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How Does Heller Use Allusions To Dante's Inferno

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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 …show more content…

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

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In Stanley J. Kozikowski article, “Damned in a Fair Life: Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’”, infers that The Swimmer is a “spiritual allegory in the fashion of Dante” (367). He also argues that Cheever’s story is autobiographical on Neddy’s part and “reveals itself as an uneasy pilgrimage to hell” (367). Kozikowski draws very specific sections and details of The Swimmer and presents the parallels in Inferno, such as: the attitudinal similarities between Neddy Merrill and Dante the pilgrim, the likeness Cheever’s multiple pools and their environments share with the different circles and rivers of Dante’s hell, and references some of The Swimmer’s speech and characters that uncannily reflect that of Inferno. Kozikowski takes The Swimmer bit by bit,

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The same way, disorder means damnation. In both of the masterpieces we find the same way in conceiving coordinates and juxtaposing politics and religion, empire and church. Analogous is the way to express certain forces of nature, intimate qualities of the spirit, sublimation or degeneration of senses through animals. Dante’s Comedy and the mosaic of Otranto teem with animals and monsters: dogs, wolves, dragons, lions, sphinxes, griffins, centaurs, etc. We find all of these representations in both of the works and with the same meaning, same analogies, and same functions.

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While Dante and Virgil travel along the swamp by Phlegyas, the Boatman of the Styx, Filippo Argenti, a wrathful, tries to block their pathway. Filippo Argenti was a Black Guelph nobleman, who severely disliked Dante. Some accounts tell a tale of the feud between them which started with Filippo slapping Dante in the face. Dante says to Filippo, “And [Dante] replied: ‘If I come, I do not remain. / But you, who are you, so fallen and foul? /

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Heavily critiqued but widely honored as one of today’s most captivating and literary intriguing books of the past century, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 presents a story displaying one of the more forgotten aspects of WWII which is base life. Catch-22 is a book set during World War II where an American B-52 bombardier named Yossarian communicates his experiences and life at a U.S. Air Force base on a small island named Pianosa located west of Italy. Catch 22 is renowned by many who have enjoyed the book’s realism and use of satire, but some people mainly teachers believe the book to be to mature for students of the high school age. In some cases the book has been outright banned such as the case in Strongsville, Ohio where the school district banned the book from school libraries due to the use of profanity and racial slurs repeated often throughout the

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