![]() ![]() ![]() Can you … I hope you can be a little glad to see even me for the present.” When Reginald meets her, Pam is clearly disappointed: Michael died when he was still a boy, and it is clear in the story that Pam never recovered. There is no more deeply painful character than that of “Pam.” We have very few names, but we know Pam (the Ghost), the late Reginald (the Spirit), and her son Michael. Soon, though, the caricatures turn to significant characters whose personality and struggles with self is not only true to the character, but often prophetic of the reader’s personal journey. We begin with cartoons of a short man with a superiority complex, a cheated hysterical woman, a vacant liberal clergyman, a unisex couple–“both so trousered, slender, giggly and falsetto that I could be sure of the sex of neither”–and “ the Big Man,” a bully who turns to violence because “I gotta have my own rights, see.” Some sad, some humorous, these modern fairy tale-like tropes dominate the first chapters of The Great Divorce. The Great Divorce begins not with characters but with caricatures. ![]()
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