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The Great Divorce is full of water imagery: rivers, waterfalls, rain, etc. More than once, the Narrator expresses his desire to bathe or drench himself in water: to jump in the river, pass under a waterfall, etc. These images arguably evoke the Christian practice of baptism, in which a human being bathes in water, accepts Jesus Christ as their lord and savior, and is “born anew.” Thus, the water imagery in the novel symbolizes mankind’s desire to cast off sin, embrace God, and achieve salvation.
Water Quotes in The Great Divorce
The The Great Divorce quotes below all refer to the symbol of Water. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
Next moment I stepped boldly out on the surface. I fell on my face at once and got some nasty bruises. I had forgotten that though it was, to me, solid, it was not the less in rapid motion. When I had picked myself up I was about thirty yards further down-stream than the point where I had left the bank. But this did not prevent me from walking up-stream: it only meant that by walking very fast indeed I made very little progress.
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Water Symbol Timeline in The Great Divorce
The timeline below shows where the symbol Water appears in The Great Divorce. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 3
...Narrator and his fellow passengers get off the bus, and find that they’re near a river, with green trees and thick grass. The Narrator has a sense of being in a...
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The Big Man, now a ghost, asks the Driver, “when have we got to be back?” The Driver explains that the passengers are under...
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...dressed in robes. The Narrator realizes that these people are Spirits who live by the river. Some of the ghosts scream at the sight of these Spirits and run back to...
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Chapter 4
...demands to know why Len has a solid body and gets to walk around the river, while he has has to spend his time in the grey town. Len explains that...
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Chapter 5
As the Narrator surveys the river and the trees, he hears a sound, and two huge lions emerge from the trees....
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...an idea—perhaps he could walk on water. When the Narrator tries to walk in the river, though, he finds that the river, while solid, is still flowing in one direction—as a...
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Chapter 6
The Narrator walks on the river, against the flow of the current. After walking for an hour, he’s moved a few...
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Suddenly, a voice cries, “Fool. Put it down.” The voice seems to come from the waterfall—and the Narrator realizes that what he’d thought was a waterfall is really a bright angel,...
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Chapter 7
...tired as he stares at the Water-Giant. He wishes that he could bathe in the river instead of walking on it.
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...this kind. The ghost tells the Narrator that there’s no point in staying by the river. The golden fruit of the tree looks delicious, but it’s just “propaganda,” since it can’t...
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The Narrator guesses that by staying by the river, he and the Hard-Bitten Ghost could become “solider,” an idea that the ghost promptly rejects....
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...be getting along. Before he leaves, though, he tells the Narrator that it’s going to rain soon—and when it rains, the raindrops will be as hard as bullets. With these words,...
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Chapter 8
The Narrator sits by the river, feeling miserable after his talk with the Hard-Bitten Ghost. When he first met the Spirits...
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Chapter 9
...that “the damned have holidays.” Occasionally, the people of Hell are allowed to visit the river, although most opt to visit Earth instead. The Narrator asks MacDonald, “Is there really a...
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Chapter 12
...the Narrator, the Narrator sees light flashing in the trees, as if reflected from a river (hence his question at the end of Chapter 11). But then, the Narrator sees that...
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