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The Intelligent Man / Ikey
A bitter, cynical soul who tells the Narrator that Heaven and Hell are a “racket,” both owned by the same people. The Hard-Bitten Ghost is generally distrustful of the world—despite the fact that he’s “been everywhere” in life, he’s never particularly impressed by the places he visits. It’s possible that Lewis intended the Hard-Bitten Ghost partly as a parody of the ideas of William Blake, whose long poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, argues that good and evil are two different forms of the same vital energy. The Narrator generally respects people like the Hard-Bitten Ghost, and so the Ghost’s cynical observations throw the Narrator into deep despair.
The Hard-Bitten Ghost Quotes in The Great Divorce
The The Great Divorce quotes below are all either spoken by The Hard-Bitten Ghost or refer to The Hard-Bitten Ghost. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7 Quotes
“I thought they were at war?”
“Of course you did. That's the official version. But who's ever seen any signs of it? Oh, I know that's how they talk. But if there’s a real war why don't they do anything? Don't you see that if the official version were true these chaps up here would attack and sweep the Town out of existence? They've got the strength. If they wanted to rescue us they could do it.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Hard-Bitten Ghost Character Timeline in The Great Divorce
The timeline below shows where the character The Hard-Bitten Ghost appears in The Great Divorce. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7
...the tree looks delicious, but it’s just “propaganda,” since it can’t be eaten. The “ Hard-Bitten ghost ” claims that he’s come to the river to see it for himself—in life, he...
(full context)
The Narrator guesses that by staying by the river, he and the Hard-Bitten Ghost could become “solider,” an idea that the ghost promptly rejects. The ghost complains that people...
(full context)
The Hard-Bitten Ghost tells the Narrator he has to be getting along. Before he leaves, though, he tells...
(full context)
Chapter 8
The Narrator sits by the river, feeling miserable after his talk with the Hard-Bitten Ghost . When he first met the Spirits who lived by the river, he assumed that...
(full context)
