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At a glance
By a waterfall beneath a tree of golden, immensely heavy apples, Ikey tries to gather fruit to carry home.
An angel in the waterfall urges him to remain and grow strong enough to enjoy the fruit for its own sake; Ikey chooses instead to haul a single apple back toward the bus, crushed under its weight.
Scripture for reflection
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;”
2 Corinthians 4:17 KJV
UECF.NET summary
Ikey — the same shrewd passenger from Chapter 2 — reappears beside a waterfall, beneath a great tree hung with apples of solid gold. True to form, he sees not beauty but profit: if he can only carry a few of these apples back to the Grey Town, he imagines, he could sell them and finally get ahead there.
An angel calls to him from within the waterfall, inviting him to stay in the country instead — to grow, over time, strong and solid enough not merely to carry the apples but to eat and enjoy them as they actually are, gifts rather than merchandise.
Ikey cannot let go of his old economy of scarcity and profit even here, where the fruit is free for the taking by anyone willing to stay. He struggles to lift a single apple, finds it crushingly heavy for his thin ghost-body, and staggers off toward the bus anyway, determined to haul his one small profit back to a world where it will mean nothing.
Main themes
- Greed that cannot recognize a gift
- The 'weight of glory' as something to grow into, not seize
- Old habits of scarcity persisting even in abundance
Key ideas
- Ikey's instinct is to monetize Heaven's abundance rather than receive it.
- The angel's invitation is patient and unforced: stay, and grow able to bear what is now too heavy.
- Carrying even one apple back to the Grey Town will do Ikey no real good — objects from this country cannot truly be used the way earthly goods are.
Who appears in this chapter
- Ikey — The calculating ghost from Chapter 2, unable to see the fruit as anything but a commodity.
- An angel in the waterfall — Invites Ikey to remain and grow able to enjoy the fruit rather than merely take it.
Related Bible references · NKJV
Practical application
- Notice where a habit of scarcity or profit-seeking might be preventing you from simply receiving a gift as a gift.
- Ask what it would look like, practically, to 'grow into' a joy that currently feels too large or costly to accept.
Questions for study
Reflection questions
- Why might it be harder to receive an unearned gift than to work for a smaller reward you feel you have earned?
Small-group discussion
- Ikey would rather struggle home with one crushingly heavy apple than stay and grow able to enjoy the whole orchard. What smaller, harder-won goods do people sometimes cling to instead of a larger, freely offered one?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of C. S. Lewis’s text, which remains in copyright. Read Chapter 6 in The Great Divorce itself — from a library, bookseller, or the Internet Archive’s access-restricted lending copy — then use this page to review its themes and questions. Scripture quotations above are the King James Version. No quotations from Lewis are included on this page.