The Relationships Between the Original and Modern Inferno

The film Dante’s Inferno criticizes contemporary America, while staying true to the poem’s messages. The film highlights the overindulgence the go on in the inferno, including food and sex. The film is able to make scenes in the inferno realistic and relatable.

To begin with, the inferno is resembled to look like a city. There is a ferryboat that leads souls into the city of hell. There are policemen that control the area. There is organization and order, which is also very similar to a city. When they enter the third circle of hell there is a Quiznos and a McDonald’s. The sinners are sent here for gluttony and are forced to eat anything in their path. This is an insult at America and the obesity problem the country has with indulging in food. The sixth circle of hell also resembles a city, in fact in is called the City of Dis. There is a real estate agent who offers to show Dante the sites. This is similar to the poem. The City of Dis is a walled city for the lower levels of hell. There are moats, high towers, gates and watch guards. Relating the poem and film to a city makes the inferno seem more realistic and organized.

The “city” is run by the devil, Lucifer.  In order to keep a city running, a ruler is needed. In our cities it is a mayor or a president. In the film the ruler is the only full human. The rest of the characters are shadow puppets. This shows the importance and rule the character has. He is found in the bottom of the ninth circle where it is extremely cold. Lucifer resembles the ultimate power. His wings control the temperature of the inferno. He is also punishing the worst sinners. Dante describes him as “His similarities make him resemble the god of the inferno. Although his purpose is not necessarily for the good, he is the supreme ruler. In the poem Dante describes him as “the emperor on the despondent kingdom” (Canto XXXIV, line 28).

In the film, the second circle of hell is for the sin of lust. Those who are sent to this level are forced to constantly having sex. Dante is confused by the punishment because he thinks it’s rewarding. This reflects contemporary America and the idealization of sex. Our society fanaticizes sex and sees it as a good thing. He fails to realize the sinners will never feel the pleasure of sex again. This is a very different idea than the poem, which separates lovers and by winds of a violent storm. In the poem Dante pities the sinners, instead of praising them. It reads, “because of pity-I fainted, as if I had met my death.” (Canto V, 141). It is interesting to see how the addition of sex changes Dante’s perspective. I believe if the sinners were having sex in the poem, Dante’s reaction would have been more dramatic and appalled. Sex was more serious and private than it is in contemporary society.  Dante’s original thoughts have been able to incorporate modern themes and relate to today’s world.

The Power of Choice in Dante’s Inferno

During class today we discussed that the filmmakers of Dante’s Inferno emphasized that the decision of who goes to hell and who doesn't is a human choice.  This strongly opposes the ideas that Dante himself supported in his writing of Inferno.  In the original text, the creation of the divisions of hell and the choosing of the inhabitants who live there is left to God. God’s choices are considered to be perfect, and by the end of Inferno Dante’s doubts in God have largely disappeared.  In the post movie discussion we brought up these points, but we weren't able to discuss the significance of the filmmaker’s choice to change this part of the story.  What point were the filmmakers trying to make, or what message were they trying to send?

Since Dante’s Inferno is a satire my first instinct is to believe that most of the stylistic changes applied to the original story are for the purpose of stimulating cultural change.  This would fit in with many of the other changes used in the film such as the urban setting and the contemporary characters.  Dante-poet made the decision for God to be perfect and all-powerful for the same reason the filmmakers of Dante’s Inferno chose to have God play a lesser role in the story, and that is to fit the cultural moment in which each piece was created.  Dante needed an omnipotent, cruel God to make all the decisions in order to send the message he intended to share with readers, while the filmmakers appealed to our modern culture’s growing independence from God by placing the big decisions in human hands.  By doing this the filmmakers are issuing a call to action for the viewers of the film by offering more control over their lives then Dante ever allowed in the original story.  The filmmakers are asking the viewer to take matters of right and wrong into their own hands, instead of relying on a divine power for justice.  It seems as if the filmmakers believe that the sins portrayed in the film are too out of hand to be dealt with through the threat of eternal damnation.  By giving the viewer more responsibility the filmmakers are attempting to provide a basis on which society can begin improvement through self-examination.

