Gotfried Lessing talked of an "ugly ditch" between those things that we could be certain of and religious truth. C.S. Lewis' Great Divorce suggests that, for each one of us, their is an ugly ditch that must be crossed, but it is not at all the ditch Lessing describes. What kind of "ditches" does Lewis think we have to overcome before finding religious truth? Would the average reader recognize themselves in any of the figures depicted here?
The ditch is a divide not only between the truths of reason and the truths of faith, it is divide between what we can know and what we can’t.
ReplyDeleteWe can make assumptions about the afterlife based on what the scriptures say but they remain just that, assumptions. The only way to know the truth is to die – and that is also the only way across the ditch.
Our reality, our experiences are the only things that we can base our assumptions on so heaven is imagined as the best life we can think of, things that we think is important, so we wind up with heaven having streets of gold and everyone is living in mansions. I don’t think so, but that is just the thing nobody can know, well not until we get there.
Imagine having a unique experience no one has ever done until you, how would you describe it so someone else could understand it? You would need a common reference to at least begin describing your unique experience, then you could expand the description. What about if the experience was so unique that there is not common reference, how do you explain without it sounding impossible? Or a miracle? Truth of faith?
Like C.S. Lewis we all have images of what heaven and hell might be like, but those images are usually based on a frame of reference we have obtained from others either through hearing or reading. I am sure Lewis used people he had met in his life to model the ghosts for his story The Great Divorce where he tries to describe what he thinks of heaven and hell. However he had no true way to know what the experience of heaven will be like.
Jerry Taylor
I took the “ditches” in The Great Divorce to be the jump we must make from being our sinful selves to being redeemed and worthy of Heaven. The man with the lizard on his shoulder was willing to cross his ditch and leave behind his old ways, so that he could leave the Grey Town and go into the Mountains. In order to find religious truth, we need to be willing to leave behind the ways of the world. There’s the Kierekgaard quote, “We [Christians] pretend to be unable to understand it [the Bible] because we know very well the minute that we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” Life is different for a Christian, and while everyone’s ditch looks different, we must all cross ours to get to the truth. It reminds me of Augustine’s Confessions. I think most people could find themselves in Lewis’ story if they were honest with themselves…that’s always hard for us to do, though.
ReplyDeleteIn this novel, C.S. Lewis is quite delicate; I sometimes feel he is trying to pull on the inner weakness of the reader in a prominent but non-harmful way. He hides sins in various characters and from many different perspectives as well. These all point to a similar narrative of how sin often went unseen in an individual's life. From love to pity and grudges held and many more, C.S. Lewis extracts the hidden obsessions these sins can have in an individual's life.
ReplyDeleteThe best analogy to what C.S. Lewis tried to pull out was how sin goes unnoticed, a ditch beside the road. You see a ditch as you drive, past it rarely ever gets any genuine attention as you drive past it. That is the analogy present in this story's theme as a whole. The things that went most unnoticed were those that were the most neglected. In the end, though, those were the sins that were the most detrimental to the individuals upon their "death". After a life lived by overlooking the same thing, just as the ditch beside the road, the ditch, so to say, grew uglier and uglier as they traveled the road of life. Upon their arrival, the thing that they ignored their entire journey was the hardest thing to get across. Just as when driving, there are points where ditches are less dangerous to get across due to their depth. The same can be said about sin; when you get rid of sin early on, it is easier to remove it. However, The longer it goes, the less likely it becomes to be removed or, in the analogy to the ditch, cross.
Tanner Simon
As some of the statements above me, I also do not see where the "ditch" is within the book, but based on the title of the book, I get a little bit of an idea though. Maybe the title indicates that there is a lapse in logic when it comes to the "ditch" and Christianity.
ReplyDeleteOne of the 'ditches' that one must cross when it comes time to die is to admit when one has been sinful, even if their life has not inherently been religious. If they believe themselves Christians, then surely they believe they are going to Heaven upon their death - in going along that path, one must admit when they have sinned, regardless of how small that sin was.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I feel is critical is that when people merely say they are religious, but then refuse to follow through with that promise, they find themselves at a ditch. Admit that they weren't a good Christian and sinned, and be able to jump that ditch, or remain prideful and claim they were a better Christian than others and wasn't sinful enough to warrant Hell in the slightest, therefore causing themself to be stuck at that edge of the ditch.
It is an ugly thing, confronting the reality of who you are as a person. That is a huge hurtle to cross, especially if you know you were not a good person. Others believe themselves to be good people while remaining awful, but those people tend to be delusional, having convinced themselves that they'll get into Heaven just because they went to church.
Additionally, another ditch that might be inferred would be the connection between the desire of understanding and the Bible. The thing about some of the events in the Bible is that they are fantastical in nature, quite unrealistic by todays' standards. As we continue into the future, this grows more prevalent. And in seeking to understand just 'how' the miracles were achieved, it becomes mentally embedded to disbelieve it until it can be proven. When your faith is reliant on having this understanding, you will find yourself staring into a ditch.
Overall, the question of whether or not people will connect with the figures in the book is an easy one - yes. People can and will connect to any protagonist, especially if the person is portrayed as a victim or a hero. After all, that is what most people view themselves in their story.
Even flawed protagonists have people who view themselves as those we read about. People cling onto practically anything, including morally grey characters. We cannot say for sure whether or not these characters in particular have caused people to form a connection, but I can assume they will and have.