the back

Desiring solitude

Oh no! A poet!

Haiku #3