Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.note
Inferno is one of the most detailed accounts of what Hell might feel like. The end results aren't pretty.
- The ones who really have it bad are the ones trapped in Hell's Vestibule — The Opportunists. As they never took sides between good and evil in life, so is their fate in death. They're not actually a part of Hell, and they have no chance at redemption. They just have one small place to be tormented for eternity alone by themselves, all while they chase a giant blank banner. Said torment often involves being relentlessly attacked by biting and stinging insects along the way.
- Limbo, First Circle of Hell, is rather benign compared to the others, as it's home to those pagans who weren't quite bad enough to get into Hell Proper, but it is still Hell. And children who weren't baptized end up here.
- The Second Circle, meant for people overcome with lust, dooms its inhabitants to be buffeted about by the terrible winds of a violent storm, never knowing rest. While this isn't a particularly harsh punishment by the poem's standards, the idea of being eternally blown around by such powerful winds is still a pretty terrifying thought. Especially when you take into consideration that extreme wind speeds are known to cause severe frostbite.
- The Third Circle, reserved for those who over-indulged in food, drink, and addictions in the world above, placing such things above all things, including their fellow man, forced to slosh around forever in the vile muck that made up most of the circle.
- The Fourth Circle, where the hoarders and wasters joust back and forth constantly with huge bags of money, wailing and gnashing their teeth.
- Somewhere among the fourth circle resides Plutus, who greets the travelers with "Papè Satân, papè Satân aleppe!". To this date people are still unsure on just what this is supposed to mean.
- The Fifth Circle, meant for people who succumbed to anger and sullenness, is filled with inhabitants so controlled by their emotions that the former are mindlessly attacking every person around them and the latter are hopelessly sunken at the bottom of the Circle's filthy waters. This see-saw of destruction and despair continues for eternity.
- The Sixth Circle of Hell, which contains the City of Dis, is a massive fortress made of stone coffins where heretical souls are on fire. Because of their heresy, they're trapped in burning tombs. As part of their punishment, sinners "remember" the future but not the past (except for their own sins). These coffins are open until the end of time, then they will be closed and the heretics will remember nothing at all.
- On the path between the Sixth and Seventh Circles, Dante and Virgil come across a large vault with an inscription that reads "I hold Pope Anastasius, enticed to leave the true path by Photinus." We never learn what's happening to him in there.
- The Seventh Circle, appropriate for punishing the violent, has some very brutal punishments.
- The first ring is meant for people violent against their proverbial neighbors. It contains the Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood filled with murderers, warmongers, plunderers, and tyrants. It gets worse: if somebody rises too high from the river, they get shot by the centaurs patrolling the banks.
- The second ring is for people who were violent against themselves. It contains the Wood of the Suicides, a dark, scary forest full of gnarled trees and dangerous thorns. Where are the people? Well, they are the twisted, broken trees. Oh, and they still bleed and feel pain, which is a problem since the trees are constantly being attacked by harpies. It's also made clear that, when the Last Judgment comes and the damned are given back their bodies (to amplify their suffering for the rest of time), those in the Wood of the Suicides don't get their bodies back. Instead, their bodies will be hanging from one of their branches.
- Speaking of the second ring, it also contains the violently profligate. They get eternally chased through the Wood of the Suicides by ferocious hounds, who savagely maul them when they catch them.
- The third ring is meant to punish those violent against God, nature, and art. It's a huge, sandy desert where fire constantly rains down from the sky. Eternally wandering across the burning sand is bad enough, but if you ever stop to rest on the sand, you'll be stuck in that position for a hundred years.
- The Eighth Circle of Hell, Malebolge, which punishes the fraudulent and malicious. It's probably the closest the poem gets to depicting Fire and Brimstone Hell, and it puts many other similar portrayals to shame.
- In the first ditch, the panderers (pimps) and seducers are forced to march in single file around the circumference of their circle, constantly lashed by horned demons.
- In the second ditch, flatterers are forced to wade forever in human waste, representing the excrement they spewed in life.
- In the third ditch, simoniacs (those who bought or sold Church positions) are punished by being half buried with their legs sticking up in the air and their feet burned. No new holes are created, so whenever a new sinner enters, the sinner below is pushed deeper into the hole.
- In the fourth ditch, astrologers, sorcerers, and seers have their heads twisted backwards, forcing them to walk in reverse. The pain causes them to cry until they are blind.
- In the fifth ditch, corrupt politicians are boiled in a huge lake of tar. If they dare break the surface to get some relief from the heat, the Malebranche devils stab them with pitchforks until they go back under. If they're really unlucky, the Malebranche devils will "fish" them out of the tar and mutilate them personally, as Dante sees happen to one unfortunate soul.
- In the sixth ditch, hypocrites are forced to walk around while wearing heavy robes made of lead, but colored like gold.
- The exceptions are Caiaphas, Annas, and the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders who insisted on having Jesus Christ crucified. They are crucified on the ground while all of the other hypocrites trample them.
- In the seventh ditch, thieves are punished by having snakes forever bite them. Those who get bitten explode, but they always regenerate.
- In the eighth ditch, deceivers who gave false advice or encouraged others to engage in fraud are punished by being burned in individual tongues of flame.
- In the ninth ditch, those who perform schism are forced to bear horrible, disfiguring wounds inflicted on them by a great demon with a sword.
- In the tenth ditch, the falsifiers are forced to endure horrible diseases.
- The entrance to the Ninth Circle is guarded by 30-to-35-foot-tall giants, mostly from Greek Mythology. Even after all he's seen in Hell, Dante is rather freaked out by this, and he even says that he's glad giants don't exist on Earth anymore and that the only big creatures that still exist are relatively harmless ones like whales and elephants.
- The Ninth Circle of Hell, meant to punish traitors, is a huge frozen lake called Cocytus. The inmates here are trapped in the lake's ice.
- Some people aren't just trapped in the lake but frozen together. Dante and Virgil come across a count who was condemned to a dungeon by an archbishop for betraying Pisa. While that was an act of betrayal, the archbishop also betrayed him by throwing his sons in too, who it's implied the count ate to survive. Their punishment is to be frozen together with the count eating the archbishop's head forever.
- Also, the narration's reaction: as the Pisans allowed it to happen, the narration wishes for islands to move and obstruct the mouth of the Arno river and flood Pisa, making it uninhabitable forever.
- The most disturbing part about the Ninth Circle? You can come here before you die. Some traitors have committed acts so vile that their souls are immediately dragged out of their bodies and down into the ice while the vacant shells they leave behind are occupied by demons. Dante learns this when he meets Friar Alberigo, a man he knows back on Earth who's still alive yet is already half-frozen.
- Some people aren't just trapped in the lake but frozen together. Dante and Virgil come across a count who was condemned to a dungeon by an archbishop for betraying Pisa. While that was an act of betrayal, the archbishop also betrayed him by throwing his sons in too, who it's implied the count ate to survive. Their punishment is to be frozen together with the count eating the archbishop's head forever.
- The final part of the Inferno, where the three worst traitors, Judas, Brutus, and Cassius, are being eternally chewed in Satan's three mouths in the very center of Hell.
- Satan himself is pretty terrifying. While he's nearly mindless and doesn't even notice Dante and Virgil, he's still Kaiju size (Dante states that the giants they met before would only be about as big as his arm) and has three faces.
- The nightmare fuel doesn't stop when Dante and Virgil leave Hell. When visiting the second terrace of Purgatory, meant for the envious, they see that the souls in it have their eyes sewn shut.
