We now begin the main body of The Great Divorce. In each subsequent chapter, Lewis will witness an encounter between a Ghost and a Bright Spirit where we will see what they are willing to choose in place of Heaven. In today’s episode we spend time with the Bright Spirit, Len, and his former boss, The Big Ghost, who is very insistent that he gets “his rights”…
S2E6: “I gotta have my rights…” (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.
04:14 – Chapter 150-word Summary
05:10 – Chapter Discussion
31:39 – Haikus
Show Notes
• The drink-of-the-week was the Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban. Since Matt is on Exodus 90, he was drinking his last Peach-Pear La Croix!
• The quote-of-the-week came from the complaining words of The Big Ghost:
“Tell them I’m not coming, see? I’d rather be damned than go along with you. I came here to get my rights, see? Not to go snivelling along on charity tied onto your apron-strings. If they’re too fine to have me without you, I’ll go home.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
• Matt had been reading The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila and shared the following quotation:
“Let’s make the best possible use of our feet first and learn to know ourselves. And yet it seems to me that we will never know ourselves unless we seek to know God. Glimpsing his greatness, we recognize our own powerlessness; gazing upon his purity, we notice where we are impure; pondering his humility, we see how far from humble we are.”
The Interior Castle by St. Teresa of Avila
As we’re going to see, The Big Ghost is the one who really needs to hear this! He thinks so much of his own power, his own ability, his own “rights”…
• I also had a quotation to share. I thought this line from Letters to Malcolm explains the dull nature of the grey town and the great variety in Heaven, both of the landscape and the Bright Spirits:
“If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and heaven will display far more variety than hell” – Letters to Malcolm (Letter 2)
– C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm
• Matt shares his 150-word summary of the chapter:
Lewis wanders away from the bus, making slow progress over the painful grass. He is followed by The Big Ghost, and one of the solid people, Len, who was an employee of his on earth.
We find out that Len murdered someone. The Big Ghost is therefore horrified to find him here in Heaven.
While admitting he was neither religious nor faultless, the Big Ghost claims he always did his best, never asking for anything that wasn’t his by rights. Even now he isn’t “asking for anybody’s bleeding charity”… but Len corrects some of these delusions and exhorts him to do just that, to ask for charity! Finally, Len explains that, having hated him on earth, he now asks for forgiveness and offers his service. However, the Big Ghost rejects it all, saying “Tell them I’m not coming, see? I’d rather be damned than go along with you”
– Matt’s 150-word summary of Chapter 4
• Seeing that the Bright Spirits are each heading for a particular Ghost, Lewis foresees “affecting scenes” so he leaves the huddle of ghosts and wanders off. I explain that subsequent chapters is going to follow a standard pattern; Lewis will see an encounter between one of these Spirits and Ghosts.
• The Big Ghost, the violent man we have met multiple times, meets Len, a former employee from earth. The Big Ghost is shocked to see Len in Heaven since he killed a common acquaintance, Jack:
“What I’d like to understand,” said the Ghost, “is what you’re here for, as pleased as Punch, you, a bloody murderer, while I’ve been walking the streets down there and living in a place like a pigstye all these years.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
The fact that The Big Ghost was in Hell and Len, a murderer, is Heaven should remind us of Jesus’ words that Tax Collectors and Prostitutes would enter the Kingdom ahead of the religious elites of His day (Matthew 21:31).
• The Big Ghost asks Len if he’s ashamed of himself. Len’s answer shows that he has died to himself and become humble. Like Lewis says in Mere Christianity, the humble man doesn’t think about himself:
“No. Not as you mean. I do not look at myself. I have given up myself. I had to, you know, after the murder. That was what it did for me. And that was how everything began.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
Committing murder brought about Len’s conversion.
• I quoted Lewis’ favourite mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich, who rested in God so perfectly that she said:
“All things will be well, all things will be well and all manner of things will be well”
– Lady Julian of Norwich
• The Big Ghost has a very early view of events, whereas Len has an eternal perspective. He knows that Jack is alive and with him in Heaven!
• The Big Ghost thinks that he lived a far better life than Len and should be treated accordingly. He has appointed himself judge!