Fear and Dante's Inferno

Fear is one of the most powerful human emotions. It tempts people into cowardliness and coerces people to turn from their morals. In Dante’s Inferno this power of fear is seen as a theme throughout the poem which turns people from God’s plan. For example, Dante’s fear continually makes him question going into the depths of The Inferno. Dante’s fear begs him to seclude himself away to the comforts of the Earth that he knows. This power of fear can be seen when Dante looks for excuses not to descend into Hell by questioning, “But why should I go there? Who sanctions it?/ For I am not Aeneas, am not Paul;/ nor I not others think myself so worthy” (Canto II 31-33). Here, Dante is letting fear tempt him to turn from Gods plan; he is letting it compel him into thinking only of himself and not of the others that he will be serving.

In this sense, fear belongs to the selfish and immoral. It belongs to those who will think about themselves before they think about others or even God. This notion that fear belongs to the immoral is strengthened when Virgil dispels Dante’s fear. Virgil, one who has proven to live a Nobel life, recognizes there is no need for fear when working in Gods plan. Nevertheless, even Virgil is not immune to fear deep in The Inferno and must be rescued by one even more noble and moral than himself. Outside the gate of Dis, a city with greater suffering than before, Virgil could not pass and began to let fear take hold of him. He questions the certainty with which they will make it through the journey and subsequently asks for help by saying, “We have to win this battle/…if not….But one so great had offered help”(Canto IX 7-8). Virgil, the one who has been repelling Dante’s fear, now feared himself. He even questioned the validity of God’s plan and needed one greater and more moral than himself to dispel his own fear.

Fear has the power to turn people selfish, to think only of themselves. Therefore, fear belongs to the immoral. More specifically in Dante’s Inferno, fear compels people to turn from Gods plan. When fear consumes one’s mind, it takes someone greater and more moral to dispel that fear. Whether Virgil repelling Dante’s fear or The Angel repelling Virgil’s fear, one greater with more trust in God’s plan must come to the rescue. In Dante’s inferno fear is not only seen as a natural response the mystery and danger of The Inferno but, more importantly it is seen as a proof that man and even Nobel spirits still do not comprehend the extend of God’s power and will.

Love in the Inferno

The theme of love, while a little harder to look for in Dante’s Inferno, is one that fascinated me as I read the first half of the poem.  Especially with regard to the first two Cantos, love is an important driving force in this poem; direct references to it eventually become more  and more fleeting as the poem progresses and Dante advances through the various circles of Hell.  The reader first encounters love early on in Canto I, when Dante makes a reference to “the Holy Love” as the Divine Creator of al beings rather than the punitive, unforgiving figure that the reader encounters for the majority of the remainder of the poem (Canto I, 38-40).  Dante also speaks of love in the context of his muse, Beatrice, who in sending Virgil as Dante’s guide claims to act out of love:  “For me you’ll go, since I am Beatrice./And I have come from where I long to be./Love is my mover, source of all I say” (Canto II, 70-72).  It is this act of love that not only sets Dante’s journey through Hell in motion, but also provides for Dante the motivation to trust in the process and in Virgil as his guide.

I think what truly piqued my interest in the particular theme of love was how Dante treats it when he writes about it throughout Inferno.  In juxtaposition with the harsh, matter-of-fact descriptions he utilizes to delineate the various punishments of Hell’s inhabitants and the atrocities of Hell in general, Dante writes of love in rare terzas characterized by an undeniably lyrical quality.  Perhaps the greatest example of this is in Canto V, when Dante encounters the lustful in the second circle of Hell and speaks to Francesca da Ramini about her love for Paolo and the misfortune of their punishment to drift in the winds of Hell, constantly separated for eternity: 

“Love who so fast brings flame to generous hearts,

seized him with feeling for the lovely form,

now torn from me.  The harm of how still rankles.

Love, who no loved one pardons love’s requite,

seized me for him so strongly in delight

that, as you see, he does not leave me yet.

Love drew us onwards to consuming death” (Canto V, 100-106).

                The language that Dante employs in this passage is romantic in nature, which matches the wistful tone of the star-crossed lover’s lamentations.  It sounds beautiful—so beautiful in fact, that it moves Dante to faint out of pity for their misfortune.  Passages such as this one, however short-lived they may be, caught my attention because I wondered about the purpose of this shift in Dante’s writing.  I mean, even in Hell, which is supposed to be devoid of hope and all things good, love is present.  Is it a symbol of God’s omnipresence?  Or perhaps, a brief reminder that God is not solely punitive and cruel in nature?

