Tag: The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce: Chapter 9

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Summary

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?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 8

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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?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 7

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Summary

Made uncomfortable by the Water-Giant, Lewis leaves and continues to make his way downstream again. He meets a “tall…a lean hard-bitten [ghost] with grev hair and a gruff, but not uneducated voice” leaning against a tree.

The ghost asks Lewis if he’s going back and Lewis says he’s unsure. The ghost explains that he is since he’s “seen about all there is to see.” He just came up to “have a look around”. He did the same on earth: “Pekin… Niagara Falls, the Pyramids, Salt Lake City, the Taj Mahal” and didn’t think much of any of them, claiming that they were “All run by the same people…a World Combine”.

He’s exceptionally disappointed with Hell, saying “They lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids… but when you get there its’s just like any other town”.

The Hard-Bitten Ghost claims that there’s no possibility of staying in Heaven since “You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass… All that idea of staying is only an advertisement stunt.”

After complaining about how uncomfortable Heaven is, Lewis said that “There seems to be some idea that if one stays here one would get…acclimatised.” The ghost rejects this, saying he’d been told that lie his entire life. In the nursery he was told that if he were good, he’d be happy, at school they said Latin would get easier, he was told marriage would would “settle down”, during the World Wars that peace would eventually come.

Our ghost is a conspiracy theorist. He goes on to claim that, just in the same way “[Mummie] and Father were the same firm”, that Heaven and Hell are run by the same people and it’s an elaborate joke. He argues that Heaven and Hell can’t be at war, otherwise Heaven “would attack and sweep the Town out of existence”.

After complaining that there’s nothing to do, either in Heaven or Hell, Lewis asks the ghost would he would like to do if he had a choice. The ghost rejects the entire idea, saying “It’s up to the Management to find something that doesn’t bore us, isn’t it? It’s their job. Why should we do it for them?” He goes on to say that the same thing was wrong with “the parsons and moralists” who “keep on asking us to alter ourselves. But if the people who run the show are so clever and so powerful, why don’t they find something to suit their public?” Regarding the idea of becoming “solider”, the Hard-Bitten Ghost cynically asks Lewis what he would think of a hotel which told you that you’d grow to enjoy eating bad eggs eventually!

The ghost prepares to leave and asks Lewis if he’ll join him. Lewis cheekily responds that
“There doesn’t seem to be much point in going anywhere on your showing”. When he comments that at least it’s not raining here, the Hard-Bitten Ghost points out at that it’s bound to soon and, when it does rain, the raindrops “will make a hole in you, like a machine-gun bullet”. Convinced that “they” won’t catch him that way, our ghost leaves.

Questions

Q1. What do you make of the Hard-Bitten Ghost?

Q2. Why do you think the ghost was so unimpressed with everything on earth?

Q3. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Hell?

Q4. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Heaven?

Q5. Why does he reject the idea that the ghosts will become solider over time?

Q6. Why does the ghost not think Heaven and Hell are at war? Why does he think they are colluding?

Q7. Why does the ghost not suggest anything he’d like to do?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 6

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Summary

Our protagonist walks upstream on the hard water for an hour, but only advances “a couple of hundred yards”. However, the foam forces him to leave the water and walk on the great flat stones on the banks.

After hearing “an immense yet lovely noise vibrated through the forest” for several hours, he finally arrives at a massive waterfall which he says “was like giant’s laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works”. Lewis comments that his senses “were now receiving impressions which would normally exceed their capacity. On earth, such a waterfall could not have been perceived at all as a whole; it was too big”

He then notices that “a hawthorn bush not twenty yards away seemed to be behaving oddly”. It turns out to be his “bowler-hatted companion” he met on the bus whom the Big Ghost had called Ikey, who wanted to setup a shop in The Grey Town.

The Intelligent Ghost was trying to cross the ground in a stealthy fashion without being seen, but making slow progress through the heavenly environment. He makes his way to a tree when the wind blows, dislodging golden apples which land both around and on him!

Upon recovery, The Intelligent Ghost attempts to fill his pockets with the apples. However, “his ambitions were gradually forced down” from multiple, large apples to the single, smallest apple he could find. Even though he is bent double, “inch by inch, still availing himself of every scrap of cover, he set out on his via dolorosa to the bus, carrying his torture”.

