Dante's Commedia

What the Commedia is.
	If you, dear reader, do you not spend much time online, this might be confusing for you. Let me say this: Dante’s Commedia is a self-insert fan fiction full of Mary Sue/Gary Stu characters and is pretty much nothing more than a means to inflate Dante’s pride and self-worth. Now, let me explain what that means. First, fan fiction. This essentially uses a world that is already developed in order to expand upon the premise of the original story. So if I were to write a side story about an event that happened in Harry Potter, that would be a fan fiction. Second, self-insert fan fiction. This is a case in a fan fiction in which the author puts himself into the world in which he is writing. Using the Harry Potter example, I would be the main character of the fan fiction that involves the Harry Potter universe, despite having nothing personally to do with the universe and having no justifiable means by which to enter into that world. Third, Mary Sue/Gary Stu characters. These are characters that are utterly one dimensional and have no bad qualities and if they do the bad qualities are portrayed as good or justified.
	Now that I have the definitions out of the way, let me explain why Dante’s Commedia fits. The Bible gives us a very small view of hell, honestly little more than that it sucks and it contains a lake of fire or something. Dante greatly expands upon this, adding several layers to hell, each based on a sin the Bible condemns. That is basically what a fan fiction does. Nothing too bad here.
	Dante obviously puts Dante into the story. Thus, if we agree from the previous paragraph that it is a fan fiction, it is now obviously a self-insert fan fiction. Now, the general view on the internet of self-inserts is that they are universally bad. This is not entirely true, and since Dante wrote this in a time before the internet we can give him the benefit of the doubt.
	This is the kicker: Mary Sue and Gary Stu characters. They are almost universally loathed by almost every internet reader above the age of fifteen. These are characters that take the center stage whenever around and have no difficulties at all doing anything. They are overpowered and can railroad any kind of plot—push the plot forward past whatever difficulties that might be encountered. That is exactly how Dante uses almost every single angel. The first one we see is the one that pushes the door of Dis open and walks away without a word, completely undoing the actions of several characters already established as cunning and vicious with no explanation of how the angel does it other than that “he’s an angel.” Then we get to Virgil’s explanation of the damned, and how it is so obvious that they deserve being in hell. God in this case is being used as a ‘do-no-wrong’ Gary Stu. Yes, Virgil, it’s completely fair that you’re in hell forever because you were born at the wrong time. Let’s just gloss over the fact that several people that were born before you were allowed into heaven based on some completely arbitrary decisions. Yes, those people that are suffering forever because of a single moment’s wrong decision completely deserve their fate. I will admit that some people probably do deserve the fires of hell for some length of time, but I personally do not see how anyone can deserve to be tortured for eternity. And I mean anyone at all, not just anyone as in the common murderer.
	And all of those go without mentioning one of the worst Mary Sues I have ever seen in any literature at all—including Twilight. Beatrice. When she is introduced, it is by being escorted by a large number of angels, four eternal maids, and a griffin. What has she done to earn any of that honor other than being, in Dante’s opinion, utterly divine and beautiful? As soon as she sees Dante, she berates him for crying about Virgil having to go back to hell. She spends the next Canto and a half nagging him about why he stopped writing about her when she died. And to Dante, every word she said was perfectly justifiable, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to obsess over a woman long past her death date. I haven’t read Paradiso yet, so she might get better, but for now she seems utterly one dimensional and little more than perfect. Again, it’s like reading Twilight.
	The part of the Commedia not spent pining over Beatrice is spent pining over Dante. The entire Commedia is a treatise on arrogance based on the premise alone: A single man is given a chance to take a walk through hell, purgatory, and heaven in an attempt to change his life. What right does Dante have to be the man that gets to go on that walk? We are shown in Purgatorio that Beatrice asked God to do that for him. But what reason does God have to grant her that boon? What does it say to Dante’s ego that he considers himself worthy of such a gift? That is not, of course, discounting all the specific instances in the novel in which he takes time to stroke his own ego. Right at the beginning, in Limbo, we see Dante joining the great and famous poets as though he belongs with them. While admittedly after finishing the Commedia he honestly does deserve a spot there, at the time he most definitely did not. In Purgatorio, the single person Dante met that knew about him gushed praises for Dante’s work. And again, the entire thing seems a work on arrogance, because Dante is taking it upon himself to decide who goes or went to hell and who goes to purgatory and who goes to paradise. While I do admit that this gives character to all three canticles, it seems presumptuous of him to assign placement for anyone to any of the three locations.
	All in all, I will say that the Commedia is a wonderful piece of art and is definitely worth studying. However, as a piece of literature—once you get past the skill it took to write the syntax—it is little more than drivel, the lowest rung of the lowest form of literature: Self-insert fan fiction.

