History Literature / TheGreatDivorce

* NeverMyFault: This is the chief problem of the damned, as repentance is the first step one makes towards salvation.

* TheShutIn: None of the hellish spirits want to venture outside their "dwelling places" when darkness falls. When 'They' arrive. Whether is a this is a case of OurAngelsAreDifferent or OurDemonsAreDifferent is not explicit mentioned, therefore left open to interpretation. If anything, ''sunrise'' ironically comes first, and hoo boy [[GoodIsNotNice the damned don't]] [[HolyBurnsEvil like that]] [[EvilCannotComprehendGood one bit.]]

* SpiritAdvisor: Every visitor from Hell gets one; though the Heavenly Beings are all fully visible to one another, the Hellish ones can only perceive depending on certain circumstances.

* WasOnceAMan: Many of the Hellish spirits are so bitter that there's very little left of them.

* MadeOfIron: Everything in Heaven. From the people to the water to the sunlight, everything in Heaven is more solid (due simply to being more ''real'') than anything on Earth.

* TheMasochismTango: A husband and wife who leave the line for the bus quarreling. It is clear that they will go on trashing each other forever.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: We only see the Ghosts who decide to visit Heaven, but there's some discussion about Ghosts who take similar visits back to Earth.

* IronicHell. It exists ''in Heaven'', but is no larger there than an atom. The beings that dwell there are subatomic. In fact it's so insignificant, it's shown to be more of a state of mind, rather than a state of reality itself.

* IdiotBall: The plot centers around a busload of idiots so self-centered that they are completely unable to accept a Paradise where they have to care about others.

* HopeSpot: The Ghost With the Lizard permitting the Angel to kill his lizard and subsequently being reborn as a Person, thus proving that the Ghosts actually ''can'' be reborn.

* FriendToAllLivingThings: Sarah Smith has won over practically every person and every living creature she's ever met, which is why we learn her name. The only person she couldn't win over was her husband [[spoiler:and cannot even in the afterlife]].

* DomesticAbuse: We see two not-very-good spouses in Hell. Robert's Wife is a control freak who forced him into what ''she'' considered success, and Frank Smith emotionally manipulated his wife Sarah using pity. Both of them try their shtick with the Bright Ones, but it doesn't work.

* AHellOfATime: DownplayedTrope. The Grey Town doesn't contain the expected sights associated with Hell: devils with pitchforks, sinners being tortured on flaming racks, etc. It's just a depressing, rainy place where constant squabbling causes residents to spread out from everyone else and become TheAloner. However, it's hinted that this is just the antechamber to Hell -- things are about to get much worse once the sun sets and the full darkness sets in for the rest of time.
* AnAesop: The intended aesop is that Heaven and Hell are incompatible, though you can change sides.

* TheAloner: Pretty much every resident of Hell, because they can't stop quarreling with their neighbors. Every time someone settles near another person, within a week they've fought so badly that someone decides to move farther out, eventually moving to the outskirts and building a new house.

* AnythingThatMoves: One of the Ghosts appears to have grown so obsessed with sex that she is unable to conceive of any purpose for interaction other than seduction, and actually tries to seduce the Bright Ones who are trying to talk to her.

* AnswersToTheNameOfGod:
--> '''A Ghost:''' I just want my deserts, see? I'm not asking for anyone's bleeding charity.\\
'''A Person:''' Then do so at once. Ask for the Bleeding Charity. Everything is here for the asking and nothing can be bought.
** There's also an exchange where a Ghost exclaims "God!" to the confusion of one of the Bright Ones, who only uses the word "God" as [[{{God}} a noun]]. The Ghost has to embarrassedly explain that he meant something like "[[GoshDangItToHeck By gum]]."

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: [=MacDonald=] states that all our choices, and even Time itself, are essentially a kind of image through which we can perceive eternal reality.

* EldritchLocation: Heaven is this to all Hellish ghosts. Everything is alive, or an incarnation of an Angel. Creatures real and mythological live there. People act like they're GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul. Everything hurts and disorients them as they find they are less-than-real.

