THE GREAT DIVORCE

William Blake wrote a poem called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. In it, he argued that because humans are such complex beings, nothing is completely “good” or “bad”. In his view, “Heaven” is a land of restraint and “Hell” is a land of freedom. It takes two to tango, so one is not “better” than the other. By neglecting rigid black/white moral rules, we’re supposedly allowed to pursue a lot of gray space.

C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce to refute Blake’s satirical propositions.

Lewis declares that Heaven and Hell are two very distinct places. Of the two, Heaven is the only place where one can attain true happiness. As he wrote in the preface, “I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’ — or else not. It is still ‘either-or’. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell” (466).

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The Narrator finds himself in a dismal, vacant place.

“My walking brought me to the better parts of the town… 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” (467).

The people in line are unpleasant or selfish.

When a couple fights and gets out of line, the Narrator is glad to be two spots closer to the front.
The Narrator passively observes the violent Big Man punch the haughty Short Man. As the Short Man limps out of line, the Narrator is again glad to be another spot closer to the front.
Two young people lustfully prefer the company of the other over the opportunity to get on the bus, so they walk out of line, arm-in-arm.
A man tells a woman that he’ll pay her to trade spots, but then he cheats her: “I heard the clink of money and then a scream in the female voice, mixed with roars of laughter from the rest of the crowd. The cheated woman leaped out of her place to fly at the man who had bilked her, but the others immediately closed up and flung her out” (468).
When the bus and Driver appear with angelic qualities, many people criticize the Driver for petty reasons.
Many people unnecessarily “fought like hens” to shove their way onto the bus, even though there was “plenty of space” (469).
The “Tousle-Headed Poet” who sits next to the Narrator arrogantly complains how the other people are uncultured: “The appalling lack of any intellectual life doesn’t seem to worry them. …I’ve fooled about trying to wake people up here” (469).

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The bus begins flying over the ground, giving the Narrator a view of the enormous “grey town” that they’re leaving. Meanwhile, the Tousle-Headed Poet continues to complain to the Narrator about his life before the grey town. Because he died by suicide, we can assume that “the grey town” is Hell.

After a fight (involving knives and guns) breaks out on the bus, the Narrator gets in a different seat with a different man: “The Intelligent Man”. The Intelligent Man gives the Narrator further insight to the grey town. According to him, all newcomers to the grey town arrive at the “Civic Centre”.

From the Civic Centre, people have two options:

Walk towards the bus stop. Even though many Christians think that Hell is an inescapable place for eternal punishment, it’s supposedly possible to escape from the grey town through a lot of willpower and work.
Keep drifting further and further away from the bus stop. The reason why the grey town is so large and empty isn’t because there was once a larger population. Since people can’t live in harmony, they are tempted to keep moving further and further away from each other.

“You see, it’s easy here. You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps growing” (472).

Theoretically, people who have drifted far away could still one day travel to the bus stop.

“But it’d be a distance of light-years. And they wouldn’t want to by now: not those old chaps like Tamberlaine and Cenghis Khan, or Julius Caesar, or Henry the Fifth. …The nearest of those old ones is Napoleon. We know that because two chaps made the journey to see him. …They went and looked through one of the windows. Napoleon was there all right. …Walking up and down — up and down all the time — left-right, left-right — never stopping for a moment. The two chaps watched him for about a year and he never rested. And muttering to himself all the time; ‘It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault. It was the fault of the Russians. It was the fault of the English.’ Like that all the time. Never stopped for a moment. A little, fat man and he looked kind of tired. But he didn’t seem to be able to stop it” (472-473).

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The Intelligent Man (aka “Ikey“) then reveals his fatal flaw: Greed. He’s trying to find a way to gain money (even though there isn’t a clear use for money in the afterlife).

“The trouble is they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it. …It’s scarcity that enables a society to exist. Well, that’s where I come in. I’m not going on this trip for my health. As far as that goes I don’t think it would suit me up there. But if I can come back with some real commodities — anything at all that you could really bite or drink or sit on — why, at once you’d get a demand down in our town. I’d start a little business. I’d have something to sell. You’d soon get people coming to live near — centralisation. Two fully-inhabited streets would accommodate the people that are now spread over a million square miles of empty streets. I’d make a nice little profit and be a public benefactor as well” (473).