What was the point of it all?
	Throughout the Divine Comedy, Dante goes through and sees some very terrible things. He sees the fires of hell and hears the screams and laments of the damned. He meets demons and their prisoners. He traverses the entirety of hell and comes face to face with Satan himself in the ninth level. He climbs up Satan and conquers him and in doing so conquers his sins. He arrives at Mount Purgatorio and begins the process of redemption. He goes through the seven P thing and has all of them removed one by one.
	And not once does he change. He doesn’t seem to grow more or less shocked at anything new he sees or comes across. He doesn’t seem to learn anything or grow as a person or as a character. He grows to depend on Virgil and when Virgil leaves Dante immediately turns to him when he reaches a problem only to find that Virgil was no longer there. When Virgil leaves, he depends on Beatrice. I assume when he returns to Earth the point is that he’s supposed to depend on God.
	The thing is, though… Dante doesn’t seem to be able to do that. Depending on God would require him to have changed in some way, and up until the end of Purgatorio he honestly didn’t seem to have changed at all. He might once he gets to Paradise—I haven’t read that book, after all—but he just as easily might not. Is having no character progression something normal for books in Dante’s time? Am I missing something? Dante constantly says how he seems to have learned something, but he never seems to act on it. It’s a wasted journey for everyone involved if he doesn’t change in the end, so here’s hoping he does end up mending his ways.


The Importance of When
	Why was Virgil in a hurry? I may have missed it somewhere in the text, but I’m not certain it was ever explained just why Virgil was in such a rush to get Dante to the top of Mount Purgatory. Was Virgil given a time limit that we were not made aware of? Was he really in such a hurry to get back to hell? Was Dante truly such terrible company that being in hell was preferable to being around him?
	As much as I like to believe the last one—especially given my post last week—I think it more likely that Virgil was in pain the entire time he was helping Dante. Virgil was helping Dante with something Virgil himself would never attain: Reaching heaven. Virgil was witnessing the ‘mercies’ of God while knowing that he would never feel them. Virgil grew more and more testy as they got closer to the peak, seeing more and more of the ‘niceties’ of God and the happiness of the sinners being punished. They get to go to heaven. Virgil is stuck in the hopelessness of hell. His face is being rubbed in what he can never have.
	And Dante thinks Beatrice is such a perfect lady. She did that to Virgil, knowing the pain he would be in. It seems to me that we’re going to have to seriously take Dante at his word that Beatrice is so perfect, after the results of their first meeting. As far as I can tell, she’s not a person I would brag about knowing. Maybe she’ll improve in Paradiso.


Hell as God’s Love
	The dictionary definition of love, courtesy of http://dictionary.reference.com/ is:
a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
Discounting the fact that God is not a person, I fail to see how an eternity of damnation and punishment is love. I can see that as a number of things. Something to be wished upon an enemy, perhaps. Or maybe something to be idly said by someone that cuts you off in traffic. It could even be something temporary, a method used to guide someone along the correct path.
	But to do that to someone that you purportedly love? To hear their eternal screams and smile, saying that it is because you love them that you throw them into the lake of fire… That is no human definition of love. That is something so alien, perhaps so monstrous, that it is beyond our understanding. In the words of Epicurus: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
	In a way, it seems God is malevolent, at least to our human minds. He knows of hell and its evils, but instead of showing love and mercy by saving those sent there, he sits, knowing they’re bound in pain and fire. Those that love him tend to do so out of fear and lack of understanding. There’s a human phrase for that. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome.


The biggest copout of them all
	This canto is the biggest bloody copout I have seen in a long time. “This is fair because God says it’s fair. Why does God say it’s fair? I would tell you, but you wouldn’t understand.” That is not how you settle arguments. That is how you make children stop talking when you don’t feel like dealing with them. But children do not grow from being told they are wrong and an adult is right. They grow from having someone explain why they are wrong and why the adult is right. There is only so much a child can understand, but for an adult to not even make the attempt to explain something is one of the greatest evils of child rearing. To allow a child to be ignorant with no attempt to educate them? At least make the attempt to explain why the souls of those that have never heard of God are not allowed into heaven. Especially when some people that have never heard of God or Jesus are allowed into Heaven by God after being resurrected for a very short time and allowed to repent. It is not fair, and I believe that Dante realized that. He knew that he could make no reasonable justification for sending all pagans to hell, so he didn’t even try. He let the angel condescend Dante and make an excuse for not answering.
	Or the even scarier answer: The angel knew there was no reason for why no pagans were allowed into heaven. He knew that and didn’t want to tell Dante that millions of people were going to hell unfairly. God has to be worshipped, after all. Letting everyone know that he doesn’t care about mercy and justice is hardly a good way to get him to be worshipped.