The Great Divorce is one of Lewis's most intriguing pieces of fiction. Rather than being a novel in the traditional sense, this book follows more the tradition of G.K. Chesterton (author of The Man Who Was Thursday), one of Lewis's inspirations, to create a surreal narrative filled with allegorical meaning yet not quite fitting the qualifications of a typical allegory, such as his classic children's novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Through the course of the novel, the reader follows the unnamed narrator (assumed to represent Lewis himself) in a sort of exploration of the afterlife reminiscent of Dante's Divine Comedy, traveling from Hell to Heaven in a dreamlike manner and experiencing the journey as a sort of metaphor that reflects truth in the real world.
It is important to remember that Lewis notes in the introduction that the cosmological system he presents in The Great Divorce (the particularities of Heaven, Hell, and spiritual reality) in no way represents his own view about the specificities of the afterlife; it is merely a convenient artistic representation of the truths he intends to convey. Regardless of this disclaimer, Lewis's cosmological progression echoes that of Dante in many aspects. Both Lewis and Dante are presumed to be their own fictional first-person narrators, each one experiencing an ascendant journey through an imagined afterlife that sheds light on the nature of current reality.
Like Dante, Lewis opens the novel finding himself in a dark and grey area, inhabiting the realm of Hell. Unlike Dante, Lewis has no one to guide him, and he makes his own choices. This presentation of Hell is an unusual one in Christian typology; typically, Hell is full of fire and brimstone, sinners being physically tortured for all eternity as punishment for their sins. The Hell of Lewis, however, bears little resemblance to that of Dante: it is a bleak, grey city with complete freedom and no overt torment. People are free to do as they please, and the only characteristic that differentiates it from our present reality is the utter lack of joy and charity. Selfishness is a given, and this leads to most interpersonal encounters being unpleasant. This version of Hell is far more theologically appealing; instead of God vengefully punishing the unrepentant with cruel torture, he simply allows them to have their own way, chasing the things that truly don't matter in an endless cycle of distrust. The narrator is tired of the inanity of this place, and when a bus comes to town offering to take people to "another place," he takes the opportunity.
Before beginning an analysis of Heaven, it's important to note one aspect of Lewis's fictional structure of the spiritual realms that differs from most traditional interpretations. For those who remain there forever, the grey area is Hell. For those who choose to take the bus to Heaven and remain there, however, the grey area is merely Purgatory, an intermediary stop on their eventual journey to Heaven. This opportunity for postmortem conversion is an interesting idea of Lewis's, one that is scarcely reflected in the rest of his writing but one that preserves the perception of a loving and reasonable God, for good or ill.
When the spirits arrive in Heaven, they discover that the entire realm is vibrantly real, containing a quality of being that they themselves lack. This ontological dichotomy makes the inhabitants of Hell look like little more than "Ghosts," which becomes their monikers for the remainder of the work. As Lewis finds out in the course of his journey, Heaven isn't merely above Hell: it's outside and around it, as Hell is so tiny as to be unobservable in reference to the scope of Heaven.
Much like Dante, Lewis comes across a guide in Heaven, a person who was greatly influential to him in life: George MacDonald, a Scottish theologian and fantasy writer who parallels the role of Beatrice by guiding Lewis through the realm of Heaven and explaining the meaning of the visions Lewis perceives. As the narrative progresses, Lewis learns much about Heaven in contrast to the ways of Hell that has extraordinary import on the way we live our lives in the contemporary age, as seen through personified examples of the clash of worldviews. At the novel's end, the sun breaks through the clouds and rises above the horizon, representing the undiluted presence of God in the same way Dante experiences it at the end of his journey in the Empyrean. While MacDonald greets the sunrise with a contented smile, the unimaginably bright light shatters Lewis's mind and wakes him from his dream.