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A fat man points out that the Intelligent Man’s dreams are “only materialism”, “retrogressive”, and “Earth-bound” (475).

But the fat man has a flaw too. He is overly idealistic and optimistic about the grey town. Similar to how William Blake didn’t think that Hell was too bad after all.

“We look on this spiritual city — for with all its faults it is spiritual — as a nursery in which the creative functions of man, now freed from the clogs of matter, begin to try their wings. A sublime thought” (475).

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Hours later, it becomes brighter outside. The sky turns from “mud-color” to blue. When the Narrator opens the window, a “delicious freshness came in for a second” (475).

But the Intelligent Man yells for the Narrator to close the window since it’s too “cold” outside.

Instead of the light giving warmth and happiness, it exposes the passenger’s sinfulness more.

“It was a cruel light. I shrank from the faces and forms by which I was surrounded. They were all fixed faces, full not of possibilities but impossibilities, some gaunt, some bloated, some glaring with idiotic ferocity, some drowned beyond recovery in dreams; but all, in one way or another, distorted and faded. One had a feeling that they might fall to pieces at any moment if the light grew much stronger” (475).

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The bus lands over a cliff to the entryway to Heaven, where there’s a grassy plain and a river. The sinful passengers become powerless amidst the timeless beauty that surrounds them.

“They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air. One could attend to them or ignore them at will as you do with the dirt on a window pane. I noticed that the grass did not bend under their feet: even the dew drops were not disturbed” (477).

The steps that they take hurt them and tire them out since “reality is harsh to the feet of shadows” (486).

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The Driver gives the passengers the option to stay there or head back to the grey town. Some people want to go back to what they’re used to, but the Narrator is captivated by the mountains in the distance.

“There was no change and no progression as the hours passed. The promise — or the threat — of sunrise rested immovably up there” (478).

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Heavenly Spirits (appearing as bright, solid people) approach them. The Big Man (now referred to as the “Big Ghost”) recognizes one of these Spirits as Len. Back on Earth, Len murdered a man named Jack (who is also in Heaven now). Len explains to the Big Ghost that he’s had a changed heart ever since he gave himself up to Christianity.

“Murdering old Jack wasn’t the worst thing I did. That was the work of a moment and I was half mad when I did it. But I murdered you in my heart, deliberately, for years. I used to lie awake at nights thinking what I’d do to you if I ever got the chance. That is why I have been sent to you now: to ask your forgiveness and to be your servant as long as you need one, and longer if it pleases you” (481).

But the Big Ghost is full of pride. He resents that Len made it to Heaven before he did. He complains that even though he wasn’t a religious man, he tried to lead a good life and rightfully “deserves” Heaven instead of being “put below a bloody murderer” (480). He indignantly tells Len, “If they choose to let in a bloody murderer all because he makes a poor mouth at the last moment, that’s their look out. But I don’t see myself going in the same boat as you, see? Why should I? I don’t want charity. I’m a decent man and if I had my rights I’d have been here long ago and you can tell them I said so” (481).

Len reiterates that the only way to Heaven is through surrender. Heaven can’t be earned or bought, and those with shadowy feet can’t make it there alone. But the Big Ghost still refuses Len’s help, declares that he would rather be damned in the grey town, and storms off.

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The fat ghost talks with a different Spirit (named Dick). The fat ghost maintains his idealistic, optimistic view: “The grey town with its continual hope of morning (we must all live by hope, must we not?), with its field for indefinite progress, is, in a sense, Heaven, if only we have eyes to see it? That is a beautiful idea.” He furthermore asserts that “honest opinions fearlessly followed — they are not sins” and “to travel hopefully is better than to arrive… What is more soul-destroying than stagnation?” (484-487).

Dick corrects him that Heaven is the only destination that people should strive for: “You have been in Hell: though if you don’t go back you may call it Purgatory” (484).

Dick also clarifies that people ought to find out the truth: “Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend: a drunkard reaches a point at which (for the moment) he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind… But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent” (485-486).

