The Issue of Purgatory: Leaf by Niggle vs. The Great Divorce

Hello everyone, and happy Friday-before-Palm-Sunday (aka the last normal Friday of Lent)! Isn't that insane? Lent has flown by this year. 

Today I have something a tad different for you than usual. In this post, I mentioned that I wanted to do an essay/blog post comparing "Leaf by Niggle" to The Great Divorce, and while only Chloe got *really* excited about that, the idea has captured me enough that I am going to do it even so. And you're along for the ride, whether you like it or not. So, buckle up for a very philosophical post which may feel more like an essay than one of my usual posts... (I'm honestly a little nervous posting it, buuuuut Megan does similar things from time to time, so we'll see what happens?)

And this just occurred to me, but this post fits in quite well with The Grim Writer's Remember O Thou Man, and so I am linking up with her! :) (But I'm not using one of her graphics, because I already made my own and I'm too lazy to change it. XD)

While "Leaf by Niggle" and The Great Divorce have very different goals--"Leaf by Niggle" being about the pains of being a creator, and the hope that perhaps the faulty and faltering sub-creation of a human sub-creator might be able to be redeemed, and The Great Divorce being an exploration of what happens after Death, but even more primarily an exploration of fallen human nature, and the things that keep us from God--within those two goals, they both manage to convey the authors' ideas about Heaven and, more interestingly, Purgatory. (While Hell is quite present in Lewis, Tolkien barely touches on it at all, so I'm going to be leaving it aside in this post). The ideas about Heaven are the most concordant, whereas the ideas about Purgatory the most divergent...at least on the surface.

Starting with the easy one, let's talk about Heaven for a moment, though it comes at the end of "Leaf by Niggle", so technically I'm going out of order...but for both Lewis and Tolkien, strikingly, Heaven is shown as a journey into the mountains. In "Leaf by Niggle", the main character leaves, knowing

"He was going to learn about sheep, and the high pasturages, and look at a wider sky, and walk every further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill...what they are really like, and what lies beyond them, only those can say who have climbed them."

In The Great Divorce, The Mountains are what all the characters should be journeying towards, what all the fully alive Spirits are trying to bring the Ghosts into.

"Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. --Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?"

Those who come to meet the Ghosts have retraced their footsteps out of the Mountains, but the ultimate calling is a journey, as Lewis says later, in The Last Battle, "further up and further in" to the Mountains, entering into the Master's joy. I had realized that this motif was consistent in Lewis--I still need to see if I can find this idea in his nonfiction, because that's one of my favorite things to do, find an author's fiction in his nonfiction and vice versa--but I hadn't known Tolkien used it, too.  

On to Purgatory, which forms the greatest portion of "Leaf by Niggle" and the least of The Great Divorce...but which, in my opinion, offers the most fodder for discussion and comparison. 

The are just a few parts in The Great Divorce where Purgatory is mentioned by name--already a bit of a surprise, because I was not under the impression that most Anglicans (or Protestants at all) "do" Purgatory. (Which...I think Purgatory makes perfect sense, but hey, that's a post for another day.) Here we go with those quotes:

"You have been in Hell: though if you don't go back you may call it Purgatory." 

"If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory...to those who remain there [it] will have been Hell even from the beginning."

"'Hell is a state of mind--ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind--is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself.' 

'But there is real choice after death? My Roman Catholic friends would be surprised, for to them souls in Purgatory are already saved. And my Protestant friends would like it no better, for they'd say that the tree lies as it falls.'

'You cannot fully understand the relations of choice and Time till you are beyond both.'"

Hold onto those thoughts for a moment, while we talk about Tolkien's depiction of Purgatory. In "Leaf by Niggle", Purgatory is rather like a mix between a hospital, a workhouse, and a prison. In fact, the whole thing, within the story, is called the Workhouse Infirmary. Of this Infirmary, and Niggle's Treatment there, it says,

"He did not like the treatment at all. The medicine they gave him was bitter. The officials and attendants were unfriendly, silent, and strict; and he never saw anyone else, except a very severe doctor, who visited him occasionally. It was more like being in a prison than in a hospital. He had to work hard...he was never allowed outside, and the windows all looked inwards. They kept him in the dark for hours at a stretch, "to do some thinking"."

And then later...

