Clive Lewis "Divorce": reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

A short work by Clive Lewis, "Dissolution of Marriage" is devoted to religious topics and has nothing to do with the divorce process. The title itself reflects the content of W. Blake's collection “The Marriage of Hell and Paradise”. With his work, the writer tries to prove that such a union is impossible.

Who is Clive Lewis?

Clive Lewis, scholar and theologian, was born in Ireland in 1898. The English writer is known for his works on religious themes and works in the fantasy genre. Lewis's first published work was the poetry collection The Oppressed Spirit. In 1926, another collection of poems was published - "Daimer".

According to the writer, in 1931 he became a Christian. At the same time, his works of a Christian orientation were published: "Letters of Balamut", "Miracle", "Simply Christianity". During the war years, Lewis worked in the broadcasting service for the BBC, was a member of the Inklings, which gatheredfamous writers D. Tolkien, C. Williams, W. Coghill and others.

The name of the writer was known from religious books, but world fame came with the release of the Chronicles of Narnia cycle in 1955.

In the Christian world, interest in the writer's books has not faded from the moment of publication, but the general public paid attention to them after the release of the film "The Chronicles of Narnia" in 2000. And, judging by the readers' reviews, not only the writer's artworks are popular, but also religious ones: "Love", "Pain of Loss", "Reflections on the Psalms", "Until We Have Found Faces". Including "Divorce", which we will dwell on in more detail.

What book is this?

The hero of the story finds himself at a bus stop and realizes that the bus he got on is not going anywhere, but to Paradise. Events are developing rapidly, the reader will not be bored. The author reveals the feelings of each passenger who arrived on this flight. "Anonymous Orthodox" - this is how Bishop Kallistos called the writer and clarified that Lewis is partly familiar with Orthodoxy, he visited the church several times and hardly studied the works of the holy fathers, but showed himself to be an "orthodox thinker." Perhaps this explains its popularity in almost all Christian denominations, which is quite rare.

The writer not only contrasts his work with the title of the poet Blake, who claimed that good and evil are a single whole, but also with the content of the book"Divorce". Lewis clearly shows that this is not the case. The story begins with an unfriendly and gloomy picture: gray buildings, drizzling rain, twilight falls on the city. The reader sees people who are overwhelmed: anger, pride, vanity, indifference, irritability, coldness. In "Dissolution of Marriage" Lewis also describes the sounds surrounding the characters - laughter, crying and squealing.

Is heaven necessary?

When the bus passengers arrive in heaven, they feel bad, they are unhappy: the light is blinding, they scream that it's all advertising. It's impossible to live like that. "You can't bite apples, you can't drink water, you can't walk on grass." They lived well where they came from. As readers of Clive Lewis's book "Dissolution of Marriage" write in reviews, reading these lines, you understand that everyone chooses heaven or hell for himself. It would seem that people still need? They were given a tour, allowed to touch the eternal bliss - to see paradise with their own eyes, to compare that world and this one. Though not for long, they were given the highest happiness that one can only dream of.

But neither the views nor the thoughts of these people linger on anything - they hurry back, fuss, swear, lament. They managed to transfer their hell to heaven. The author is overwhelmed with anxious feelings, and the reader sees that hell is an intoxication with passions. In a small work, a gallery of faces and feelings rushes by. The heroes of the book by Clive Lewis "Dissolution of Marriage" communicate with the antipodes who are in paradise and try to reason with them, stop and prevent evil. Butarrivals are proud, stubborn and do not want to change, do not want to admit their mistakes.

Which would you choose?

Lewis's book is built in the form of dialogues. Each of the characters illustrates a mortal sin. The reader sees a woman who madly loved her son - an apostate, a thief, a theologian. It would seem that he is terrible? What is his sin? He is a theologian without God, carried away by reasoning about the afterlife, he forgot about God. This arduous journey reveals the soul of every character in Clive Lewis's book Divorce.

The author shows that this hellish state is not easy to overcome - the union of good and evil is impossible. If a person chooses heaven, not a drop of hell will remain in him, but if he chooses hell, then the path to heaven is closed. Paradise reigns not on earth, but in the soul of a person, in the very heart, and in order to find it, one must make efforts to abandon hell. Courage is not enough for everyone.

Clive Lewis in "The Divorce" makes a surprisingly accurate comparison. He represents sin in the form of a lizard pressing on a person's chest. Everyone is trying to prove to him that you just need to throw the lizard off your chest, but the person is afraid. So it is in life. A person sometimes lacks the determination to give up bad habits. In the book, an angel comes to the aid of the hero and turns a disgusting creature into a beautiful one.

What is God's mercy?

The author says that sin can be transformed by its opposite - good deed. Lewis is amazingly accurate in portraying that people in hell are also not deprived of the love of God. And it is she who weighs and torments sinners: those who are tormented in Gehenna are stricken with a scourgelove. They realize that they have sinned against His love, this sadness burns the heart, incinerates. To eternal rest and bliss, it was necessary to take only one step - to accept this love. But they couldn't.

Lewis in his work reveals that God loves everyone equally - both the righteous and sinners. Only for some His love is bliss, for others it is an unbearable torment. Everyone chooses - heaven or hell. Sometimes a person is perplexed, if God is Love, how can he send his children to eternal suffering? The author in this parable answers this question: it is not God who wants them to suffer, a person himself cannot accept His mercy.

Reviews from readers

In "Marriage Dissolution" Clive Lewis is right on target. The author did not set himself the task of telling how it would actually be in “that life”. But he skillfully makes the reader think about many things - about heaven and hell, about the meaning of life, about prayer without God, which can lead to indifference or boundless love. Lewis is amazingly accurate in showing that hell is in the soul. And it does not matter whether he believes in the afterlife or not, but in the book each reader will find his own portrait. The book is incredible! A penetrating story to the core. Light style, bright, juicy descriptions, dialogues and content with deep meaning.