Lewis suddenly sees a vision, “a great assembly of gigantic forms all motionless…standing forever about a little silver table…[where] there were little figures like chessmen who went to and fro doing this and that…[each the] puppet representative of some one of the great presences that stood by. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of those same men and women”. This vision terrifies Lewis and asks MacDonald if “all that I have been seeing in this country false? These conversations between the Spirits and the Ghosts were they only the mimicry of choices that had really been made long ago?”. His teacher says that alternatively you might say they were “anticipations of a choice to be made at the end of all things”, but that it would be better to say neither. The point was that on this journey he had seen the choices a bit more clearly than on earth because “the lens was clearer. But it was still seen through the lens. Do not ask of a vision in a dream more than a vision in a dream can give”. It is at this point that Lewis realizes that he is not actually dead and only dreaming. MacDonald warns him that, when he tells others, to emphasize that it was only a dream.
The vision of the chessemen fades and he is back in the wood again. Standing with his back to the sunrise, Lewis seeing the land light up before him as the sun rises. Suddenly the air is filled with “hounds, and horns; …ten thousand tongues of men and woodland angels and the wood itself sang”. Screaming, Lewis buries his face in the folds of MacDonald’s robe, but “The light, like solid blocks, intolerable of edge and weight, came thundering upon my head”. In the next moment, the folds of MacDonald’s garment become the folds of Lewis’ ink-stained cloth which he had pulled down as he fell from his chair. The blocks of light turn out to only be the books which he had pulled from the table. He wakes up “in a cold room, hunched on the floor beside a black and empty grate, the clock striking three, and the siren howling overhead”.
Questions
Q1. How do you understand the vision of the chessmen? How does Lewis now understand this journey? What warning does MacDonald give Lewis?
The Dwarf struggles against joy. It “was not the meeting [the ghost] had pictured; he would not accept it”. He tugs at the chain and the Tragedian acts offended, saying, “It is fortunate that you give yourself no concern about my fate. Otherwise you might be sorry afterwards to think that you had driven me back to Hell”. The Lady replies “Dear, no one sends you back. Here is all joy. Everything bids you stay”. Saying this does no good – the Tragedian says he still has some self-respect and the dwarf starts to shrink.
When the Lady tells the Dwarf to not “let it talk like that“, the “Tragedian caught her words greedily as a dog catches a bone”, complaining that she always had to be “sheltered”. The Lady explains that wasn’t what she meant, rather that she wanted him to “stop acting… He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now”.
Sarah tells Frank to stop “using…other people’s pity, in the wrong way…”. She explains that “Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it…can be used for a kind of blackmailing… [to] hold joy up to ransom”. This is something he did ever since he was a child. She asks him “Did you think joy was created to live always under that threat? Always defenceless against those who would rather be miserable than have their self-will crossed?” She explains that “you can no longer communicate your wretchedness… Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light”.
The Dwarf and the chain having disappeared, for the first time the Lady addresses the Tragedian, asking who he is and where Frank has gone. She invites him to stay, but the Tragedian vanishes. The lady returns to her retenue who begin to sing a song: “The Happy Trinity is her home: nothing can trouble her joy…”
After departing, Lewis asks his teacher: “Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?”. MacDonald asks him if he would prefer it if “he still had the power of tormenting her”. He talks about “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned… to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy… that Hell should be able to veto Heaven… Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever… the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves”.
Lewis says he finds it horrible to say that pity must someday die. His teacher distinguishes between the action which will last forever and passion of pity which will come to the end. He says that the passion of pity “draws men to concede what should not be conceded” whereas the action “changes darkness into light and evil into good”. However, “we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice”.
Lewis once again asks why the Spirits don’t go down into Hell to rescue the damned. Going down on his knees and using a blade of grass as a pointer, MacDonald points to a tiny crack, saying, “…through a crack no bigger than that ye certainly came…”. The idea that the infinitely empty Grey Town is down in a little crack blows his mind, but Lewis now realizes that the Lady couldn’t even fit into Hell. MacDonald concurs that “Hell could not open its mouth wide enough”. Referring to Jesus, MacDonald says that “Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell…” Lewis asks if He ever will descend again, but MacDonald explains that time doesn’t work that way, but assures Lewis that “There is no spirit in prison to Whom He did not preach”.