Additionally, Dick points out that if hopeful traveling was indeed better than actually reaching your goal, “how could anyone travel hopefully? There would be nothing to hope for” (487).

Because Dick can’t promise the fat ghost a “wider sphere of influence” (since he’s not needed in Heaven) nor a “scope for his talents” (only “forgiveness for having perverted them”), the fat ghost ultimately decides to go back to the grey town. After all, he’s more interested in the pursuit of knowledge than in knowledge itself: “I’d nearly forgotten. Of course I can’t come with you. I have to be back next Friday to read a paper. We have a little Theological Society down there. Oh yes! There is plenty of intellectual life. Not of a very high quality, perhaps. One notices a certain lack of grip — a certain confusion of mind. That is where I can be of some use to them” (486-488).

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The Narrator spots Ikey trying to steal apples to sell back at the grey town (similar to how Eve greedily stole a forbidden fruit).

“I could see him feverishly trying to fill his pockets with the apples. Of course it was useless. One could see how his ambitions were gradually forced down. He gave up the idea of a pocketful: two would have to do. He gave up the idea of two, he would take one, the largest one. He gave up that hope. He was now looking for the smallest one. He was trying to find if there was one small enough to carry. The amazing thing was that he succeeded. …He was lame from his hurts, and the weight bent him double. Yet even so, inch by inch, still availing himself of every scrap of cover, he set out his via dolorosa to the bus, carrying his torture” (492).

A waterfall (aka the “Water-Giant“) that doubles as “a bright angel who stood, like one crucified” called Ikey a “fool” and ordered him to “put it down. You cannot take it back. There is not room for it in Hell. Stay here and learn to eat such apples. The very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you” (492). But Ikey did not respond and stubbornly continued on towards the bus.

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A cynical ghost (referred to as the “Hard-Bitten Ghost”) approaches the Narrator. This ghost is “a lean hard-bitten man with grey hair and a gruff, but not uneducated voice: the kind of man [the Narrator has] always instinctively felt to be reliable” (493). The Hard-Bitten Ghost explains that the reason why he came on the journey is because he’s a traveler: “I’m the sort of chap who likes to see things for himself. Wherever I’ve been I’ve always had a look at anything that was being cracked up” (493-494).

But he always gets disappointed (and even thinks up conspiracy theories). He claims that famous sights like the Niagara Falls, the Pyramids, and the Taj Mahal are “not worth looking at. They’re all advertisement stunts. All run by the same people. There’s a combine, you know, a World Combine, that just takes an Atlas and decides where they’ll have a Sight. Doesn’t matter what they choose: anything’ll do as long as the publicity’s properly managed” (494).

Echoing William Blake, the ghost likewise thinks that Heaven is nothing more than “propaganda” 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… It’s as good as any other park to look at, and darned uncomfortable” (493-494). The Narrator argues that they’re supposed to become more solid if they stay, but the Hard-Bitten Ghost says that this is the “same old lie. People have been telling me that sort of thing all my life. They told me in the nursery that if I were good I’d be happy. And they told me at school that Latin would get easier as I went on. After I’d been married a month some fool was telling me that there were always difficulties at first, but with Tact and Patience I’d soon ‘settle down’ and like it! And all through two wars what didn’t they say about the good time coming if only I’d be a brave boy and go on being shot at? Of course they’ll play the old game here if anyone’s fool enough to listen” (494).

The Narrator points out that if no place is worth going to, then there should be no reason to go back to the grey town. After all, it’s not raining in Heaven. The ghost admits that the grey town is boring and “a flop” (since “they lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids — Henry VIII and all that — but when you get there it’s just like any other town”). But at least it’s more comfortable there. After the ghost declares that he doesn’t want to get drilled with holes if it would rain in Heaven, he makes his way back to Hell.

The Narrator is left feeling discouraged, miserable, and confused about his desire for salvation.

Looking for evidence that it’s indeed possible for a ghost to make it in this new environment, the Narrator observes a conversation between a female ghost and a solid-bodied Spirit. The Spirit tries to politely convince her to lean on him all the way to the mountains, reassuring her that “we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived” (499).