"Poor Niggle got no pleasure out of life...he was certainly not amused. But it could not be denied that he began to have a feeling of--well, satisfaction: bread rather than jam. He could take up a task the moment one bell rang, and lay it aside promptly the moment the next one went, all tidy and ready to be continued at the right time. He got through quite a lot in a day, now; he finished small things off neatly...he was becoming master of his time...there was no sense of rush. He was quieter inside now, and at resting-time he could really rest."

Later still, he does harder work, then complete rest in the dark. But ultimately, the judges send him on to a further stage. 

Here, it's not entirely clear what happens. When Niggle is sent on, one could perhaps think that since he's leaving the workhouse, he's leaving the Purgatory stage. I would rather argue that since he hasn't reached the mountains yet, and he's still doing work and improving things, he's still in Purgatory, the mountains being Heaven. But it's certainly debatable.

But when Niggle is sent on from the Workhouse Infirmary, he reaches something unexpected. The completion and perfection of his life's work.

"Before him stood the Tree, his Tree, finished. If you could say that of a Tree that was alive, its leaves opening, its branches growing and bending in the wind that Niggle had so often felt or guessed, and had so often failed to catch. He gazed at the Tree, and slowly he lifted his arms and opened them wide. "It's a gift!" he said."

Ultimately, he works with Parish, who he'd known from his life, to make, near the Tree, a small house and garden. Niggle, who in life had sometimes neglected his duties in order to think about the Tree, "became most absorbed in building and gardening", while Parish, who had been more 'down to earth' and looked down on Niggle's artistic pursuits in life, "often wandered about looking at trees, and especially at the Tree". There's still a remedy being worked here, different for each of them, which makes me think this is still Purgatory. (I could probably write a term paper on this topic...here's where I'd tie in the Divine Comedy...) Niggle and Parish are both happy, but that doesn't mean this cannot be purgatory. 

Eventually, the work draws to an end, Parish loses his limp, and Niggle sets out for the Mountains, while Parish waits for his wife. (This is where I'd tie in Chesterton. See? Wonderful term paper topic. Don't steal it, I have dibs. ;))

And now, I think we've laid the groundwork with explanation enough for me to actually begin my dissection of differences.

When it comes down to it, the essential difference between Lewis and Tolkien's conceptions of Purgatory is what they're connected with. Lewis's idea of Purgatory is connected to Hell, whereas Tolkien's is connected to Heaven. 

Now, you may protest that in Lewis's view, the souls in Purgatory eventually reach Heaven. Well, yes, they do. But the mechanics of how Purgatory works, in Lewis, are "hellish" or "hell-flavored", whereas everything about the mechanics of how Purgatory works, in Tolkien, is "heavenly" or "heaven-flavored". The way that Lewis constructs his Purgatory, although some of what he's after is sound, puts it in direct contradiction to Tolkien's (Catholic) view of Purgatory, and it shows.

In Lewis's view, it seems (the words "it seems" must be appended to all of my statements here...while making extremely audacious claims about the mechanics of hell and purgatory in his work, he still manages to be extraordinarily vague, so please mentally append "it seems" after I say anything about Lewis's view. XD) the eternal punishments of Hell and the cleansing fire of Purgatory are the same. There's punishment for sin; but those in Purgatory don't have as much sin, or SOMETHING and so they can go after a certain amount of time. More or less pointless suffering, only useful inasmuch as it's deserved, and then release. 

This is problematic, though, in view of the Catholic POV on the difference between Purgatory and Hell. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 1, section 1031 (do I sound pretentious yet?) says, "this final purification of the elect...is entirely different from the punishment of the damned." It goes on to speak about the purgation as "cleansing fire", citing 1 Corinthians 3:15 and 1 Peter 1:7, as opposed to the "unquenchable fire" of Gehenna which Jesus speaks of in Matthew. The eternal separation from God cannot be a cleansing fire to clean up the sin of those who are not quite ready to enter into Heaven. It just doesn't work like that. 

There's an analogy that I think of when Purgatory comes up, which, please take with a grain of salt, because analogies are always imperfect when it comes to the spiritual life, but here we go. 

