David Champagne

Professor Paffenroth

Core Humanities Seminar 1000

24 November 1997

Loneliness: Hell on Earth

In theology class, loneliness was defined as the experience of being disconnected, unrelated, or cut off from the Other. The Other is something that fulfills a dimension of the human person, that pushes one to enter into relationships, be it with God or another human. In core humanities we examined St. Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, The Confessions of St. Augustine, and credited him with defining the concept. However, many other writers since Augustine’s time have also worked with this notion of loneliness. Dante while writing his famous cantos about the afterlife and, more recently, Sr. Helen Prejean in her novel Dead Man Walking both eloquently elaborated on the idea that it is necessary for humans to enter into relationships.

Humanity’s need for the Other becomes more and more apparent in Dante’s Inferno as Dante descends deeper into Hell. In the upper circles of Hell, Dante describes punishments that fit the various sins the sinners committed while they were alive. The sinners are punished with an overindulgence of their sin. For instance, the circle of the angry is filled with angry people who yell at each other for eternity just as the circle of the wrathful is filled with wrathful people who will, similarly, hit each other for eternity. While being placed in these circles is not desirable, it should be noted that the sinners do have contact with one another and, in a demented way, are happy because they are getting to do what they most wanted to do on Earth.

When Dante crosses the wall of Dis, he begins to describe more severe punishments; what was described in class as "Little Mermaid Hell" disappears. Pain is now inflicted from a source outside the sinners. Actual physical pain becomes an issue. For instance, one group of sinners is described as being torn limb from limb by devils and then thrown back into a river of boiling blood. At this point the reader should notice that the sinners are no longer able to interact with each other.

Dante illustrates this lack of contact even more clearly when he reaches the deepest regions of Hell. There, Dante describes how the sinners are kept completely isolated from one another in blocks of ice. Virgil, Dante’s guide, informs Dante that the worst sinners are punished in this fashion because their sins completely cut them off from the rest of humanity. And, just as in the rest of Dante’s Hell, these sinners are placed in Hell according to what their actions were on Earth.

Dante also incorporates his concept of humanity’s need for a web of connections into his description of Purgatory. He states that the repentant can shorten their time in Purgatory by having the people on Earth pray for them. Dante then gives the impression that this will somehow help to reestablish the sinners’ broken connections to the rest of humanity.

Finally, in Dante’s Paradise the reader is also confronted with Dante’s concept of humanity’s neediness. Dante explains that in Heaven God’s love is equal, "Throughout Heaven God’s light shines equally." Beatrice, Dante’s guide, however, explains that some of the inhabitants of Heaven reflect God's "light" better than others. Beatrice uses this reasoning to justify Heaven’s partitioning into circles with an ever-increasing distance from God. As in the first two volumes, Dante’s concept of human neediness is evident once again. Those who realize they need God, and thus love him, are those who reflect God’s light best and, therefor, are closest to God.

In all three cantos, Dante makes it painfully clear to his readers just how important relationships are to humanity. He describes Hell as basically a place for those who have irrevocably isolated themselves from the Other and Purgatory as a place for those who wish to restore their relationship with Other. For Dante one human alone was nothing.

The ideas St. Augustine established and on which Dante elaborated are by no means irrelevant in today’s society. Sr. Helen Prejean also emphasizes in her writing how important relationships are for humans. In fact, she used this as her major argument against the death penalty when she spoke at Villanova. She stated that because prisoners on death row are dehumanized by a process of infrequent visits and being ostracized from the rest of the prison community, their incarceration amounted to torture. She stated that even death row inmates could not survive on food and shelter alone. Her point was that all people need something other than themselves in their lives and that not allowing a person to interact in any way is the cruelest punishment possible, something no human has the right to inflict on another. I believe she could find many similarities between her experiences with death row inmates and the souls trapped in Dante’s Inferno.

The fact that ancient and modern day great minds from very different backgrounds have come to the same conclusion about humans needing something other than themselves to survive is notable. Perhaps, if more people would try to understand how important everyone is to everyone else, the world would be a different place.