But the female ghost is full of shame and feels self-conscious of people staring through her, so she refuses his help. She then accuses him of taking advantage of the fact that she can’t run away or hide from him.

The Spirit announces that “only one expedient remains” (500). He calls upon a herd of unicorns (in hopes of nudging her to temporarily forget herself and go towards the mountains). Upon hearing the thud of hooves, the female ghost bolts. Because the Narrator also runs away, he loses track of which direction she went.

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A Scottish Spirit named George MacDonald meets up with the Narrator and serves as his guide (or “Teacher”). He explains to the Narrator that the grey town is Hell to some, Purgatory to others.

The entryway to Heaven (where they are now) is the “Valley of the Shadow of Life”, whereas the entryway to the grey town is the “Valley of the Shadow of Death”. One’s past life on Earth leads to either of these two eternal places: “Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their 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. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly” (503).

The Teacher also explains how Hell is a state of mind while Heaven is true reality: “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. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains” (504).

Those who wish to shut themselves up in Hell do so through the desire of stubbornly holding onto something: “The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words ‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.’ 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” (504).

The Teacher also reassures the Narrator that everyone in the grey town who wishes to have the chance to work their way back to Heaven always find their way to the bus stop: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘They will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ 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” (506).

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While the Narrator walks with his Teacher (leaning on his arm), he recognizes a famous painter from Earth.

A Spirit explains to the painter that there’s no need to paint in Heaven: “When you painted on earth — at least in your earlier days — it was because you caught glimpses of Heaven in the earthly landscape. The success of your painting was that it enabled others to see the glimpses too. But here you are having the thing itself. It is from here that the messages came. There is no good telling us about this country, for we see it already. In fact we see it better than you do” (510).

The painter had become so obsessed with the pursuit of capturing a glimpse of beauty (and thereby Heaven) that he forgot about the joy of Heaven itself. So, the painter later drifted to being “interested in paint for its own sake” (511).

The Spirit also informs the painter that when people drink from the fountain, they’re cured of all pride. They begin fully rejoicing in other people’s accomplishments as if they were their own. Everyone is famous: “The Glory that flows into everyone, and back from everyone: like light and mirrors. But the light’s the thing” (512).

When the Spirit adds that he and the painter have already been completely forgotten on Earth, the painter declares that he needs to create a new masterpiece and promptly scurries back to the bus.

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Next, the Narrator observes a female ghost talking about her husband Robert to a Spirit named Hilda. The ghost is a control freak who likes to manipulate others and complain for the sake of complaining.

First, she declares that she would refuse to stay in Heaven if she had to meet Robert (since he never appreciated all the things that she did for him on Earth). Before Hilda can get a word in, the ghost then changes her mind and says that she’ll take the “burden” of caring for him again since she believes that she could “still make something of him” (516). And then she switches to demanding to see him: “Put me in charge of him. He wants firm handling. I know him better than you do. What’s that? No, give him to me, do you hear? Don’t consult him: just give him to me. I’m his wife, aren’t I? I was only beginning. There’s lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him. No, listen, Hilda! Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to — to do things to. It’s simply frightful down there. No one minds about me at all. I can’t alter them. It’s dreadful to see them all sitting about and not be able to do anything with them” (516).

However, true love doesn’t involve forcing someone to be a certain way. There must be free will on both sides of the relationship. When all that is left of the female ghost is her desire to control her husband once again, she disappears: “The Ghost which had towered up like a dying candle-flame snapped suddenly” (516).

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Next, the Narrator overhears a conversation between a woman named Pam and her brother, Reginald. All that Pam wants to do is see her son (Michael), who died as a child.

But Reginald warns her that she must learn to put God first: “I’m afraid the first step is a hard one… But after that you’ll go on like a house on fire. You will become solid enough for Michael to perceive you when you learn to want Someone Else besides Michael. I don’t say ‘more than Michael’, not as a beginning. That will come later. It’s only a little germ of a desire for God that we need to start the process… You’re treating God only as a means for Michael. But the whole thickening treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake. …You exist as Michael’s mother only because you first exist as God’s creature. That relation is older and closer… [God] also loves. He also has suffered. He also has waited a long time. …Human beings can’t make one another really happy for long” (518).