* EldritchLocation: Heaven is this to all Hellish ghosts. Everything is alive, or an incarnation of an Angel. Creatures real and mythological live there. People act like they're GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul. Everything hurts and disorientates them as they find they are less-than-real.

* StarsAreSouls: Subverted. In Hell, the distance of one's house from the Heavenly Bus stop is measured in the ammount of time it would take to walk the distance, similar to how our Sun's closest neighbors are measured in light years. "Old ones" including famous (or infamous) people from history such as Tamberlaine, Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar keep moving away across the plain of nothingness indefinitely. They ''could'' go all the way back to the bus stop... but it would take a very long time. At 15,000 years away, Napoleon's the nearest "star".

* TragicIntangibility: The souls of {{Hell}} are so insubstantial that even the blades of grass in {{Heaven}} pass through their form. We see several ghosts fail to lift apples, dawdle on one side of the river they can't swim in, and slowly realize that each time they they feel excruciating pain whenever anything passes through them, including light.

%%* DrivenToSuicide: The Tousle-Headed Poet. According to him, all the bad things that happened to him were [[NeverMyFault Never His Fault]].%%What does this have to do with suicide?

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: [[invoked]] Used in-universe. The apostate bishop speculates about how Christianity could have turned out differently (and, in his opinion, better) if Jesus had not been crucified, and had continued teaching throughout his life. This is, of course, CompletelyMissingThePoint: according to Christian orthodoxy, it's Jesus' death and resurrection that makes it possible for sinners (that is, everyone) to enter heaven.

-->''It was Soult's fault. It was Ney's fault. It was Josephine's fault. It was the fault of the English. It was the fault of the Russians.''

* StarsAreSouls: Subverted. In Hell, the distance ofo ne's house from the Heavenly Bus stop is measured in the ammount of time it would take to walk the distance, similar to how our Sun's closest neighbors are measured in light years. "Old ones" including famous (or infamous) people from history such as Tamberlaine, Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar keep moving away across the plain of nothingness indefinitely. They ''could'' go all the way back to the bus stop... but it would take a very long time. At 15,000 years away, Napoleon's the nearest "star".

* CityNoir: "The grey town", a dismal place where it is always twilight and where it's always raining, even inside.

* SelfInflictedHell: Arguably one of the two main points of the book: The only reason the Ghosts end up in Hell is because of their own petty issues, when the chance to go to Heaven is right in front of them.
** Hell itself very much runs on "[[Theatre/NoExit Hell is Other People]]". On its own, it's just a rainy, depressing town, with nothing really nice there. What makes it hellish is the fact that everyone there is a jerk, and no one can stand each others' company. In fact, the town is mostly empty because quarrels bad enough that the participants decide to move away happen very frequently.

* SpiritualSuccessor: ''The Great Divorce'' can be seen as a modern(ish), less unsubtle counterpart to John Bunyan's classic ''Literature/ThePilgrimsProgress''; both works are allegories for the Christian faith where almost every character represents an ideology or a personal vice, and they both [[spoiler:turn out to be dreams at the end]]. Lewis also wrote ''The Pilgrim's Regress'' which was more blatantly inspired by Bunyan's work right down to the title.

** One of the ghosts that Lewis meets on the bus tells him how Hell works and why it's so empty (Everyone arrives at the same place, but since nobody can get along with anyone else, they quickly move away, and spread through the town), as lead-up to his point about why he's going up (most things in Hell can be gotten simply by imagining them, so he wants to go to Heaven to get ahold of something that can be called a commodity and use economics to force people to stay together).

* MundaneAfterlife: Hell. It's a town in constant twilight (some lights are on but not yet welcoming) where it's always raining (and nothing can keep the rain out). There are no 'better parts of town'- it's all dingy lodging houses, mean shops, and "bookstores of the sort that sell ''The Works of Aristotle''." It's also mostly empty since no one can stand anyone else enough to live nearby for long (one ghost says that most people decide to move within a week of settling in one place).
** Though at least one Ghost hints that the twilight will eventually turn into a full night, at which point [[NothingIsScarier "they" will come out]].