By Simone Southers

Fantasizing about reading classic literature was (and still is) one of my favorite pasttimes. So, when I got the opportunity to read works like Homer’s Illiad and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno with Professor Merkel, you could say that the dark academia wannabe in me was excited. Reading works like these were required for a class called “The Devil, the Hero, and God,” which looked at literature that had these interactions. Inferno shows the more obvious interaction out of all the literature I read for the class. 

Whenever I would hear about Inferno while growing up, I always thought of it as an unattainable story that was only meant for really smart people. But somehow, someway, I was able to get my hands on it. I was finally one of the cool, intellectual kids. I can finally parade around and say that “Hey! I’m smart, too! I read this really hard text, look at me!” What I didn’t realize though was that despite each Canto (or section) being only a few pages long, Dante is able to pack varying amounts of depth in each one, and through allegorical text.

Essentially, while in exile from his home country, Dante writes the first installment of his three-part adventure, titling it Inferno. Any person from Gen Z (and possibly millennials) who were, or still are, interested in fandoms will recognize the fanfiction self-insert aesthetic of his story. However, Inferno is allegorical and has more prestige than your typical Harry Styles or Draco Malfoy fanfics. 

It starts with him getting lost in the woods, losing his path, and ending up being chased by a vicious beast. He is saved by one of his idols, Virgil, and proceeds to fanboy in front of him. However, Virgil was tasked by angels in Heaven to help Dante find his path again. Now with a dead man as his guide, Dante travels through the depths of Hell and observes the many sins and punishments that dwell within it. The lower he gets, the worse the sin and the punishments are. He learns about each punishment through interacting with the other souls at whichever level he is in. But he eventually reaches the last level of Hell, housing Lucifer and the worst sinners of all time, and leaves such a horrifying place.

Much to my surprise, the plot of this story is relatively simple. Our protagonist follows his guide through the depths of literal Hell and is able to come back up alive. He lost his way but he found it again. Dante has us sit through thirty-three Cantos of head-throbbing allegorical poetry just to say that he was lost. 

It also follows the problem structure formulated by Gottschall, where in order to have a story, you need a character (Dante), a predicament (lost his path), and some attempt at extrication (him finding the path again). 

Gottschall also proposes that you don’t have a story if it doesn’t follow one or more of the “master themes,” as he coins it. Out of the few that he mentions, Inferno would fall into the theme of “death and mortality.” To look at it more in-depth, I believe that Dante uses Inferno as a “scare tactic” to motivate the reader/audience to remain faithful to the Christian faith. Aside from Limbo, each level of Hell has its own brutal and/or disgusting punishments for those who have sinned, with each level increasingly getting worse.

Now, I don’t know if Dante was on some psychedelics during his exile or what– but he has quite the imagination for conjuring up a book that is filled with punishments that are so grotesque and terrifying. Some of them include: being a tree that feels pain when your leaves are eaten by harpies and spill blood when your branches break off, having feces continuously rained on you, being stuck upside down in ice as your feet are on fire, and having your head chewed on by Lucifer, amongst other punishments. Wild stuff.

Most of the sins are retold in a similar way to about the same extent, regardless of what the punishment is. You get a general gist of what the punishment is through Dante’s narration or through another character and observe how some of the souls interact with Dante. An example of this is from the twelfth Canto where those who are violent against their neighbors boil in a river of blood. Our helpful guide directs Dante’s, and our, attention to the punishment and the sinners.

But fix your eyes below, upon the valley,
for now we near the stream of blood, where those
who injure others violently, boil.

O blind cupidity and insane anger,
Which goad us on so much in our short life,
then steep us in such grief eternally!

This is definitely quite the image, and logically, I should see this as disturbing. But it seems too general for me to actually be “scared” or have any sort of discomfort. But, let’s keep going…

Now, with our faithful escort, we advanced
along the bloodred, boiling ditch’s banks,
beside the piercing cries of those who are boiled.

I saw some who were sunk up to their brows,
and that huge Centaur said: ‘These are the tyrants
who plunged their hands in blood and plundering.

