| Dante's
Inferno |
| Walk with me,
dear reader. You are not
afraid to walk through Hell, are
you? The souls of the
living cannot be tortured here,
yet be warned there are things
that may offend you. This
is an extended outline of Dante's
Inferno. It is a partly
interactive page, mixed with
images and expressions to enhance
the feel for the trip. Most
every key point is covered here,
save for the details of the
sinners which you will have to
read the book for |
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You awaken in a
dark forest with no apparent way
out. There is an unease in
the air and you attempt to make
your way through the dense woods.
Off in the distance you see
a hill that leads into a bright
and blinding radience (Heaven).
As you try to climb it,
your path is blocked by three
beasts: a she-wolf, a lion,
and a leopard. These
represent the three kinds of sin.
You just about give up hope
when Virgil, master poet, comes
to lead you to Heaven through the
backdoor, i.e. Hell and Purgatory. |
| After
you cross Acheron with the aid of
Charon, the ferry-man, you pass a
region close to Hell where you
see people chasing a flag in
fields of maggots and worms.
While they chase the flying
banner, swarms of hornets and
wasps sting and draw blood from
the souls which is devoured by
the insects on the ground. Here
are the Opportunists, those who
lived not for God or Satan or
good or evil... but for
themselves. Those angels
who chose no sides in the War in
Heaven are damned with the
Opportunists. |
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You pass through
the gates of Hell, the warning on
the gates throwing fear into your
heart. Your guide, Virgil,
assures you that this is not a
warning for you. The first
region you come to after entering
is the dark realm of Limbo.
The souls of the vitruous
non-Christians and those born
before Christ are damned, but not
tortured here. Their only
sin was not knowing Christ, there
only punishment is to never see
Divine Radience. |
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| You pass through
Limbo, your heart heavy. You
wonder what other punishments lie
in store. You pass down
into the next circle of Hell,
that of the Carnal. These
souls sought pleasures of the
flesh above pleasures of the
spirit. They are tossed and
thrashed about in a great tempest,
never resting or knowing peace.
You stop and talk to a pair
of lovers who tell you their tale
of love and lust. You begin
to feel sad for them, then you
see the town whore tossing about
in the tempest and remeber these
are evil souls. |
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Indeed, evil
souls. You remind yourself
that they are in Hell for a
reason. And accept the fact
that you can believe precious
little of what they say. The
third circle of Hell is Gluttoney.
These souls gorged
themselves in life, taking in
scared notions of sustenance, and
produced nothing but waste.
The scenery is a great
garbage dump of filthy souls
piled about in black snow and
muck. Cerberus, the three-headed
hell-hound, vicously bites and
rips apart souls painfully that
then reform to undergo the
torture yet again. The
stench of filth and the sight of
the dump nearly make you lose
your
lunch. It is here, where
the Sins of Incontinence begin to
be most evident. |
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As you pass into
the fourth level of Hell, you
heard the groans of great
physical exertion and the screams
of pain. You climb down and
see two factions of people
opposing each other. They
roll great boulders between them,
each side getting crushed by the
great stones. One side
shouts "Why hoard?",
the other shouts "Why waste?".
You realize that these are
the hoarders and wasters of money,
in the circle of Greed. Those who
coveted money and lavishness
rather than the wealth of
spiritual enlightnment |
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You pass Greed
and wait for the ferry to take
you accross the River Styx.
As you and Virgil cross,
you notice that the river is
teeming with souls of Anger.
The wrathful claw at each
other to keep from drowning,
drowning each other in the
process, and the sullen are
buried in the muck at the bottom
of the river, their torture
silent. You whack a few
souls away from the boat to keep
it from over-turning. |
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After a little
help from above, you pass into
the inner Hell of Dis. The
first circle you climb down into
is Heresy. Those who
believed that their souls died
with their bodies are punished in
a truly fitting way. They
are confined in open graves awash
with flames, as you walk by the
screams and anguish of the damned
almost overwhelm you. You
stop and talk to one soul who
rises from his grave to tell you
how he doesn't deserve to be here.
