What's next?

Why is the concept of hell so intriguing? Why is what Dante write so intrguing? What has made Dante's work last so long?

As each of these was laboring to rake
His nails all over himself--scattering and digging
For the great fury of the itch they tried to slake,

Which was one other relief: their nails were snagging
Scabs from the skin to a knife blade might remove
Scales from a carp, or as if the knife were dragging

CAnto XXIX (lines 85-90)

Beginning thus: 'So that your memory
in men's mind in the former world won't fade

But live on under many suns, tell me
Who you and your people are; your punished state,

Canto XXIX (lines 110-113)


Science indicates that after death, the human body becomes dirt. But Science has yet to understand the composition of the soul. Where will my soul go? What will happen with my soul? Because each human wants to believe that their life is worth something, they believe in a soul, something greater than just the science of the human body. The problem is that that soul does not have rules, the soul does not have scientific parameters. While the human body is alive the free soul is confined to the scientific rules of the body, but if we believe that each human has a soul then what happens when the chains of life are broken?

For centuries I think that each individual through literature, philosophy, science, math, history, and life has searched for what that soul is, and what will happen to it after death. This interest in afterlife is possibly a reason for which Dante's work has such far reaching powers. Dante's Inferno touches on what happens to the soul. and provides an answer to a question that a scientifically minded population has sought and will continue to seek for as long as humans live.

In order to answer that question Dante reveals hell as a science. Like the seven levels of classification, each soul/shade has a name, a place from where it comes, and a set of sins that correspond with the name. Dante removes all subjectivity from life, and replaces it with a set of rules. Everywhere Dante goes in Hell he asks individuals for their names and why they have come here. Each individual provides a reason that validates their level of hell, and creates a structure in a structureless concept. And for a community that is driven by science and the expansion of technology, the order that Dante create is 1, a concept that the human is able to grasp, and 2, a set of rules that explain the unknown.

But then the question arises why Dante and not anyone else who has written about hell. I think it has to do with the relationship between the crime and the punishment. Many other writers who discuss hell simply refer to it as a place of torment, one that is equal for everyone. In our world ever since Hammurabi certain punishment follow certain crimes. Since Dante follows the same concept that the punishment fits the crime, Dante's work is one that is more relatable to.

In fact I think that Dante's Inferno is actually banned in some countries. IN those countries law is different. Law is what the authoritarian says, so in fact if someone from that country were to read the book they would not relate to it because their government does not have a crime fits the punishment system. As far as Hammurabi's concept extends so to will the need for a system where the punishment fits the crime.