Here they lament their ruthless crimes; here are
both Alexander and the fierce Dionysus,
who brought such years of grief to Sicily.

Quite the terrifying punishment, right? Made your skin crawl? Maybe cringe a bit? …No? 

Dante’s choice of making this entire tale in the first person was to have us hold the “mask” of Dante, vicariously living through his experiences in a hellish environment. But he is also “retelling” the journey he had gone through, adding an extra, but confusing, layer of closeness to the audience. At some points, it’s hard to tell the difference between Dante as a narrator and him as a character. Since we brought these couple of variables to the forefront of the conversation, why aren’t these passages near traumatizing? Doesn’t Dante want us to stay faithful to God? Perhaps the punishment from the 28th Canto can give us some insight.

Who, even with untrammeled words and many
attempts at telling, ever could recount
in full the blood and wounds I now saw?

Each tongue that tried would certainly fall short
because the shallowness of both our speech
and intellect cannot contain so much.

Uh, oh. Dante being at a loss for words is a new sight. Yet eerie. It has us questioning: what could Dante be preparing us for? It’s a sort of warning of sorts.

No barrel, even though it’s lost a hoop
or end-piece, ever gapes as one whom I
saw ripped right from his chin to where we fart:

his bowels hung between his legs, one saw
his vitals and miserable sack
that makes of what we swallow excrement.

Saying that this is a sight for sore eyes would be an immense understatement. It is a sight that would make me want to rip out my eyes. But sadly, it doesn’t end there…

 

Nightmare fuel. Pure nightmare fuel. This highly regarded religious figure just flashed his organs at us! By doing so, Dante plants the seed of disgust and horror within us. Describing the punishment in such detail gets our imaginations going, and has us groaning at the thought of it. Having the poem be in the first person helps immerse us into Dante the Pilgrim’s experience. Dante also being aware that he is retelling the story also helps with the immersion aspect. What makes this so different from the stanzas from Canto XII? 

While I was all intent on watching him,
he looked at me, and with his hands he spread
his chest and said: ‘See how I split myself!

See how maimed Mohammed is!
And he who walks and weeps before me is Ali,
whose face is opened wide from chin to forelock…

Behind us here, a devil decks us out
so cruelly, re-placing every one
of this throng underneath the sword edge when

we’ve made our way around the road of pain,
because our wounds have closed again before
we have returned to meet his blade once more.

Canto XII is showing us what the punishment is, while Canto XXVIII is telling us what the punishment is.

One could argue that both are being used in each Canto, which is true. But both Cantos take advantage of setting the scene versus telling us what is happening. The scenic aspect of Canto XXVIII has us as active participants, rather than passively observing. The detailed description of the dismembered souls in this level of Hell allows us to imagine, also in detail, how absolutely grotesque and terrifying it was for Dante to have such an encounter.

As we can see, Dante’s way of traumatizing us works to some degree. Perhaps driving instructors could be put on the same level as Dante. Anyone and everyone that has a driver’s license needed to attend some sort of driving school. Within it, you would learn what to do, and not do, behind the wheel. But, there is one class that I remember more vividly than the other four-hour classes I needed to take. On this day, we were first told about what could happen if we were in an accident, and what to do if we got into one. I didn’t pay much attention to this, opting to doodle in a notebook as the instructor continued to speak. Eventually, she put on two or three long-duration videos consisting of graphic images of car crashes and accidents. Clearly, traumatizing older teens is legal in Ohio. 

After watching the videos, and some years later, it’s safe to say that I haven’t gotten into any accidents since acquiring my driver’s license. So perhaps the traumatizing worked.

One key thing to draw from both Dante and my driving instructor is that life is precious. As cheesy as it may sound, it’s important that we see the value in our lives, whether it’s through faith or by our own sheer willpower. It’s very easy to take aspects of life or our entire lives for granted. So, for the life of us, let’s avoid getting into car accidents, and avoid losing our way in a really dark, and scary forest.