The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis Book Analysis

Free will is vastly important when making life decisions. Various decisions pop up in everyday life, and one seemingly minute decision can affect your life in many ways.  Indeed, when making decisions without outside assistance, we may feel more confident in the decision. If we were heavily influenced by an outside force, we might not be so certain. In this day and age, it is popular to believe that all things are determined by something external to them. “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis challenges this assertion and exhibits a different school of thought. Although it is sometimes claimed that free will is unimportant and may not even exist, I think that "The Great Divorce" demonstrates that free will exists and is relevant because the ghosts act and decide their fate through the choices they make in "The Great Divorce".

Free will is a concept that is best described as, “The freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention (Free will, def.2).” It is essentially the ability to freely decide things for yourself. An example of free will occurring is deciding whether or not to rob a bank. Unless somebody is forcing you, you can use judgment and decide if you should commit the crime or not. Our judgment is very important because it is the method we use to think critically about an issue. Judgment is “an opinion or decision that is based on careful thought (Judgment),” and without it, we would make many harmful and unacceptable decisions in our lives. Robbing a bank is a generally terrible decision to make, and it shows a lack of right judgment. They think about what would happen as a direct result of that crime and realize that they should not do it. If they did not use judgment, that person would decide to just rob the bank. A decision is, “a choice that you make about something after thinking about it (Decision).” You can make a decision, like robbing a bank, at any time in life. Decisions are also a direct result of free will. If free will did not exist, nobody would have to decide anything because nobody would have a choice in what they did. 

“The Great Divorce” is an excellent example of people making decisions. In “The Great Divorce”, a man is transported to a spiritual world. In the beginning, a man waits at a bus stop. As he waits, the man witnesses several people decide to leave the line. Eventually, the bus leaves and the man is transported to the spiritual world. In this spiritual world, he meets many ghosts. Each person has flaws and has made bad decisions. Throughout the book, the main character realizes that he is visiting heaven and that the spirits are damned souls who are also visiting paradise. Eventually, the man concludes that the souls he meets have the choice to stay in heaven or the Grey Town that they started in. This truth means that the ghosts who leave the line are passing on a chance to live in a paradise. One of the primary examples of a spirit not taking that chance is the young couple. The man observes, “A moment later two young people in front of him also left us arm in arm (Lewis 3).” The ghosts were so vain and caught up in themselves that they decided to leave the line. They are not the only ones, as a few more people also exit the queue. Each one chooses to pass on heaven and live in a town where nobody cares about anyone.

When the ghosts leave the queue, they go back to the place called Grey Town. The people there live in houses by themselves and never talk to anyone. They are unhappy because they are enslaved, and nobody is in any kind of a relationship. Free will enables us to shape our relationships and make choices. For instance, there is a couple in the queue who argue. They both pretend to be humble and eventually leave because they are obsessed with themselves. The couple does not have a relationship because they merely argue all the time. On the other hand, is a woman named Sarah Smith. She is part of a procession, and the narrator remarks, “Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honor all this was being done (Lewis 118).” Lewis asks his companion about the woman and learns that it is Sarah Smith. Sarah is a lady held in great honor. Lewis’s character then witnesses her meet her husband for the first time in the afterlife. In his earthly life, he was a manipulative person who blackmailed people into feeling pity for him. Now, he takes the form of a dwarf, who represents manipulation, and the Tragedian, a pitiful creature. These two immediately attempt to make Sarah feel pity, but her love for Jesus has given her the ability to love truly. The dwarf’s attempts fail because she sees through his lies, and he fades away into nothingness. Sarah triumphed because she had chosen Jesus over earthly things. 

Another illustration of someone who uses their free will well is a man named Reginald, who chose to love Jesus on earth. Reginald is a spirit who meets his newly dead sister. She is looking for her son, with whom she is obsessed. Reginald attempts to dissuade her from making any more poor choices but fails. Still, he is free and not under any influence, even though his sister will likely go back to Grew Town. Many ghosts also chose to suffer instead of thrive. This highlights how a simple choice could mean happiness or eternal despair. Choices like this make life more meaningful, especially when we are rewarded for making good decisions. Among many others, Sarah Smith is honored for this. Her faith and kindness in her past life have brought her true happiness and peace. Being rewarded for good decisions can also be seen in real life. Going back to the bank-robbing analogy, if one were to rob the bank, they would be arrested and punished accordingly, but if they chose not to rob the bank, nothing would happen and maybe they would get an opportunity to make money another way. If we make good decisions, good things will happen. The reward factor often causes us to think about it more, thus creating moral responsibility. Moral responsibility makes us more careful with our actions. They have weight, and we need to be responsible for them. Reginald’s sister, Pam, does not understand the gravity of her actions and she cannot get over the fact that her son would leave her for God. We think more carefully if we know it will directly affect us. Pam did not realize that her actions would have direct consequences. Humans are usually self-centered or focused on the wrong things, so the importance of their actions is often noticed too late. 

Some thinkers and philosophers have claimed that free will is unimportant. They believe that everything is random and chaotic. If anything can happen, then your free will does not matter because whatever happens, happens. However, the will of a person will always be relevant in any encounter. As Lewis comments, “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. Those who knock it is opened (75) .” He drives home the point that a person cannot go to heaven unless they trust in God. People might also argue that since God knows everything, nothing is up for being decided. However, Paul Little makes a brilliant point in his book “Know what You Believe” that, “ God’s foreknowledge is not in itself the cause of what happens (52).”. No matter what, people will always have some free will in any circumstance, and it can affect the outcome.

Despite it being proclaimed that free will is unimportant, “The Great Divorce” proves the opposite. The ghosts who chose to stay in Grey Town serve as an example that free will is significant. Free-will choices are eternally significant. Sarah Smith, Reginald, and those who leave the bus queue, like the young couple, testify to this fact. Your choices will affect you. And even if things seem random and chaotic, you will always have some say in a matter because you matter.