Lewis asks MacDonald about his Universalist beliefs, but MacDonald says “it’s ill talking of such questions…because all answers deceive. If ye put the question from within Time…the choice of ways is before you… But if ye are trying to leap on into eternity… then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears. Time is the very lens through which ye see…something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all…[but] every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom”
Questions
Q1. Why does the ghost resist joy? What does the Tragedian threaten? How does the Lady respond?
Q2. What did the Tragedian hold love hostage? What does MacDonald say about pity?
Q3. How does the Lady respond to the Ghost’s disappearance? Why is Lewis troubled by her reaction?
Q4. What does Lewis find out about Hell from MacDonald? Why couldn’t the lady go there?
Q5. What does MacDonald say about time, freedom and predestination?
The branches of trees down one aisle of the forest dance with light and Lewis thinks there must be another river nearby. It turns out the light is coming from people in a procession. Lewis tells us that “If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old”. Behind them came a beautiful lady in whose honour all this was being done.
Lewis whispers to MacDonald, “Is it? … is it?”. His teacher responds that it’s actually a lady from Golders Green named Sarah Smith, who is “one of the great ones” in this country. MacDonald identifies some of the people in the procession as angels, and others as “her sons and daughters” who were any child she met on earth. She is also surrounded by animals: cats, dogs, birds and horses. MacDonald explains that “Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
The Lady moves towards “two phantoms: a great tall Ghost, horribly thin and shaky”, whom Lewis dubs “The Tragedian”, who is being led on a chain by another Ghost who is “no bigger than an organ-grinder’s monkey”. When they meet, despite the Tragedian being the one who speaks, the Lady addresses only the Dwarf Ghost. She kisses him and asks for his forgiveness “For all I ever did wrong and for all I did not do right since the first day we met”. The Dwarf shakes the chain and the Tragedian responds, saying he accepts her apology.
The Tragedian says that he’s been thinking only about her “all these years…breaking your heart about me”. In a small, bleating voice, the Dwarf Ghost asks if she missed him. When the Lady tells him that he’ll understand it soon enough, the Dwarf and Tragedian speak in unison to each other, saying that she didn’t answer the question. It is at this point that Lewis “realised then that they were one person, or rather that both were the remains of what had once been a person”, Sarah’s husband, Frank. The Dwarf and the Tragedian tell each other that “it would be rather fine and magnanimous not to press the point” but they aren’t sure if she’d notice, recalling a time when they let her have the last stamp and she didn’t “see how unselfish we’d been”.
The Dwarf and the Tragedian are shocked to find out that the Lady has been happy in Heaven without him. The Tragedian asks here if she even knows the meaning of the word “Love”! The Lady responds: “How should I not?.. I am in love. In love, do you understand? Yes, now I love truly”. Rather than being comforted by this, the Tragedian asks if this means she didn’t love him on earth. The Lady says she did but “only in a poor sort of way… mostly the craving to be loved… I needed you”. The Tragedian is horrified at the idea that she no longer needs him, even though she says that “We shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly”.
The Tragedian, becoming even more melodramatic, laments “Would to God I had seen her lying dead at my feet before I heard those words”. The Lady tries to snap him out of it by saying to the Dwarf “Frank! … Look at me… What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don’t you see what nonsense it’s talking?”. Her message seems to get through and he starts to smile and grow a little bigger.
Questions
Q1. How would you describe the procession? What is Lewis’ suspicion regarding the identity of the lady?
Q2. Who are the ghosts in this chapter? Why are there two ghosts, one of them on a chain? Why are the ghosts shocked to find that the lady has been happy in Heaven?
Q3. How does the lady describe her love for her husband on earth? How is it different now in Heaven?
