Friday, February 25, 2005

Don Juan and Hell

This week for one of my classes I read Man and Superman written by Bernard Shaw. Most of Act 3 is of Don Juan in hell and is Shaw's depiction of what heaven, hell, and earth is.
He describes hell in this way: "Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but to amuse yourself."
"Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from Heaven"
"Heaven is the home of the masters of reality." ". . . In Heaven...you live and work instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they really are; you escape nothing, but glamour; and your steadfastness and your peril and your glory. If the play still goes on here on earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind the scenes."
"Earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer. 'Make me a healthy animal.'

This is a very different way of looking at heaven , hell, and life on earth than Dante. Dante believes that the sin committed on earth will be judged accordingly in hell and that there is a hierarchy of sin. Shaw shows hell being a beautiful place maybe like Dante's Limbo. In shacks hell the hell bound have any pleasantry and do as they please. Heaven may be dull, but is reality. There is no play acting like on earth or in hell.

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