In the first part of the Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno, the poet Dante Alighieri plays the role of a man taking a spiritual journey through the circles of Hell searching for wisdom, enlightenment, and ultimately, reaching paradise. Many works of literature have been influenced by Dante’s journey and therefor, have included allusions to Dante’s novel. In the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, he tells a story during World War Two, in which the main character Yossarian goes on a similar journey to Dante, which could be described as “hell on earth”. Heller uses a similar structure in the novel to that of Dante’s inferno. Heller includes specific examples in ch.39, “ The Eternal City” and integrates several allusions to Dante’s inferno to compare the journey of both Yossarian and Dante. In doing this, he portrays a deeper meaning to Yossarians journey while he travels through Rome experiencing many sins and atrocities around him.
Heller continually alludes to Dante’s inferno in Catch-22, which creates emphasis around Yossarians journey through
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At one point on his journey through Rome, Yossarian finds himself “pelted by a frigid rain”(Doscow 31), exposed and vulnerable, as he was exiled from shelter and forced to find warmth and protection. However, this particular rain does not cleanse what it touches, but only dirties and destroys it. The rain intensifies the distortion of the visible world surrounding him. This alludes to Dante’s interaction with the gluttonous in the third circle of hell. It always rains in the third circle, where the Gluttonous suffer. Not pure water, but filthy polluted stinky rain and hailstones. They are forced to soak in the garbage filled, cold world around them. As Yossarian and Dante experience this point in their journey, they both feel more and more a part of their hell they are trying to