Q4. How does the lady try to snap Frank out of the melodrama? Why might this work?
Lewis then recounts “one of the most painful meetings” between a ghostly woman named Pam and a Bright Spirit, Reginald, her brother. The ghost is disappointed, expecting instead her son, Michael. Reginald tells her he’s far up in the mountains and explains that she would appear invisible to him at this point, but this would be remedied shortly: “As soon as it’s possible for him to see you, of course he will”. Reginald explains that the first step in this process is rather hard, that she will become solid enough “when you learn to want someone else besides Michael… the little germ of a desire for God that we need to start the process.”
Although rather annoyed at the thought of “religion and all that sort of thing”, she’s willing to do what’s necessary to see her son. Reginald explains this approach is futile, since she’s “treating God only as a means to Michael. But the whole thickening treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake.” Pam replies that he “wouldn’t talk like that if you were a Mother”, but Reginald explains that she has reduced herself to being only a mother. She was “Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature”.
Pam then declares that “If [God] loved me He’d let me see my boy” and objects that God had let Michael die. Reginald explains that this was necessary, firstly for Michael’s sake since his mother could never make him truly happy, and secondly for her sake, in an effort to transform her “merely instinctive love…into something better… to love Michael as [God] understands love”. Since Pam’s maternal instinct “was uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac”, God took him so that “in the loneliness, in the silence, something else might begin to grow.”
These critical comments about “Mother-love” are poorly received by the ghost, who declares it to be “the highest and holiest feeling in human nature”. Reginald responds that “no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.” Pam is adamant that her “love for Michael would never have gone bad”. But Reginald points out that she must have met mothers who are united with their sons in the Grey Town but who are still unhappy. She had indeed, but is convinced that this would never happen with her and Michael.
Reginald says that living only for Michael’s memory was a mistake, and this made her husband (Dick) and her daughter (Muriel) miserable. Pam protests saying they didn’t care, but Reginald refutes this. Becoming melodramatic, Pam indignantly replies “Oh, of course. I’m wrong. Everything I say or do is wrong, according to you.” With mirth in his eyes, the Spirit says that this is “what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! …There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.”
Angry at the humour, Pam demands her son: “He is mine, do you understand? Mine, mine, mine, for ever and ever.” Reginald replies that “Everything will be yours. God himself will be yours. But not that way”. After pointing out that Michael was originally “an Accident”, Pam says “I hate your religion and I hate and despise your God. I believe in a God of Love.” Reginald points out that, she is the one who has love neither for him nor even for her own mother. When Pam thinks his feelings are hurt, the Spirit laughs and replies that she can’t hurt anyone in this country. Lewis tells us that “The Ghost was silent and open-mouthed for a moment; more wilted, I thought, by this reassurance than by anything else that had been said”
MacDonald leads Lewis away, saying that the conversation is likely to take a while, but that he can now see the choice that is presented to the ghosts. Lewis asks about natural feelings and MacDonald says that “There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly… And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse… It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil…”. He explains that “Every natural love will rise again and live forever in this country: but none will rise again until it has been buried.”
They then see a Ghost with a little red lizard sitting on his shoulder, whispering things in his ear. The Ghost angrily tells it to shut up, but the lizard continues unabated. The ghost turns to limp away from the mountains.
The ghost meets and angel. The ghost says that the lizard refuses to be quiet, so he’s going home. The angel asks him if he would like to make the lizard quiet. When the ghost says he would, the angel steps forward to kill it, causing the ghost to retreat. The ghost downplays the issue. He says he was only thinking about silencing it. He procrastinates. He says he’s sure it’ll be quiet now and that the gradual process would be better. He complains of ill health. The Angel rejects all these excuses and repeatedly asks if he can kill the lizard. The ghost is convinced he’ll die and says the angel is already hurting him. The Angel replies “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.” The ghost complains that the Angel should have killed the lizard without asking, but the Angel responds “I cannot kill it against your will. It is impossible. Have I your permission?”