A great voice suddenly says “Fool. Put it down”.  Jack realizes that that the waterfall itself was speaking, that it “was also a bright angel who stood, like one crucified, against the rocks and poured himself perpetually down towards the forest with loud joy”. The giant tells The Intelligent Ghost to put the apple done since “There is not room for it in Hell”. Instead, he invites him to remain in Heaven and “learn to eat such apples” and tells him that “the very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you.”

The ghost either doesn’t hear the angel, or chosoes to ignore him and continues his journey back to the bus…

Questions

Q1. Why do you think Lewis’ senses are increasing in capacity?

Q2. What is The Intelligent Ghost so afraid of?

Q3. What is The Intelligent Ghost trying to do? What problems does he have?

Q4. How can the waterfall also be an angel?

Q5. What does the angel tell The Intelligent Ghost to do instead?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 5

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Summary

Two lions arrive, “playing some solemn romp”. Feeling nervous, Jack leaves. By the river, he finds one of the Bright People, a man named Dick, talking to the Episcopal Ghost Lewis had met earlier.

Dick and the Episcopal Ghost were friends on earth. The ghost reminisces about the conversations they used to have. He comments that his friend “became rather narrow-minded towards the end”, believing in a literal Heaven and Hell, but he assumes that he’s now “broadened out again”. In response to this, Dick asks the ghost if he knows where he thinks he’s been living. The ghost is scandalized when Dick refers to the Grey Town as “Hell” (but if he chooses to never go back, he may call it “Purgatory”). The Episcopal Ghost asks why he was sent to the Town and is told that it was because he was an apostate.

The ghost indignantly asks “Do you really think people are penalised for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.” He declares that “They were not only honest [opinions] but heroic. I asserted them fearlessly. When the doctrine of the Resurrection ceased to commend itself to the critical faculties which God had given me, I openly rejected it. I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk.” Dick points out that nothing was risked and the inevitable happened: “popularity, sales for your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric”.

Len explains their “opinions were not honestly come by”. They adopted a certain current of ideas because they “seemed modern and successful”. He asks his ghostly friend “When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of our faith?” He says that they were “playing with loaded dice… errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.”

The Bright One tells him “You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?” The ghost affirms that he already believes, saying his “religion is a very real and a very precious thing”.

Dick invites him to the mountains, but the ghost says he will only do so with some assurances: “a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness-and scope for the talents that God has given me – and an atmosphere of free inquiry”. Dick promises him no such thing, “No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God.”

The ghost protests that “there is something stifling about the idea of finality… what is more soul-destroying than stagnation?” The Spirit responds “There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them… Thirst was made for water; inquiry for truth. What you now call the free play of inquiry has neither more nor less to do with the ends for which intelligence was given you than masturbation has to do with marriage.” Regarding this statement as obscene, the ghost responds saying “that question-and-answer conception of thought only applies to matters of fact. Religious and speculative questions are surely on a different level.”

Dick asks the ghost if he even believes that God exists, to which the ghost asks “What does Existence mean?”

Dick then asks if he still even desires happiness, but while the ghost is dispensing his own wisdom on the subject, he suddenly remembers that he’s later presenting a paper at the Grey Town’s Theological Society, asking what Jesus’ opinions would have been if he hadn’t been tragically killed at such a young age. It is at this point the Spirit leaves him and the ghost returns to the bus humming a hymn to himself.

Lewis tries walking on the river’s hard water and falls flat on his face due to the water’s motion.

Questions

Q1. What do you think is the significance of the lions?

Q2. What do we learn about the background of the ghost and the spirit in this chapter?

Q3. Why is the ghost’s criticism of the spirit’s “narrow” opinions ironic?

Q4. What is the ghost’s sin?

Q5. How do the ghost and the spirit each regard the ghost’s beliefs?

Q6. What are the ghost’s demands for Heaven?

Q7. What would you regard as the ghost’s essential resistance to the spirit and to Heaven?

Q8. Why do you think the chapter ends in the way it does?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 4

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Summary

Anticipating “affecting scenes”, our protagonist wanders away from the group. He discovers that the grass, “hard as diamonds”, makes progress slow and painful. He is followed by The Big Ghost and one of the solid people. It turns out that, on earth, the ghost was the boss of the bright, solid man, who is named Len. Len had murdered a common acquaintance, a man called Jack. The Big Ghost is horrified Len has been allowed into this land. Len explains that his victim is there too and that he will see him soon.