When Pam asks why the God of Love would take away someone who she loves, Reginald explains that it was both for Michael’s sake and her sake. Similar to the book of Job, one must love God more than the gifts that He provides us with (such as a family, wealth, and job opportunities). Because God is the God of Love, He wants us to learn to love more than one person on Earth: “You cannot love a fellow-creature till you love God. Sometimes this conversation can be done while the instinctive love is still gratified. But there was, it seems, no chance of that in your case. The instinct was uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac. (Ask your daughter, or your husband. Ask our own mother. You haven’t once thought of her.) The only remedy was to take away its object. It was a case for surgery. When that first kind of love was thwarted, then there was just a chance that in the loneliness, in the silence, something else might begin to grow” (518).

Pam’s obsession with Michael came at the cost of her other relationships. And as Reginald warns, while the past can be a good place to visit, if you keep looking at life through the rearview window, you’re bound to crash into what’s ahead: “No man ever felt his son’s death more than Dick. Not many girls loved their brothers better than Muriel. It wasn’t against Michael they revolted: it was against you — against having their whole life dominated by the tyranny of the past: and not really even Michael’s past, but your past… [The past] was all you chose to have. It was the wrong way to deal with a sorrow. It was Egyptian — like embalming a dead body” (519-520).

After all, Michael was never truly “hers” to begin with. Although she gave birth to him with her own body (which she doesn’t have anymore since her death), even her body was a gift from God. We mistake our gifts as false gods. The greater the gift, the harder it can be to re-center our focus on God if we misuse that gift: “Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil… It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas that you make demons, but out of archangels” (521-522).

As the Narrator’s Teacher later explains to the Narrator, the mother doesn’t have an “excess” of love for Michael but rather a “defected” love: “She loved her son too little, not too much. If she had loved him more there’d be no difficulty. I do not know how her affair will end. But 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. ” (526).

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Killing a corrupted desire for lust can be easier to kill than a corrupted love of a mother for her child.

The Narrator next sees a ghost with a little red lizard on his shoulder. The lizard (which represents the lust that he carries) impatiently keeps whispering in the ghost’s ear until the ghost smiles and limps away from the mountains.

A Spirit repeatedly offers to kill the lizard, but only if it gets the ghost’s permission. The ghost is deeply conflicted: He knows that he shouldn’t keep carrying around something that isn’t good for him, but on the other hand, he likes to still have it around.

Eventually, the ghost grants the Spirit permission to kill the lizard (even though this sacrifice causes the ghost pain). As a reward, the ghost transforms into a solid-bodied man, and the lizard transforms into a stunning stallion. As the Narrator’s Teacher comments: “Flesh and blood cannot come to the Mountains. Not because they are now 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… 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?” (526).

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A Lady (named “Sarah Smith”) is overflowing with love as she parades in. She approaches a Dwarf ghost (her former husband, who is holding a chained leash that’s around a tall, theatrical-looking Tragedian ghost’s neck). The two ghosts represent Frank’s divided nature: his natural self, and the over-dramatic role he plays to make others pity him.

At first, Sarah’s words make the Dwarf taller, more confident, more visible, and almost ready to relinquish the Tragedian. But once he realizes that Sarah wasn’t sad without him and that he isn’t “missed” or “needed”, he pretends to be offended as he shrinks smaller and smaller (to knee-height, then to the size of a kitten, and then to the size of a fly).

Sarah tries to convince him to let go of the chain and to stop “using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way. We have all done it a bit on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. You see, I know now. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic… because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, ‘I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there all alone, crying.’ You used their pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end” (534).

When the Dwarf and the Tragedian fade away, the Narrator is confused why Sarah isn’t mourning. His Teacher explains that she had enough torment from him in their earthly lives and that he no longer has the power to hurt her. After all, lurking behind pity is “the demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven… It must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe” (536).

The Narrator’s Teacher also explains how pity is a double-edged sword: “The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty — that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken… [The action of Pity is] a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses” (536-537).

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The entire journey turns out to just be the Narrator’s “dream”. But we can use its lessons to watch out for the traps that many of the characters fell in. To which place will we treat our life on Earth as an entryway to?