The Lizard starts chattering to the Ghost, saying that the Angel really can kill him and that, if this happens, the ghost would be all alone and that he promises to be good. Facing a life constantly harassed by the lizard, the ghost gives his permission. The Angel closes his hands around the reptile, the ghost screams and the lizard is flung with its back broken on the turf.
The Ghost begins to become more solid, “an immense man, naked, not much smaller than the Angel”. At the same time, the lizard transforms into a great stallion. The man flings himself at the feet of the Angel and then rises, leaping on the horse’s back and races off towards the mountain. Lewis says that “the whole plain and forest were shaking with a sound… the voice of that earth, those woods and those waters”.
Lewis asks MacDonald “…does it mean that everything… that is in us can go on to the Mountains?”. His Teacher responds that “Nothing… can go on as it now is… [it] will not be raised again if it submits to death… Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are too rank, but because they are too weak. What is a Lizard compared with a stallion? Lust is a poor, weak, whimpering whispering thing compared with that richness and energy of desire which will arise when lust has been killed.”
Lewis tries to understand how “this man’s sensuality proved less of an obstacle than that poor woman’s [excess of] love for her son”. MacDonald immediately rejects this, saying that “There was no excess, there was defect. She loved her son too little, not too much… it may well be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in Hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it” MacDonald says that Lewis must draw another lesson: “Ye must ask, if the risen body even of appetite is as grand a horse as ye saw, what would the risen body of maternal love or friendship be?”
Questions
Q1. Why is the Motherly Ghost disappointed? What prevents her from growing solid?
Q2. Why are we told God took her son? How do you square this with “a God of love”.
Q3. What was wrong about Pam’s relationship with her son. Why does MacDonald rebuke Lewis for saying that this mother has “an excess of love”?
Q4. What was wrong about Pam’s relationship with her other family members?
Q5. How does this chapter relate to the material covered in “The Four Loves”? How can good things go wrong?
Q6. What does the lizard represent? Why does the ghost resist to its death? What excuses does the ghost make? Why is the ghost’s permission required?
Q7. How does the lizard attempt to argue for its own survival?
Q8. What happens to the lizard? What does this mean? What does MacDonald when he says that everything must submit to death in order to live in this world?
Lewis recounts another overheard “conversation” between a Ghost and a female Spirit named Hilda. The ghost begins by saying that she would not dream of staying in Heaven if she were expected to meet Robert, her husband and Hilda’s brother. She says that she forgives him “as a Christian…but there are some things one can never forget.” She even seems puzzled as to how he came to be in Heaven at all.
She then begins to retell the story of her life with Robert. Her chief complaint was “The ingratitude! It was I who made a man of him! Sacrificed my whole life to him! And what was my reward? Absolute, utter selfishness”. She explains that he was relatively poor man, completely lacking ambition, and that she was the one “who had to drive him every step of the way”. She nagged him to take on extra work, which is regarded as nothing in comparison to her own workload, since she “I had to keep him going all evening…draw him out of himself and brighten him up and make conversation”. He didn’t appreciate her flower arrangements, particularly when she spilled a vase on the manuscript of a book he was writing (something which she “cured him of…in the end”)
She complained about Robert’s attempts to “just slink off by himself every now and then to see what he called his old friends… and leave me to amuse myself!” Instead, she insisted that the friends come to the house instead. She both subtlety manipulated her husband and made his friends feel uncomfortable, managing to drive them away by the end of their first year of marriage.
Upon receiving a promotion, Robert hoped for peace, but his wife now wanted to get a bigger house and was irritated that he doesn’t seem thoroughly enthusiastic about the house-hunting process. She convinced him to buy a house they couldn’t really afford, but she was excited that she could now “entertain properly”. In contrast, she said that Robert “…just set himself to get old and silent and grumpy”, even though he “hadn’t always been like that”. Robert would just sit there, hating her and she grew to hate him too. There appears to have been some issue with the “younger men who came to the house” who liked her better than her “old bear of a husband” and “used to laugh at him”.