Remembering that these are
evil souls, you take no heed of
his words. |
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You enter the
Circle of Violence and Virgil
tells you that it is broken into
three sections: Violence
against your neighbor, violence
against yourself, and violence
against God. You come to the
banks of Phlegethon. Those who
exercised violence against their
neighbor are submerged in a river
of boiling blood, those who try
to come out are shot with arrows
by centaurs on the shore. You
cross carefully into the second
section of Violence, the Wood of
Suicides. Because they
dishonored their bodies in life,
they are denied human form in
death. Because they harmed
themselves in life, they are
formed into unmoving trees that
are abused by harpies and hell-hounds
that tear them apart and deficate
on them. You pass into the third
section of the Circle of Violence,
the burning . You see here
a further seperation in Violence:
the blasphemers, the
ursurers, and the sodomites.
On the vast stretch of
burning sands, the sodomites
wander aimlessly around in a rain
of fire. The ursurers are
further punished by crouching,
their backs burned by the rain,
because they wear the money they
usurped around their necks.
The most offensive of
violences is that against God,
the blasphemers lay supine on the
burning sands while being pelted
with the rain of fire. While
leaving the burning desert, you
notice that the next Circle of
your trip is so far into the
darkness, you cannot see the
groud. Virgil nods to you
and calls forth Geryon. |
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Geryon
flies you two down the cavern on
his back. You dismount and
Virgil explains the layout of
Fraud, the eighth circle of Hell,
while your eyes adjust to the
lack of light. There are
ten distinct sins covered in
Fraud. These sins are
seperated by walls in the shape
of concentric circles. You
walk across the bridges over
these walls and look at the souls
and punishments below. |
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| March
in two different
directions in a trench.
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| Simonacs
(evil churchmen) |
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| Buried
upside-down in a hole
with their feet being
licked by flames, other
souls eventually push
them further down into
the hole. |
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| Emersed
in boiling pitch, demons
claw at those who rise
above to breath. |
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| March
about in golden cloaks
lined with lead. |
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| Painfully
rob each other of human
form, causing them to
revert to a serpentine
one. |
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| Engulfed
alone in giant flames
like candle wicks. |
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| Ripped
open with their entrails
spilling out. |
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| Afflicted
with painful, body
mutilating diseases |
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You find your way
past the Fradulant and your guide
tells you that there is one more
circle left before you may pass
into Purgatory and then onto
Paradise. Eagerly you bound
down the slope onto a great
glacier and last ring, Treachery.
The chill winds bites into
your skin and you draw your cloak
about you tighter to no avail.
Virgil urges you forward
and you begin to see human forms
buried in the ice up to their
shoulders, their heads bowing
down to escape the wind. These
are the traitors to their kin,
they bow in penance for eternity.
Further you walk, the cold
getting harsher. You come
to another grove of souls, these
are the traitors to their country.
Those who betrayed their
home for selfishness are frozen
in the ice up to their heads.
They cannot bow to avoid
the wind, but their tears run
down their face and freeze on the
surface of the ice. You
stop and witness two souls in one
icey grave, one gnawing at the
head of the soul who caused him
to be damned with those who sold
out the people they invited in.
You fear you cannot
withstand the cold much longer,
but Virgil forces you on. You
come, next, to the traitors to
their guests. They are
frozen up to their face, their
eyes cast upward toward Heaven
and their tears frozen in the
sockets. The last of the
earthly sinners are those who
betrayed their masters. Their
cries cannot be heard, for they
are buried fully under the ice. |
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At the very
bottom of Hell, in the center of
the glacier, buried up to his
hairy waist, is Satan. The
Lord of Evil is a twisted monster
of his once-heavenly status as a
Seraphem. His six wings
beat endlessly, causing the chill
wind throughout Treachery. He
has three heads, each gnawing on
one of the three greatest sinners
in history: Brutus, Cassius,
and Judas Isacariot. Those
who betrayed their benevolent
masters are all damned here
together with the original
traitor, Satan. Virgil
helps you climb Satan's mangy
hide to a break in the base of
the glacier. You shiver
with afterthoughts and leave this
heirarchy of torment. You
continue onto Purgatory and
salvation. |
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