The Big Ghost then asks Len if he’s ashamed of himself, to which Len replies “Not as you mean. I do not look at myself. I have given up myself” and explains that this began following the murder. The Big Ghost asks Len why “a bloody murderer” is here, while he had been living in the Grey Town. Len says that, although he’ll come to understand, it’ll be difficult to comprehend for the time being, so best to not bother about it.

But the Big Ghost says “I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t say I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see? I done my best by everyone, that’s the sort of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn’t mine by rights” Len explains that the situation is far better than he thinks, saying “I haven’t got my rights, or I should not be here. You will not get yours either. You’ll get something far better. Never fear.” The Big Ghost says he’s “not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity”, but Len exhorts him to do just that: “Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.”

At this point, we begin to see that the Big Ghost is not going to accept a Heaven where someone like Len is also welcome. Len attempts to correct this attitude without much success. He points out that the Big Ghost was neither a decent man, nor did he even “do his best”. The Big Ghost was hard on his employees, as well as on his wife and children. Len goes on to explain that murdering Jack wasn’t actually the worst thing he did: “I murdered you in my heart, deliberately, for years. I used to lie awake at nights thinking what I’d do to you if ever I got the chance”. He explains that, because of this, he has been sent to the Big Ghost to ask for his forgiveness and to serve him for as long as he would like.

The Big Ghost angrily tells Len to stay out of his “private affairs”, even though Len says that “There are no private affairs”. It is at this point the Big Ghost declares that he’s not going to go to the mountain at all: “Tell them I’m not coming, see? I’d rather be damned than go along with you”

Questions

Q1. What do we learn about the relationship between the Big Ghost and the solid person who meets him? Who is Jack?

Q2. Why is the Big Ghost surprised to see Len?

Q3. Why does Len say he isn’t ashamed? What virtue is he displaying?

Q4. On what basis does the Big Ghost think he should be granted admission? According to Len, would he get in on that basis?

Q5. What does Len say is the worst thing he’s ever done? Why is it worse than killing Jack?

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The Great Divorce: Chapter 3

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Summary

The bus climbs over a cliff and travels across “a level, grassy country through which there ran a wide river” where it lands. All the passengers push and shove to get out.

Lewis leaves the bus where “the light and coolness that drenched me were like those of summer morning, early morning a minute or two before the sunrise”. He has the sense of “being in a larger space…which made the Solar System itself seem an indoor affair”. This gives him a feeling both of freedom, but also of exposure to possible danger.

Looking at his fellow-passengers, Jack sees them as almost transparent. The “grass did not bend under their feet: even the dew drops were not disturbed”. At this point he realizes that “the men were as they always had been” and that “it was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison”. He tries to pluck a daisy and fails, it being “heavier than a sack of coal”. One ghost runs back into the bus, screaming “I don’t like it!”.

The Big Man asks the Driver when they’ve got to go back, but he replies that they can stay as long as they please. One of the quieter and more respectable ghosts comments to Lewis that personally he left the Grey Town to get away from this riff-raff!

Our protagonist looks around and sees some great mountains with “cities perched on inaccessible summits”. In the same way that the Grey Town seemed to be frozen in time, here the light does not change, with “the promise or the threat of sunrise”.

He then sees “bright” people coming to meet them, whose “strong feet sank into the wet turf”. Some of these people are naked, others robed, but it seemed to make very little difference, “the naked ones did not seem less adorned, and the robes did not disguise in those who wore them the massive grandeur of muscle and the radiant smoothness of flesh“. Although some had beards, they all seemed ageless. Two more ghosts scream and hide in the bus. The remaining phantoms huddle close together.

Questions

Q1. How is this new land described? What do you think is the significance of these descriptions?

Q2. What does Lewis come to realize about himself and the other passengers?

Q3. What does the Bus Driver say about their stay in this new land?

Q4. What annoyed the Respectable Ghost?

Q5. How are the “bright” people described? What do you think is the significance of this?

Q6. Why do some of the phantoms hide in the bus?

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