Last week we read that Sarah Smith was starting to get through to her ghostly husband. In today’s chapter we see the conclusion of that encounter and MacDonald explains why misery must one day be unable to affect joy…
S2E20: “The Dwarf and The Tragedian” (Download)
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Time Stamps
In case your podcast application has the ability to jump to certain time codes, here are the timestamps for the different parts of the episode.
08:15 – Chapter 150-word Summary
09:37 – Chapter Discussion
43:00 – Haikus
Show Notes
• Made discovered a tweet from last week which I posted while I was editing. Matt uses the word “incredible” A LOT. So, in this episode, I turned it into a drinking game, taking a drink every time he said that word…
• Matt referred to “David Copperfield Incident” from the episode on Pride last Season (S1E21).
• The quote-of-the-week comes from the lips of George MacDonald where he explains why there must be a Hell:
“Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• Matt was drinking Johnnie Walker Red Label. I was drinking Talisker which my friends gave me for singing at their wedding – they are just about to give birth to their first child.
• Matt and I will both be attending the International C.S. Lewis Symposium in November. There are going to be lots of great speakers there, including C.S. Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham. The guys from The Lamp-Post Listener will be attending, as will former show guest Patti Callahan. If you’re coming, please let us know! I am planning on bringing a bottle of Vat 69, Lewis’ favourite scotch!
• I read a message on Reddit:
Really loving the “Pints With Jack” podcasts. I am going back and listening more intentionally. I’m looking forward to a new book that I can read along with in “real time” every week. With that said, I’m hoping you guys continue for a very long time!
rss1179, Reddit
• We toasted listener Jeff who hung out with Matt this past week.
• Read read our summary of the chapter:
The Tragedian tells the lady that she is driving him back to Hell, despite her telling him that “Everything bids you stay”. The Lady pleads, “stop acting… He is killing you. Let go of that chain… [stop] using…other people’s pity, in the wrong way…”. The Dwarf gradually shrinks and disappears entirely. The Tragedian also soon after vanishes.
The lady returns to her retenue who begin to sing. Lewis is troubled by this, but MacDonald asks him if he would prefer it if “he still had the power of tormenting her… Either the day must come when joy prevails…[or] the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves”.
It is now that Lewis discovers the smallness of Hell. He also asks MacDonald about his Universalist beliefs, but MacDonald tells him “ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears”.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• The chapter begins with a very depressing line:
“I do not know that I ever saw anything more terrible than the struggle of that Dwarf Ghost against joy”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
In this chapter, his wife battles for her husband’s soul.
• Matt mentioned a famous Ted Talk from Brene Brown.
• Although it briefly looked like she was winning over her husband, the Tragedian responds:
“It is fortunate that you give yourself no concern about my fate. Otherwise you might be sorry afterwards to think that you had driven me back to Hell… I’m fairly quick at recognising where I’m not wanted. ‘Not needed’ was the exact expression, if I remember rightly… [You invite me to stay on] terms you might offer to a dog. I happen to have some self-respect left (he really means pride), and I see that my going will make no difference to you. It is nothing to you that I go back to the cold and the gloom, the lonely, lonely streets”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• When Sarah tells her husband not to talk like that, he assumes that Sarah wants to be sheltered:
The Tragedian caught her words greedily as a dog catches a bone. “Ah, you can’t bear to hear it!” he shouted with miserable triumph. “That was always the way. You must be sheltered. Grim realities must be kept out of your sight… You don’t want even to hear of my sufferings. You say, don’t. Don’t tell you. Don’t make you unhappy. Don’t break in on your sheltered, self-centred little heaven”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• Sarah tells him to stope faking:
“…stop acting. It’s no good. He is killing you. Let go of that chain”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
I suggested that she’s showing here that Sarah is revealing that the Dwarf is the one being chained.
• Sarah explains that her husband tries to use pity to manipulate and control. However, that will not work here:
“joy…cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness: but your darkness cannot now infect our light…. Can you really have thought that love and joy would always be at the mercy of frowns and sighs? Did you not know they were stronger than their opposites?”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• The Dwarf continues to shrink and disappears. When all that is left is the Tragedian, Sarah does not appear to recognize him:
“Where is Frank?… And who are you, Sir? I never knew you”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
We compared this to the words of Jesus:
On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’
Matthew 7:22-23
As the Tragedian begins to fade away, he says that she doesn’t love him and she responds:
“I cannot love a lie… I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
Sarah walks back to her party as they sing Lewis’ rendition of Psalm 91, a song which describes someone who is filled with God’s life (theosis) and who therefore cannot be shaken. I then quoted another Psalm which expresses the same idea:
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 27:1
• Lewis and MacDonald discuss what they’ve seen. Jack is troubled that she’s not affected by his misery:
“…[Is it right that] should be untouched by [her husband’s] misery, even [if it is] his self-made misery?”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
MacDonald asks him what he would prefer:
“Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthly life.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• Matt asked whether our failures in the Christian life show that we don’t really believe. I suggested that this is something of human nature and the battle we must fight:
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
Romans 7:15-20
I pointed to The Screwtape Letters when Lewis explains The Law of Undulation. Matt asked whether the “trough” periods were as a result of unfaithfulness, but I said that kind of thinking leads to The Prosperity Gospel. Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Christians all experienced great hardship – should we conclude that they didn’t have enough faith either?
Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:2-4
• Lewis articulates the idea that it seems that, even if there is a single soul in Hell, that this would undermine the joy of those in Heaven. MacDonald says that there’s a sting in the tail of this idea:
The demand [that]…the loveless and the self-imprisoned…should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven… Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
I compared it to having a housemate ruining a party. For the sake of those in the party, it’s probably best that the party-pooper stays in his room!
• Lewis’ reference to “a dog in a manger” is a reference to one of Aesop’s Fables.
• Behind Lewis’ objection is a dislike of the idea that pity should ever come to an end. MacDonald distinguishes between two kinds of pity:
The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty-that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
He makes the point though, that souls have to want to be saved:
“Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden [dunghill] of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• MacDonald explains why the Saints cannot go and rescue those in Heaven – they couldn’t fit. Hell is too small:
“a damned soul is nearly nothing: it is shrunk, shut up in itself. Good beats upon the damned incessantly as sound waves beat on the ears of the deaf, but they cannot receive it. Their fists are clenched, their teeth are clenched, their eyes fast shut. First they will not, in the end they cannot, open their hands for gifts, or their mouths for food, or their eyes to see.”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
Only Christ could make Himself small enough to enter Hell.
• The chapter ends with a somewhat complicated discourse about time and choice:
“…every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 13)
• I ended with some Haikus:
The Tragedian
When the real self leaves
And all that is left is false
We will be….nothing
The Great Lady
Do not use pity
It should not be a weapon
Holding joy hostage
A time will soon come
When misery has no hold
Nor can infect Joy
MacDonald
One who chooses Hell
Deaf to God’s call, blind to light
A soul shriveled-up
Haikus for Chapter 12
