"In The Great Divorce nearly all of the ghosts on the bus reject the opportunity they are given to make a new start. As the George MacDonald character explains, 'There is always something they prefer to joy.' This something always involves holding on to a false perception."
And this from one of his many commentators: "If making a new start begins with seeing the world rightly, Lewis would hold that seeing the world rightly begins with seeing ourselves rightly, something that Gumpas and most of the ghosts in The Great Divorce are either unable or unwilling to do.
Lewis argues that God 'whispers' to us in our pleasures, 'speaks' through our conscience, and, if these voices are not heeded, 'shouts' to us in our pains.
In fact, it could be argued that all of Lewis’s characters, in ways big and small, are continually called to journey 'further up and further in' their ways of seeing.
In Prince Caspian, the first comment Lucy makes when she finally meets Aslan is to declare that he seems to have grown bigger. However, as Aslan points out, he has not altered since their last encounter—it is Lucy’s perception that has changed. Aslan explains, 'Every year you grow, you will find me bigger.'
And the same can be said for us as well. Each time we grow in awareness—each time we come to see the world and our place in it more accurately—can be viewed as a new start, or, as Lewis writes at the close of The Last Battle, as a new chapter of that Great Story 'in which every chapter is better than the one before.'"