It's possible that the pain and cleansing fire of purgatory comes from God's gaze upon us/gazing upon God (depending on who's giving the analogy) which we cannot bear while we're still sinful. We want so much to be with Him, but because of our sin, we can't fully be with Him yet. But this gaze ultimately burns away all sin, like the solar wind that expelled all of the hydrogen and helium from Earth's atmosphere early in the life of the solar system. (That last half-sentence or so was all me. Can you tell I'm in an Astronomy AND an Earth Science class? But I find the subtle Sun/Son pun amusing.)

Do you see how radically different this is than the postulation that it's complete separation from God which can cleanse? There's nothing about separation from God in a hell-scape that could possibly prepare an individual for complete union with Him in Heaven, whereas the cleansing fire of purgatory, possibly related to actually being closer to Him than while on Earth, while still having sins on our souls, is eminently suited to that cleansing. (Which makes it heaven-flavored, since that closeness is something that will be completed perfectly in heaven.)

Savvy?

But in Tolkien's view...oh, in Tolkien's view. It's so clear that Purgatory is a time of cleansing--really, it's a time of healing. The "treatments" that Niggle undergoes are all perfectly suitable to ironing out his rough spots, straightening his kinks, making him more patient, more docile to the will of God, and more perfect...in a word, more ready for perfect union with God in the mountains. He doesn't *like* the treatment, but not because it's eternally painful, but because it's just rather unpleasant, in the way that cleansing isn't always pleasant. (Do you remember it hurting when your mom tried to get cradle cap off your head as a young child? Not fun...but necessary. Or for my female readers...did your mom every have to brush your hair when it got all tangly? We didn't like it, but the results were nice.) 

And through each phase of treatment, Niggle gets closer and closer to the Mountains (here's where I'd bring in Divine Comedy again! XD), and the journey gets more and more pleasant. One of the traditions (lower-case t, i.e. something the Church hasn't said something definitive on, but that has been speculated about by various theologians and lay people) of Catholics says that, barring the souls in Heaven, the souls in Purgatory are the happiest, because they have the sure and certain promise of Heaven, whereas all we on Earth have is the sure and certain hope. Niggle corrects the last of his spiritual errors, and then he's ready for Heaven. It's not always a pleasant journey for him, but it's clearly a journey of healing, and a continuous one, not a disjunct jump from something that's supposed to be total separation from God to total union with Him. The beautiful Purgation process is entirely in line with Catholic teaching. 

Now onto an interesting point, though. What about the hardening of the feet? Back to Lewis for a moment...

"Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened. --Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?"

I think--and this amuses me--that Lewis put in a truly purgative aspect to his imaginary eternity "by accident", or at least without the intention of making it obviously Purgatory. When the souls arrive "on the brink" of Heaven, they must travel to get there, a journey that's not always pleasant, but which 'rectifies' or 'heals' them from shadow-hood into full life. In this journey, their vices are squashed, and they arrive at the perfect, correct, "straightened" version of themselves. The already fully alive souls come and help them along their journey, just as the saints in Heaven pray for the Church Suffering in Purgatory. 

I've been reading Lewis's letters, and in a letter to Eliza Butler Martin, of August 18, 1940 (it's in Volume II of his Collected Letters), he's talking about allegory vs. symbolism/symbology, and he says something very apropos:

"Whoever tries to write allegory will become symbolical in places because he always has an imaginative knowledge of his matter which transcends his conceptual knowledge--something more than he consciously meant will keep creeping in."

I think here is a perfect example--Lewis's stated Purgatory is slightly horrifying and truly UnOrthodox, but his symbolic Purgatory, which I think may have just snuck in through his imagination, which knew that there had to be a truly heaven-flavored purgative aspect, is almost spot on, and rather beautiful. 

Tada! *sweeps a bow* Those are my thoughts on comparisons specifically of purgatory in "Leaf by Niggle" and The Great Divorce! The whole thing ballooned quite a bit longer than I was expecting, and the last point about the hardening of the feet simply popped into my head when I got to that point...which is an example of the reason why I should always write about things that I'm interested in, because I figure out what I think while I write! (I always pantsed my school papers. This may or may not have been the best idea, but the alternative was sheer drudgery). 

So, what do you think? Are you intrigued by Lewis's accidental purgative aspect inclusion? Which is your favorite, "Leaf by Niggle", or The Great Divorce? Do you plot or pants your school papers? XD