outline and summary

The book opens with the narrator in a grim and joyless city, the "grey town." He finds and joins a queue with several unpleasant people who are waiting for a bus with an unspecified destination that is in fact the foothills at the entrance to heaven. During the bus ride, the narrator converses with some of his fellow passengers and discovers that they have strong opinions about the bus, the town, and their destination. He also discovers with a shock that they are dead. When the bus reaches its destination, the "people" on the bus, and the narrator himself, are gradually revealed to be ghosts. The country is the most beautiful they have ever seen, but every feature of the landscape (including streams of water and blades of grass) is unyieldingly solid compared to themselves: it causes them immense pain to walk on the grass, and even a single leaf is far too heavy for any to lift. Shining spirits, men and women whom they had known on earth, meet each of them, and urge them to abandon the town and enter heaven proper. They promise that as the ghosts travel onward and upward, they will become more solid and thus feel no discomfort. These figures, called "spirits" to distinguish them from the ghosts, offer to assist them in the journey toward the mountains and the sunrise. Almost all of the ghosts choose to return instead to the grey town, giving various reasons and excuses. Much of the interest of the book lies in the recognition it awakens of the plausibility and familiarity, along with the thinness and self-deception, of the excuses that the ghosts refuse to abandon, even though to do so would bring them to "reality" and "joy forevermore." The narrator is met by the writer George MacDonald, whom he hails as his mentor, just as Dante did when encountering Virgil in the Divine Comedy; and MacDonald becomes the narrator's guide in his journey, just as Virgil became Dante's. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to remain in heaven despite having been in the grey town; for such souls, the goodness of heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sorrows into joy, and changing their experience on earth to an extension of heaven. Conversely, the evil of hell works so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiness on earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on earth would have been hell. None of the ghosts realize that the grey town is, in fact, hell. Indeed it is not that much different from the life they led on earth: joyless, friendless, and uncomfortable. It just goes on forever, and gets worse and worse, with some characters whispering their fear of the "night" that is eventually to come. According to MacDonald, while it is possible to leave hell and enter heaven, doing so implies turning away (repentance); or as depicted by Lewis, embracing ultimate and unceasing joy itself. In answer to the narrator's question MacDonald confirms that what is going on is a dream. The use of chess imagery as well as the correspondence of dream elements to elements in the narrator's waking life is reminiscent of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and its ghostly inhabitants are minuscule to the point of being invisible compared with the immensity of heaven and reality. This is illustrated in the encounter of the blessed woman and her husband: she is surrounded by gleaming attendants while he shrinks down to invisibility as he uses a collared tragedian to speak for him. Toward the end, the narrator expresses the terror and agony of remaining a ghost in the advent of full daybreak in heaven, comparing the experience to having large blocks fall on one's body (at this point falling books awaken him). This parallels that of the man with his dream of judgment day in the House of the Interpreter of The Pilgrim's Progress. The book ends with the narrator awakening from his dream of heaven into the unpleasant reality of wartime Britain, in conscious imitation of The Pilgrim's Progress, the last sentence of the "First Part" of which is: "So I awoke, and behold, it was a Dream."
 

study materials

mere christianity Study Guide | PDF Written by Pastor Jonathan Dinger of Grace Lutheran Church in Pocatello, ID. Contains background material, scripure references, and questions for disussion. 15pp., 117kB CSL Book Club Study Guide | Web pages Introduction and series of discussion questions. Includes a helpful chart to keep track of the ghosts. Doug Ayling Study Guide | PDF Provides background and good theological insight. He relates Lewis' theology to Augustine's City of God 5pp., 131kB Resources from South Ridge | Web site Sermon podcasts, tabular chapter summary, scripture references, and discussion questions over each section. Study by Kenneth Boa at Bible.org | Web page Transcript of an audio lesson on the book. A thorough and helpful guide to the book.