Monday, June 05, 2006

Two Related Quotes From Lewis

From The Screwtape Letters, Chapter XXII, in which the demon Screwtape becomes overexcited while berating his nephew and pupil, Wormwood:
Meanwhile you, disgusting little-

(Here the MS. breaks off and is resumed in a different hand)

In the heat of composition, I find that I have inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede. I am accordingly dictating the rest through my secretary...


And from The Great Divorce, Lewis's supposition of the edge of Heaven, where there is a bus from Hell every day, but most riders choose not to remain. (Chapter 9)
But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop - perhaps for them it was thousands of miles - and come up to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far over the torturing grass, only to spit and gibber out in one ecstacy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy. The voyage seemed to them a small price to pay if once, only once, within sight of that eternal dawn, they could tell the prigs, the toffs, the sanctimonious humbugs, the snobs, the "haves" what they thought of them.


I am reminded of BDS.

1 comment:

MaxedOutMama said...

The large centipede eruption reminded me of Ann Coulter, to be honest.

But I do get the point of your second quote.

"The Great Divorce" is a book that one must live a life to fully understand. I have been thinking of it almost incessantly over the last few weeks. Our rebellion against God is largely a matter of rejection of the choice we are offered. "How dare you," we cry. We'd like to be treated like cattle instead of primates. And in our rage, after we have rejected grace, we blame God for rejecting us.