Personal Narrative: The Underworld Or Land Of The Dead

C. S. Lewis discusses this topic by saying “The choice of ways is before you”. Everyone has the choice to choose eternal life just like how everyone in Hell in The Great Divorce has the option to ride the bus to Heaven. The only difference between the situations is that the characters in the book must ride the bus to Heaven and choose to stay there. When the inhabitants of Hell reaches the Gates of Heaven, they notice everything is solid and hard, while they are merely ghosts. This shows how God’s heavenly kingdom is stronger, denser, and more solid because it has been built on a strong foundation, God himself. Hell and its residents are weak, airy, and hollow because they are grounded in the earthly world, which provides no eternal substance. Because Heaven and a relationship with God is obviously the preferable option, the previous residents of Hell should stay in Heaven. This is much like how the unsaved people should happily accept God’s gift of salvation. However, the solid world in Heaven is hard to live in for a

Hell seems to be like a place where people tend to just go with the motions. Only the people who truly want to leave will. In the book of Revelation, Hell is described as fiery lake of burning sulfur. This scripture lines up most with what I have been taught about Hell.

A few years back I was sailing the open ocean with my leader, Odysseus, and the rest of the crew heading home when Odysseus informed us that we would be taking the long route home. As we grew closer to a strange island, the wind stopped and the water became quiet.

Hell, although we will most likely never actually know anything about it for sure, has always seemed to be brought up in the media, talked about on television, and depicted in different ways and through all of the different types of media there are around the world. For example, one version of Hell as described in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit is that the setting of Hell is a mostly empty room in which three people are selected to stay for eternity (Sartre). Whether they were selected by chance or at random, nobody can tell for sure (Northern). The characters, Garcin, Inez, and Estelle try to figure out why they were all placed together, but will never know even though they have an eternity together to figure it out (Sartre). The thought that this setting could be a Hell in it’s own can be hard to comprehend. The fact of the matter is that the three people have no looking glass in which to see themselves, no way to know how the other people in the room feel about them, and no way to get away from each other, for they are locked in this room for eternity (Sartre). The fact that one of the women, Estelle, is a sort of conceited woman who wants to see how she looks all the time makes her feel the need to ask the other woman, Inez, how she looks (Sartre). When she does this, it shows the way that it is human nature that we are constantly worried and wondering how they look through another person’s eyes (Northern). The idea of the Northern Existential Group that “Hell is other

The thought of a holy place where loyal and devout followers of Christ can finally be with their Lord is the main goal for Christianity. This location, known as “Heaven,” is said to be the home of angels and the King of Kings. Other terms for this include The Pearly Gates, Kingdom Come, Paradise, and the Promised Lands. Basically, Heaven is the ideal place for people of Christian faith to end up. However, Edwards strongly notes that it is most likely not going to be the final destination for most people, believers and nonbelievers alike. One can not talk about Heaven without also mentioning the concept of “Hell.” Hell is, in a basic sense, where the sinners go. To sin is to perform an action, either physical or mental, that disobeys God and his rules (referencing to the 10 Commandments). Edwards goes on to explain how, “Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards Hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf....(page 88)” This is the first form of persuasion that we see within this text--the art of coaxing everyone into believing no one will make it to Heaven because everyone is a

I think that my family realized that I had crossed the threshold between childhoods when I began to form my own opinions. This first took hold when I took part in poverty stimulation at my local shelter. I was giving a character and a story behind the card I was given; the story made me become emotionally attached to this name I had been assigned and the family in which I came from. The experience made me question the prejudice of the society I was living in. How many times had I avoided eye contact with the people on the side of the road begging for money? I began a long journey of soul searching and questioning the beliefs my parents had raised me on. My thoughts were continually brought back to a book by C.S Lewis, it was called Out of the Silent Planet; a character named Weston believed that individual human lives don’t matter, they must be sacrificed to save mankind.

Back when I was a space cadet in space district 69, I would try as much as I could to be on top of my class, but I also had the biggest class in space district 69 history. District 69 was one of 762 districts in the UN that was started by a planet called Earth which was also called district 1. Out of all the districts in the UN district 69 was one of the most respected districts, so my officials from my district always expected us as a class to be better and to be smarter than the rest of the districts.

I run, run, run, from the thing that haunts me most, But I can’t run away from the never-changing sway. Manulaplited by the ever-present ghost. This tempo that drives me always reminds me of the life I've thrown away.

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, “Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.” Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an

Hell, it is a common theme that gets represented fairly often in Early Christian and Medieval art. Religions that follow Christian practices view Hell as a place of indescribable torment and torture in the afterlife where unholy souls are eternally doomed by Christ’s decision on the day of the final judgment. If someone’s soul is deemed holy then they will ascend into heaven and live with the holy trinity and among the angles. The fear of death and the uncertainty of existence in an afterlife is one of the main reasons why religious traditions are practiced by billions of people. Christianity teaches that people must follow the laws that God governs and accept Jesus Christ as lord in order to enter the gates of heaven and have eternal peace.

Lurid means vivid and unpleasant. Lurid was a word on a weekly vocab quiz I took the week I first visited Simon’s Rock. Lurid was a word used casually (and properly) in a passionate discussion about a Rococo painting, The Swing, in an art history class at Simon’s Rock.

The stone was cold and I could feel the pain swelling up inside. I took a step towards the edge, I thought to myself, “One more step and the worries would end…” if only it was that easy.

One of the many subjects all societies struggle with - and will continue to struggle with for the foreseeable future - is the dispute over whether Heaven and Hell actually exist and what those popular ideologies entail. While the majority of people agree that Heaven appeases everyone in similar ways, we have considerably more variations of Hell depending on how it’s portrayed by the media. TV shows, movies, and books constantly show suffering as torture and raging flames and unending physical agony. Dante’s epic poetry, The Inferno, contradicts those popular versions of Hell by explaining that souls only suffer in ways corresponding with their sins committed in life, with the most severe punishment possible taking place in a frigid wasteland.

In today’s world the idea of hell is sometimes hard to fathom. The horrific and disturbing images that have been portrayed through out movies, religious artwork, television, and stories have drastically influenced our perceptions of hell. It is even sometimes looked upon as a joke and taken too lightly. It also provides people with a sense of fear and motivation to live their lives righteously in order to avoid this fate. In the bible, hell is described as a very real place that it used as punishment for those who keep Christ out of their lives. In, Exploring the Philosophy of Religion, hell is described as a place alienated from all things good, hopeful, and loving in the world. In simpler words, hell, the opposite of heaven.

I’m a ball of sexual tense need. He stares down at me for a moment, measuring my need, then he grabs me suddenly and flips me over. It takes me by surprise, and because my hands are tied, I have to support myself on my elbows. He pushes both my knees up the bed so my behind is in the air, and he slaps me hard. Before I can react, he plunges inside me. I cry out-from the slap and from his sudden assault, and I come instantly again and again, falling apart beneath him as he continues to slam deliciously into me. He doesn’t stop. I’m spent. I can’t take this…and he pounds on and on and on…then I’m building again…surely not…no…