Towards the end of Robert’s life, she bought a great Dane and forced him to walk it for his health. She kept hosting parties, “took him for the most wonderful holidays…[and] saw that he didn’t drink too much”. She even allowed him to take up writing again (“It couldn’t do any harm by then”). But in the end, Robert had a nervous breakdown, but the ghost said her conscience is clear – she had done her duty.
Reconsidering, the ghost says that she will, in fact, meet Robert. If Heaven will give her “a free hand”, she’ll “take charge of him again…make something of him…. There’s lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him”. When Hilda tells her this is not possible, she becomes desperate: “Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to – to do things to…. No one minds about me at all [in Hell]. I can’t alter them”. The ghost snaps, saying “I hate you. How can I pay him out if you won’t let me have him?”. Lewis says that “The Ghost which had towered up like a dying candle flame snapped suddenly… and then there was no Ghost to be seen”.
Questions
Q1. How would you describe the ghost? How would you describe the husband?
Q2. Why is the ghost reticent about meeting her husband? What does she think about forgiveness?
Q3. How did she regard the relationship with her husband? What kind of relationship does Christianity imagine?
Q4. What do you think was the ghost’s motivation regarding her husband?
Q5. What did she think of his desire to write a book?
Q6. Why do you think Robert’s ability to be a good host declined?
Q7. Why does the ghost change her mind about seeing Robert? Under what condition? How does she respond?
Lewis comes across another of the Bright Person, who turns out to be his hero, the Scottish writer and theologian, George MacDonald. He is invited to sit and talk a while.
Lewis asks him about the Ghosts: “Do any of them stay? Can they stay? Is any real choice offered to them? How do they come to be here?”. MacDonald reminds him of the Refrigerium, mentioned in Prudentius and by Jeremy Taylor. The damned have holidays, either to Heaven or back to Earth. If they go back to earth, they tend to play tricks on mediums, spy on their children or haunt a house they formerly owned. He says “literary Ghosts hang about public libraries to see if anyone’s still reading their books.” He reminds Lewis that the Emperor Trajan came to visit this land and remained.
Lewis expresses his surprise that there “really a way out of Hell into Heaven”. MacDonald tells him it depends on how he’s using the words: “If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand… Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.”
MacDonald tries to explain this further, saying, “both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell”
Lewis asks if, therefore, it is correct to say “that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind”. MacDonald sternly rejects it. Hell is indeed a state of mind, “every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind-is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind”. However, “Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly”.
Lewis asks if there is a real choice after death, since this doesn’t accord with either Catholic or Protestant theology. MacDonald dismisses this question, telling Lewis that he was not brought here “to study such curiosities. What concerns you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them making.”
Lewis asks instead, “What do they choose, these souls who go back”? He is told that “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery… Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life it has a hundred fine names…Self-Respect… and Proper Pride.”
Lewis then asks if people are lost through “the undignified vices…mere sensuality”. MacDonald agrees that there are. He says that such people being “by pursuing a real pleasure…But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him”
MacDonald tells the story of “Sir Archibald” who visited Heaven and then returned to the Grey Town. On earth he’d been interested in nothing but survival, beginning “by being philosophical, but in the end he took up Psychical Research”. He dies and comes to the plains of Heaven “and there was no power in the universe would have prevented him staying and going on to the mountains… [But] this country was no use to him at all. Everyone here had ‘survived’ already… His occupation was clean gone”. MacDonald points out that “if he would only have admitted that he’d mistaken the means for the end and had a good laugh at himself he could have begun all over again like a little child and entered into joy. But he would not do that”.
Lewis expresses amazement at this, but his teacher responds that “It is nearer to such as you than ye think”. He reminds him of men “who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… [or] a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor?”
