Portrayal of Relationship Between Heaven and Hell
Unlike many novels about the relationship of Heaven to Hell and the traditional Judeo-Christian portrayal, Hell is not a place of eternal pain and torture, more akin to Purgatory. For instance, Satan does not always take pleasure in killing or torturing others, seeing it more as a given role than a personal pleasure. Beelzebub is also tasked with all of Satan's inane duties, including handling the capture of Meg Finn herself. Likewise, Heaven is not completely pure, as Saint Peter seems to take pleasure in sending souls to limbo instead of through the Pearly Gates, as well as letting souls through that aren't completely pure. Saint Peter also pokes fun at his own station and Heaven itself; at the end of the book, when Meg is let through to Heaven, he comments that the 'Pearly Gates' aren't exactly pearly; it just sounded more appealing than 'Hole in the Sky'.
Read more about this topic: The Wish List
Famous quotes containing the words heaven and hell, portrayal of, portrayal, relationship, heaven and/or hell:
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“From the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at the time. Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give us food for thought.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism.”
—Frank Buchman (1878–1961)
“The election makes me think of a story of a man who was dying. He had only two minutes to live, so he sent for a clergyman and asked him, “Where is the best place to go to?” He was undecided about it. So the minister told him that each place had its advantages—heaven for climate, and hell for society.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)