Superversive: Roads to Heaven and Hell
Superversive has an essay by S. Dorman, author of Fantastic Travelogue: Mark Twain and CS Lewis Talk Things Over in the Hereafter.
Without a guide, how is one to get from the city of destruction to the celestial city? During the Middle Ages pilgrims traveled on foot (or hoof). In John Bunyan’s work, Christian conversed with Apollyon, out of whose “belly came fire and smoke,” and whose look conveyed disdain. But his intermittent guide was The Evangelist. Modern characters traveled by comet or a train.. Nathaniel Hawthorne used the template of John Bunyan’s footsore progress to send himself comfortably toward his own celestial destination on the railroad…Sixty years after Hawthorne’s train ride, Mark Twain sent his first person character to heaven aboard a comet cum steamship…In C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce conveyance from hell to heaven is a flying bus. …
Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.