Justice in the Inferno: from God and from the Poet

In Dante’s Inferno, the themes of sin and justice are developed throughout the poem. In the beginning of Dante’s journey through the underworld, he reads the inscription above the gates of hell. The inscription tells of hell’s origin; “My maker was divine authority, / the highest wisdom, and the primal love.” As the notes at the end of the Mandelbaum translation indicate, this is a reference to the trinity – God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (Dante, 350). All three forms of God sanction what occurs past the gates of hell, therefore reason dictates that the associated punishments past these gates must be God’s divine justice. This logic is used subtly throughout the poem as Dante was rooted in the traditional Christian views of right and wrong; God is right, anything contradicting Him is wrong.  This idea of justice divined by God holds wide appeal because it is nearly impossible to argue with the Maker of the Universe.

            Although the idea of justice directed by God is widely seen in this work, Dante the poet develops his own sense of justice, not based in the Bible at all. This is seen in his structure of “better” and “worse” sins and the retribution that accompanies those actions. These punishments are based on the wrathful idea seen in the Bible of “an eye for an eye.” The sinners are punished in the afterlife to the extreme based on how they sinned in life. For example, the gluttonous are punished by being immersed in mud like the pigs they were in life. Though this retribution is biblical, Dante’s whole structure of hell – that one sin is more severe than another – is not biblical at all. In the Christian faith, one sin of telling a white lie is no less severe than the murder. Dante the poet’s sense of vengeance and proportional punishment is a thoroughly human ideal and an example of how Dante’s historical context in 13^th century Italy affected his writing.

Despite the influences as a poet, Dante the voyageur is on a journey toward understanding the justice created by the Divine and created by the poet. Virgil the guide leads him toward accepting this truth. At the onset, Virgil is relatively understanding as Dante is shocked and saddened by the punishment he sees. He faints from shock and pity. Eventually Virgil feels that Dante should understand God’s divine justice. The guide even appears annoyed at Dante’s continued pity in Canto XXIX, when Dante is consumed by the thought of his un-avenged ancestor Geri del Bello. Virgil chastises him, saying; “Don’t let your thoughts/ about him interrupt you from here on: / attend to other things, let him stay there…” (Dante, 265). In Virgil’s view, it is too late in his journey for Dante to still feel pity. This is ultimately the purpose of Dante’s journey – to not feel pity for the sinners but see the way in which they are punished as just and right, created by God.

Dante & The Just God

Much of Inferno juxtaposes the "lives" of the living and the dead.  The levels of Hell signify both a warning and an enlightenment for Dante the pilgrim.  During the pilgrim’s travels through the nine circles of Hell, the author Dante creates a realm where sinners are punished in a way that mirrors their worst, unrepented sin.  While discussing this topic in class, I wondered if there was a religious text that suggested that this form of Hell had been proposed before.  The closest I could encounter was from Galatians 6:7, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.”  However, this quote does not specify when the individual will reap what they sow; therefore, it seems as though this very unique conceptualization of Hell came from Dante himself.  Throughout Inferno, Dante repeatedly drives home the point of eternal misery.  He does this almost to the point of being comedic; in one case, the one who rejected Christ’s resurrection is condemned to resurrect for the rest of eternity.  Though this may seem sadistic, Dante is trying to communicate the existence of a truly just God through this version of Hell.   

Those residing in the inferno have been punished on two levels: the evilness of the sin and what the reality of the sin was.  By this, I mean those who are guilty of “greater” sins suffer more than those whose sins were in a sense “lighter”; in other words, those who have taken a more active stance against God suffer greater consequences.  The unbaptized of Circle One are simply, yet harshly removed from God without hope of being brought closer.  Through a modern lens, this probably seems much harsher than it did in the fourteenth century; during discussion, Mary even mentioned this idea while pointing out that the punishments seem to make more sense as the reader goes deeper into the circles.  Still, I do not believe many people would be willing to explicitly say that those who have not been baptized are going to hell regardless of whether or not they were a good person.  This form of punishment most likely made much more sense in Dante’s time.  Nevertheless, this condemnation is obviously less harsh than those in the lower circles of Hell.  For example, in one of the lowest circles, those who were “false prophets” and tried to foresee the future were punished through tears that rendered them incapable of seeing at all.  Here, the reader can also see how the punishments reflect the reality of the sin itself.  Dante the poet, through Virgil, discusses the fairness of the punishment of those condemned in Canto II when discussing those who did not out-rightly offend God but chose not to praise him either, “Heaven casts them out, and depth of Hell does not receive them” (Dante, Inferno Canto II, Line 41-42).  In accordance with Dante’s conceptualization of Hell, those in the inferno also signify the existence of a just, but harsh God.

