“It is odd, but Hell can be a lonely place, even with so many people around. They all seem caught up in their own little worlds, running to and fro, wailing and tearing at their hair. You try to make conversation, but you can tell they are not listening.” [. . .] –Jack Handey, The New Yorker, October 30, 2006
Contributed by Darren Fishell (Bowdoin, ’09)
Gary Larson’s The Far Side: Hell and Back
Gary Larson’s iconic comic strip The Far Side, which ran from 1980 to 1994, frequently featured hell, devils, Satan, and various forms of infernal punishment, often in Dantean fashion. In one panel, Larson illustrates a projector slide reel of the recent vacation photos of a couple. Showing a picture of a grinning Satan with his arm around a sunglasses-and-beachwear-clad woman standing in front of a raging fire, the man narrates, “Oh! Now this is from last summer, when Helen and I went to hell and back.”
Contributed by Dennis Looney
The New Yorker: “Abandon All Hope” (1998)
Iced Earth, “Burnt Offerings” (1995)
“This is Iced Earth’s heaviest album, but it still retains powerful symphonic sounds and heart-twisting acoustic passages. It also has all sorts of song structures, time changes, and cool stuff packed everywhere. Iced Earth had some long songs on the previous albums, but on this one they show their ability to create a full-fledged epic. ‘Dante’s Inferno’ takes us through the Nine Planes of Hell for sixteen minutes, each plane something new and demonic. This album was written during angry times — and it shows.” —Iced Earth
Lyrics include: “Damned, the wrathful and the vain / Suffer the fifth plain / Cross the river Styx / Heed your crucifix / The muddied corpses cry / Howling to the sky / Reach the other side / Open wide the gate!”
Cited in Loudwire’s “11 Metal Songs Inspired by Dante’s Inferno” by Katie Irizarry (August 15, 2018).
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Inferno (1976)
“After being thrown out the window of his luxury apartment, science fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of hell. Feeling he’s landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante’s road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the Nine Layers of Hell led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures. As he struggles to escape, he’s taken through new, puzzling, and outlandish versions of sin–recast for the present day.” —Amazon