Into the Wardrobe

I've read a couple of articles (that I can recall) where a person who was obviously fairly familiar with Lewis's work and thought voiced the opinion that The Great Divorce somehow showcases Lewis's belief in purgatory. To the contrary, I think it's fairly obvious that the "purgatory" of TGD is a sort of allegory for this life, which, if we do not flee to Christ, will have been Hell to us all along and which, if we do flee to Christ, will have been a sort of purgatory in comparison to Heaven hereafter.

Going "on holiday" to the High Countries, as the shades do in TGD, is an allegory perhaps of going to church or in some other way coming into contact with Christ and His truth. The High Countries are so real that "purgatory" is a land of shades and unsolid things, just like Lewis's conception would have been (was) of the eternal, the heavens as more "real" than this life on the "silent planet."

Lewis obviously talked about some sort of purgatory in a few places (Letters to Malcom being the foremost in my mind), but he seems to have thought of purgatory as more of a process (instantaneous, perhaps) than a place. All the same, with maybe three sentences in all of the Lewisian corpus that have to do with purgatory (excluding TGD, which is the work in question and which demands greater care, as an imaginative work, in pulling out the thought behind it), how does one come up with the idea that TGD has to do with purgatory in the common sense of the word?

Has anybody else been dumbfounded at reading such ideas? Or perhaps somebody here agrees that TGD is illustrative of Lewis's belief in a traditional purgatory? Very interested to know.

Yes, I know just what you mean. About Lewis, anyway—I'm afraid I haven't read more of Chesterton than The Man Who was Thursday and his Ballad of the White Horse. He's one of those author's I keep meaning to get around to reading more of, but the middle ages keep getting in the way.

I've always seen The Great Divorce as allegory.

I especially like his idea that to those who end up in Hell, their live will seem to be but an extension of Hell, and to those who end up in Heaven, their lives will seem to be an extension of Heaven.

Coupled with this idea, it does seem that the story is allegorical, and that Hell is merely Earth, as is the part of Heaven the Ghosts go to (before they travel to the Mountains).

However, if you don't like that interpretation, Lewis deliberately left you an out- it's just a dream!

Purgatory never crossed my mind as I read The Great Divorce. On a literal level, it shows that the souls in Hell put themselves there and always have a chance to leave (I guess not if you're like Napoleon though). Then, on a more interpretive level, I thought about how we are now in the same situation as the characters in the book. Am I like a soul in Heaven, a ghost in Hell (like Napoleon), or a ghost that still has a chance to turn to Heaven (like the ghosts on the bus)?

I guess I never really thought about where exactly the ghosts from Hell were when they got off the bus; I assumed they were actually in Heaven, but not in the presence of God. But does that even make sense? At the same time, it's my understanding that purgatory has nothing to do with ghosts in Hell; rather it is for already saved souls not quite ready for complete Heaven. And that is definitely not what's happening in The Great Divorce. So, yeah, I share your puzzlement over those who say the book affirms purgatory.