“Personally,” said the Big Ghost with an emphasis which contradicted the ordinary meaning of the word, “personally, I’d have thought you and I ought to be the other way round. That’s my personal opinion.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
Here we see The Big Ghost’s core problem…
“I gone straight all my life. I don’t say I was a religious man and I don’t sav I had no faults, far from it. But I done my best all my life, see? I done my best by everyone, that’s the sort of chap I was. I never asked for anything that wasn’t mine by rights. If I wanted a drink I paid for it and if I took my wages I done my job, see? That’s the sort I was and I don’t care who knows it.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
Not all those who are self-righteous are religious.
• Matt asked about the indication that the Big Ghost may eventually be “ahead” of Len. I said that you do find some mystics and scholars in the Church’s history speaking this way, insofar as those who have truly emptied themselves on earth have a greater capacity to receive God’s love in Heaven.
• Len is humble enough to receive grave and mercy. The Big Ghost is not and therefore cannot receive this free gift:
“…Christ offers something for nothing… In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing. What we should have liked would be for God to count our good points and ignore our bad ones…
– Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 12)
Len explains that he is being offered something even better than simple justice.
• The Big Ghost is adamant that he only wants what he deserves:
“I only want my rights. I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity… I’m a decent man and if I had my rights I’d have been here long ago and you can tell them I said so.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
In response, Len pleads with him to ask for the “bleeding charity”! Matt and I discussed that this play on words is also pointing to the blood of Christ on the cross.
I had listened to an episode of Speaking With Joy, where the host and her brother discussed this episode of The Great Divorce and compared it to Les Miserables and the characters of Jean Valjean and Javert. Both are offered mercy, but only one can accept it.
• Because The Big Ghost is confident in his own righteousness, Len tries to acquaint him with the truth of reality: he was a hard man, both to his employees and his family. As readers, we see the hypocrisy, that The Big Ghost is aghast at meeting a murderer, yet he has spent almost all of this book either committing violence or threatening it!
Len knows this because there are no secrets in Heaven. I expressed trepidation at this heavenly reality. It’s one thing for God to know all my sins, but it almost seems worst that all those in Heaven would know them too!
• Next, Len admits that he did something worse than murdering Jack. He confesses that he “killed” The Big Ghost in his heart nightly. As we learned in Mere Christianity, the spiritual sins can be far worse than the fleshly ones. Murdering someone in your heart every day will, in short order, turn you into a hellish creature.
I had recently been reading C.S. Lewis’ anthology of the work of George MacDonald and came across this extract which seems to have been a source of inspiration for The Big Ghost:
“It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated”
– C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald Anthology (#12)
• Len asks for his forgiveness and offers to serve The Big Ghost for as long as he desires it. However, The Big Ghost rejects it all:
“Tell them I’m not coming, see? I’d rather be damned than go along with you. I came here to get my rights, see? Not to go snivelling along on charity tied onto your apron-strings. If they’re too fine to have me without you, I’ll go home.”
– C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 4)
We suggested that he rejects Len’s service because of his pride, because of Len’s goodness, the fact that he is offering his service, rather than it being compelled. The only time The Big Ghost seems happy in this chapter is when he gets to threaten. Matt also suggests that Len’s offer of service was rejected because it would place The Big Ghost into Len’s debt.
In conclusion, we see that The Big Ghost doesn’t enter Heaven because of his anger at God’s generosity to others and his own unwillingness to forgive others. He is rejecting Heaven because he wants it on his own terms.
• I concluded the episode by sharing three haikus I wrote for The Big Ghost:
Always done my best
I have gone straight my whole life
God owes me Heaven
Haiku for The Big Ghost #1
I’m not religious,
But I have been a good man…
Gotta have my rights!
Haiku for The Big Ghost #2
Bloody murderer
Offering me charity
I’d rather be damned
Haiku for The Big Ghost #3
• We had a message on Instagram from Duncan, a graduate from Notra Dame who attended the same C.S. Lewis course as Matt. He called Matt out for not reading more of Lewis’ fiction and we found out that Matt skipped the required reading! Duncan also wrote us a haiku!
Our ghostly eyes saw
A somehow more solid light
Could it be Sonrise?
Duncan’s Haiku
Hopefully we’ll be able to get Matt’s former teacher onto the show at some point.
