Despite catastrophe, the game continues. Ricia thinks that the King must have smashed the Dance Hall to prevent their escape. Kendrick begins to respond in kind before Scobie says, "'None of that!'" (p. 41) Scobie is Kendrick. Garcilaso's case is worse. Having been buried deeper and longer than either Broberg or Scobie, he has had to be dug out. He is badly injured and semiconscious with frost in his helmet. His persona, Alvarlan, is in Hell. The King has cast Alvarlan's soul there where it is now lost. When Broberg rolls Garcilaso over, Alvarlan is attacked by a demon. Although blind, he feels the wind from its wings. We have read stories about characters who enter a happy dream or delusion before death. If Garcilaso dies now, then his experience will be the opposite of that. He is in Hell - which is nothing other than the worst part of the mind. There is a famous letter from there.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
There's also C.S. Lewis' THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. And Tolkien wrote in one of his letters of how he found that work very disturbing.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I find SCREWTAPE disturbing on several levels. I prefer Lewis' THE GREAT DIVORCE.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And it was right of Lewis to make THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS so disturbing, because I believe fallen angels, demons, to be exactly as we see them in the LETTERS, evil, cruel, monstrous, enemies of God and mankind.
One thing readers should remember about THE GREAT DIVORCE is that the afterlife seen in that story was not entirely Hellish. The grey city there also had a purgatorial aspect, not all its inhabitants (or inmates) had to remain for all eternity. Some, prompted by grace, came to an understanding of where they went wrong--and resolved to leave, seeking the light shining beyond the hills.
Dante's INFERNO was also unflinchingly realistic about what Hell, and its denizens, are like. And far more convincing than Milton's all too comfortable Hell. to say nothing of how Anderson gave us some speculations on what he thought a hell universe would be like in OPERATION CHAOS.
Ad astra! Sean
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