Lewis now asks why, if the Solid People were full of love, they did not go down into Hell to rescue the Ghosts. He is told that he will understand this better before he leaves, but that for the time-being, he must understand that they “have come further for the sake of the Ghosts than ye can understand… Every one of us has interrupted that journey [into the mountains] and retraced immeasurable distances to come down today on the mere chance of saving some Ghosts”. He says that it would do not good to go further, even if it were possible, since “The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”
Jack asks about those who never even get into the bus, but is told that “everyone who wishes it does. Never fear”. MacDonald says that there are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says “Thy will be done”. He says that “All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
At this point, they hear a Ghost complaining at enormous speed to one of the Solid People. The Solid Spirit tried to speak, but never got in a word. Lewis tells MacDonald that such a women “doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn’t wicked: she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling”. MacDonald says the issue is “whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman-even the least trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever”. Leaning on MacDonald’s arm, they walk away.
They see many more ghosts. The most pitiful one they saw was a female Ghost who “supposed herself still capable of attracting the Solid People… If a corpse already liquid with decay had arisen from the coffin, smeared its gums with lipstick, and attempted a flirtation, the result could not have been more appalling”
Lewis asks MacDonald about the earlier incident with the Unicorns and he says that “Ye will have divined that he meant to frighten her; not that fear itself could make her less a Ghost, but if it took her mind a moment off herself, there might, in that moment, be a chance. I have seen them saved so.”
We are told that they meet several Ghosts who come to Heaven “only in order to tell the Celestials about Hell… as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colours had been the only purpose for which they came”. Some were even more extreme, wanting “to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven… [some] urged the blessed spirits…to seize Heaven ‘for their own’… planning Ghosts who implored them to… smooth out the horrible grass and moss and heather with asphalt. There were materialistic Ghosts who informed the immortals that they were deluded: there was no life after death, and this whole country was a hallucination. There were Ghosts, plain and simple: mere bogies”. Finally, there were “grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey…only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy”.
MacDonald says that he’d even seen that kind converted, while those less obviously damned have gone back.
While standing by some bushes, they see one of the Solid People talking with a Ghost who had been a famous artist on earth. The Artist Ghost is intent on painting the view, but the Solid Spirit, himself a former artist that “Looking comes first.” He explains that his in his early days of painting, his friend’s success in painting was that he could convey glimpses of Heaven, but here he has the thing itself. He goes on to tell the ghost that after spending longer in this country, “there’ll be some things which you’ll see better than anyone else. One of the things you’ll want to do will be to tell us about them. But not yet”
As the ghost continues to ask about painting, the Solid Spirit speaks about how “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower-become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations”. The ghost assures him that this will not be a problem for him. The Spirit says that any traces of this “will be cured when you come to the fountain… up there in the mountains…. Very cold and clear… When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.”
As they start moving towards the mountain, the ghost reassures himself with the fact that in Heaven “there’ll always be interesting people to meet…“. He is disappointed to find out that his friend doesn’t know whether Claude or Cezanne will be at the mountain. There are no “famous” people in Heaven, at least in earthly terms. The ghost comforts himself, saying “One must be content with one’s reputation among posterity…” but then is horrified to discover that they are both completely forgotten on Earth. This is too much for the ghost, who returns to the Grey Town, determined to maintain his legacy.
Questions
Q1. How does MacDonald explain the presence of the ghosts in Heaven?
Q2. In what way is evil retrospective?
Q3. Are Heaven and Hell states of mind?
Q4. According to MacDonald, what’s the same basic reason why ghosts return to the Grey Town?
Q5. Why did Sir Archibald return to the Grey Town?
Q6. Lewis asks why Heaven doesn’t invade Hell. What is George’s response?
Q7. Why does Lewis think the Complaining Ghost unworthy of Hell? How does MacDonald respond? What does he say about those who go to Hell?
Q8. What do you make of the female ghost who tries to attract the Solid People?
Q9. They meet a number of ghosts who come to Heaven with the express purpose of bringing Hell there. What is their motivation?
Q10. Why does the Solid Spirit urge the Artistic Ghost to refrain from painting for the time-being?
Q11. Why is the Artistic Ghost disappointed with Heaven?
Q12. Why does the Artistic ultimately leave Heaven?
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?
