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Macdonald And Macdonald: Summary

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The narrator finds himself in a bleak city, the "grey town", which is either Hell or Purgatory depending on how long you stays there. He eventually finds a bus for those who want to go to another place. He enters the bus and talks with the other passengers as they travel. When the bus reaches its destination, the passengers on the bus including the narrator are slowly revealed to be ghosts. Although the ghosts designation is the most beautiful place they have ever seen, every feature of the landscape is solid compared to them, it hurt for them to walk on the grass, and even a leaf is too heavy for any to lift. Shining figures, people who they knew on Earth, come to meet them. These figures are called “spirits”, they are different then …show more content…

The narrator meets George MacDonald and MacDonald becomes the narrator's guide in his journey. MacDonald explains that it is possible for a soul to choose to stay in Heaven despite having been in the grey town. For people that choose to go to heaven and leave the grey town, the goodness of Heaven will work backwards into their lives, turning even their worst sadness into joy, and this change in their experience on Earth to an extension of Heaven. The evil of Hell works the opposite way so that if a soul remains in, or returns to, the grey town, even its happiest times on Earth will lose its meaning, and its experience on Earth would have been Hell. Few of the ghosts realise that the grey town is, in fact, Hell; it is not that much different from the life they led on Earth: joyless, friendless and uncomfortable. The narrator discovers that the vast grey town and the ghosts that live there are tiny to the point of being invisible compared with how big Heaven and reality

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