For most, this idea of a harsh God is tough to swallow.  How could a forgiving and compassionate God deny anyone eternal happiness.  But then again, how could evil exist in a world that God supposedly created?

Yunior's Redeeming Qualities

In This is How You Lose Her, Yunior has quite a few bad qualities, but the most prominent one is his chronic cheating on his girlfriends. He doesn’t treat any of his girlfriends right, yet there is something about Yunior that allows him to still be a likable character. His quick wittedness and engaging narrative definitely help his cause, but I think it is the fact that, unlike many of the other Dominican men we see in this and Diaz’s other books, Yunior actually falls in love and cares about how he makes the women feel when he cheats on them. Before Miss Lora, Yunior promised himself he wouldn’t be a “sucio” like his father and his brother. In “Miss Lora” after he and Miss Lora have sex for the first time, which is also the first time he cheats on his girlfriend, he says, “both [my] father and [my] brother were sucios…sucios of the worst kind and now it’s official: [I am] one, too. [I] had hoped the gene had missed [me]” (165). His encounters with Miss Lora prove that he is unable to resist the temptation, just like his father and Rafa. However, unlike his father and brother, Yunior actually feels bad about what he is doing.

In “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars,” Yunior continues to try to make it work with Magda after she finds out about him cheating on her, and tries everything he can to get their relationship back to normal, because he obviously loves her. He says, “Magda’s my heart. I didn’t want her to leave me” (6), and when they finally break up, he seems truly upset by it. When he receives a letter from her months after they break up, he writes, “Magda’s handwriting still blasted every molecule of air out of my lungs” (25).

In “Alma” when Yunior once again gets caught cheating, he claims he is “overwhelmed by a pelagic sadness. Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertible knowledge that she will never forgive you” (49). He is sad to lose her, and tries to lie to keep her. Nothing excuses the fact that he cheated on her, but at least he actually cared about her and was sad to see her go.

Finally, in “The Cheater’s Guide to Love” Yunior loses the love of his life after she finds out he has cheated on her with fifty women. While that should be enough to make the reader hate him, it is still very difficult to because this is when he finally learns his lesson and tries to stop cheating on every girl he meets. It takes him years to even begin to get over his ex, and really puts in the effort to better himself, which makes it difficult to hate him even under the circumstance of the breakup. Yunior gives the reader so many reasons to dislike him, yet it is very difficult to hate him because he does have redeeming qualities and is a better man than many of the other men who appear throughout Diaz’s books.

Yunior's Responsibility

Throughout This is How You Lose Her, Yunior becomes more responsible for his actions and starts to realize that it is his fault the girls keep breaking up with him. The book begins when in a girl finds out Yunior cheated via a letter from the other woman (4). This is the only time when Yunior gets caught because someone else informs his girlfriend, and because of this he does not believe he is to blame when his girlfriend breaks up with him. In “Alma,” Yunior’s girlfriend discovers his cheating because he wrote about it in his journal (49). Here, Yunior first tries to deny that he cheated, by claiming that it was part of his novel. However, he then claims responsibility for the breakup when he says “This is how you lose her” (50).  The final chapter of the book, “The Cheater’s Guide to Love,” begins with an explanation about how a girl he dated for six years found out he had cheated on her with fifty other women because he did not completely delete his emails (179). At this point, Yunior immediately takes responsibility for his actions by trying to fix the situation. He clarifies everything he did to try and make it up to his girlfriend by listing “You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias…” (180). However, even when his attempts are unsuccessful, he still does not blame the girlfriend for leaving him, as he did at the beginning of the book. Later in the same chapter, when Yunior is living with the law student who he believes is pregnant with his baby, he writes about her in his journal and she finds it, after which “She doesn't speak to [Yunior] again for two whole fucking weeks” (202). In this instance, he is not cheating on the girl, he simply writes about how he doesn't like her. Even though they do not get along, he is still trying to take care of her because he is attempting to be responsible in providing for his child. During the course of the book, Yunior becomes a better, more likeable person because he starts taking responsibility for his actions. 

