Choose one of the characters in The Great Divorce and explain how sin is a diminishment, a movement toward nothing, and what that means for human moral character in our world. Five or six paragraphs on your website.
One of the more hostile and frustrated ghosts in Lewis' short piece of writing recounts, in anxious detail, the apparent faults of her now absent husband. Hilda, as the spirit is named, must endure the ghost's incessant complaints: "I was working my fingers to the bone for him...the trouble I went to, entertaining...I have always done my duty" (514). That the ghost is characterizing her past self as an almost slave-like figure leaves the reader unsurprised in regard to her transparent, non-solid predicament.
One might initially side with the ghost, accept her complaints as valid. Maybe her husband really was as terrible as she makes him sound. Maybe he really was the "old bear of a husband" she so aptly calls him (515). As her rambling continues, however, one begins to understand her sense of denial, sadness, and one-sided viewpoint. Her last few comments sputter out of her mouth in a hurry and reveal why she is the one who is sinning. She says, "I'm so miserable. I must have someone to--to do things to" (516). That she must have someone to "do things to" is an indication of her habit of looking at her husband as more of an object than a person. He functioned as project for his wife. When recalling that he had friends and a large amount of wealth, things his wife lacked (she never mentions actually having anything), it's obvious she was trying to live vicariously through her husband.
And this is where the majority of the class discussion comes forward. In denying that it was she who had issues and faults, she was essentially ignoring a part of herself. If someone ignores their sins, they become smaller. Traits like faithfulness, love, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, and patience are God-like. They're "bigger" things than traits like envy, greed, jealousy, anger, etc. The ghost possessed many of the latter attributes, unfortunately. In not being able to face her faults, she "snapped" like a "dying candle-flame" at the end of the chapter (516).
Now, for human moral character in the "real" world, the here and now, this means that people may not "snap," surely, but they lose friends, anger husbands, depress wives, alienate co-workers, destroy sibling relationships, and more. For the ghost's case, she even implies that she enjoyed the attention the younger men would giver her over her husband (515). Clearly, her sins began to eat away at their relationship.
Despite Lewis' fictional account of what occurs on an ascent to Heaven, a lot of what occurs remains grounded, somewhat, in reality. Sure, ghosts may be literally transparent, but people (on Earth) who have forgotten the "big," important things begin to fade away in a similar manner. Not literally, of course, but figuratively. Those who know someone like the ghost wife will choose to, and eventually subconsciously, ignore her or shift their focus elsewhere after becoming familiar with her jealousy, ill attitude, and negative viewpoint when thinking of her husband. They'll gloss over her to look for more "solid" individuals, ones who are "bigger."
When people have such a claustrophobic, narrow view of the world, they miss out on God. If they don't, as was discussed today, take the time to be aware of other things - a tree, a chair, other people, a dog - they aren't aware of God and fall into an egocentric lifestyle. Ironically, the ghost was too aware of her husband, didn't spend enough time trying to fix her faults, and began to fade as a result.