Nerdiness and Superpowers

                In Oscar Wao, social ostracism plays a central role to the development of the characters. Oscar, his sister Lola, and his mother all don’t fit into their societal roles like they feel they are supposed to. While being a misfit is a common theme in many coming of age stories, Junot Diaz uses references from comic books, science fiction, and fantasy novels to illustrate that the characters do not belong. In particular, Oscar is described using these nerd references because of his dedication to genre fiction and nerd culture. When he first starts to doubt his appearance in the mirror, he exclaims, “Jesus Christ, I’m a Morlock” (30). Morlocks are ugly creatures from an H.G. Wells novel who look like underground apes and eat children. In that moment, Oscar doesn’t see himself as “some kind of platano Doc Savage, a supergenius who combined world-class martial artistry with deadly firearms proficiency” (27) anymore, he sees himself as becoming a monster.

                Oscar’s mother Beli is also a misfit, even though she’s never read a comic book in her life. When she finally hits puberty and grows her famous breasts, her status changes, but she is still an outcast. Her new “power” is described as “Telling Beli not to flaunt those curves would have been like asking the persecuted fat kid not to use his recently discovered mutant abilities. With great power comes great responsibility…bullshit” (93). Beli has a new superpower, but like most superpowers it comes with the price of being treated differently. Creepy old men try to take advantage of her, and she is forced to leave the Dominican Republic after being beaten by the Gangster, “no ringwraith, but he wasn’t no orc either” (119). And saddest of all, her superpower turns out to be lethal. At the end of the book, Yunior says “She would live for another ten months, but by then she’d more or less given up” (323).

                Lola, the most well-adjusted of the bunch, still is an outcast. As a child, she is the “tallest, dorkiest girl in the school, the one who dressed up as Wonder Woman every Halloween” (57). Like her mother, she looks for a way to gain power and to escape the cycle of violence that plagues Dominican women, but ultimately succeeds in a way and ends up with Yunior, a sort of reformed Dominican. Besides Wonder Woman, she also seeks power in being seen as a witch. In “Wildwood” she explains that “as long as you’ve been alive, you’ve had bruja ways; even your mother will begrudge you that much. Hija de Liborio she called you after you picked your tia’s winning numbers for her” (53). Though she doesn’t really believe in fuku or zafa, she believes in her dreams and visions of going to a better place.

                

Fuku and Zafa

Yunior begins his story by telling the tale of fuku and zafa and the role they play in Dominican culture. Throughout the second half of the novel Lola, Oscar and Yunior respond to and believe in fuku in different ways. When Yunior moves in with Oscar junior year he mentions that “[Oscar] used to say he was cursed… and if [he’d] really been old-school Dominican [he] would have (a) listened to the idiot, and then (b) run the other way” (Diaz 171). Although Oscar was born in the States, he is a firm believer in fuku. However, whether he is actually cursed, or fulfilling an inevitable self-prophecy believing in the curse, is up to interpretation. Yunior does not believe in fuku himself, but knows how Dominicans feel about it and knows he probably should be more cautious of it.

Although Lola and Oscar come from the same mother and have the same upbringing, her views on the curse are completely opposite Oscar’s. Whereas he blames his unfortunate life on the curse, Lola “[doesn’t] think there are any such things as curses. [She] think[s] there is only life. That’s enough” (205). She represents a much more realistic, American view on life; things happen and that’s life.

Depending on the Dominican, some would look at the lives Beli, Lola and Oscar and say Abelard ruined their family and cursed them for life. Those Dominicans are likely the ones more true to their roots. Lola is a strong disbeliever in the curse. She also fights Dominican norms. Whereas most Dominican women subject themselves to abusive husbands and boyfriends, Lola was not supportive of the Dominican norms. When Oscar asks Lola if she would “allow [her] pubescent daughter to have relations with a twenty-four-year-old male,” she replies with “I’d kill him first” (35). Lola stands up for herself and does not act as a typical Dominican female is expected too.

Oscar, who believes in the curse, shows hyper Dominican masculinity in his obsession with women and porn. Oscar does not abuse women but he knows what is expected of him as a Dominican male. When he asks Yunior if it’s true that no Dominican male has ever died a virgin and Yunior confirms that it’s against the laws of nature Oscar’s response is “that… is what worries me” (174). Oscar’s acknowledgement of what his role is and what is expected of him ties him to his Dominican culture. His connection to his Dominican masculinity can also be seen as what ties him to the curse. There is a clear correlation between Dominican culture and belief in the curse. It ties the characters closer to or further away from their roots depending on what they believe in.