Either the presence of a negative stimulus or the absence of a positive stimulus causes pain. For example, fire physically burns skin because of the great heat that it carries. At the same time, icy water shocks the human body because it lacks heat. The Bible portrays Hell as the perfect embodiment of pain: the concentrated target of God’s hot, consuming anger and His cold, empty absence. However, humanity often over-focuses on God’s anger towards Hell’s occupants. It mistakenly neglects to consider the terrible reality of His separation from Hell. People who fail to comprehend both aspects of Hell possess an incomplete motivation to obey God and thus escape it. Dante illustrates the social, emotional, and physical horrors of a cold hell in his Inferno to encourage his readers to escape Hell by obeying God.
Dante first describes the mental horrors of a cold hell. On his journey across Cocytus, Dante spots two men frozen together in a hole, with one man gnawing on the other’s head “as a hunk of bread is chewed in hunger” (32.127). Upon being questioned, the spirits reveal themselves as Count Uglino and Archbishop Ruggieri (33.13-14). On earth, Archbishop Ruggieri shut Count Uglino and Count Uglino’s sons up in a tower where they starved to death one by one. In Hell, Count Uglino is constantly reminded of the “despair and pain” of his life by his killer’s proximity (33.15). Archbishop Ruggieri’s proximity to Count Uglino is a mental prison because it prevents Uglino from forgetting the pain of his physical life. The presence of Dis, or Satan, also functions as a mental prison. Upon arriving at Judecca, the home of infamous traitors like Judas Iscariot and Brutus, Dante sees Satan for the first time (34.62-67). Dante says, “How faint I then became, how turned to ice… I did not die, did not remain alive… deprived of life and death” (34.22-27). He describes Satan as a terrifying, gigantic, ugly creature with three faces; enormous, scaly, black wings; claws; and teeth large enough to crush a human (34.37-57). His brief encounter with Satan petrifies Dante, but Satan will terrorize Judecca’s other residents for eternity.
Dante also emphasizes the emotional horrors of a cold hell. While journeying across Antenora, he notices that several souls cannot weep because their tears have frozen solid in their eye sockets (33.97). These tortured souls, who could in the past relieve their grief by crying, can weep no longer. As Dante says, their “weeping itself forbids the souls to weep, and pain which finds a barrier in their eyes turns back within to make the agony grow” (33.94-96). Suppressing sadness over time leads to a substantial increase in mental and emotional pressure. The souls cannot relieve their sadness without the ability to cry, and their grief will continue growing for eternity. Brother Albergio also reveals that some traitorous souls are taken to Hell before death (33.129-135). These souls, robbed of the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones, must cope with the horrible prospect of being eternally separated from their families.
Dante finally details the physical terrors of his cold Hell. Early in his journey through Cocytus, he notices a man whose ears have been painfully frostbitten off (32.51). He also describes Count Uglino’s revenge on Archbishop Ruggieri for murdering the count and his sons. Dante says that Uglino tears his teeth into Ruggieri’s neck and gnaws at his brains, flesh, and skull. Until Uglino’s anger subsides, he will likely continue to feed on Ruggieri’s brain. Dante then details the terrible torture of Judas Iscariot and Brutus in Judecca, the lowest and coldest region of Hell. He first describes the torture of Judas Iscariot, saying that Satan’s claws “peeled away his [Judas’s] back and often left it nude of any skin.” At the same time, Satan chews Judas “headfirst” (34.62-65). These traitorous men will likely continue to suffer excruciating tortures at Satan’s hand for eternity.
Dante weaves many illustrations of the torture of Hell’s occupants throughout his Inferno. The fear of pain, experienced by oneself or others, is one of humanity’s strongest motivators. People frequently choose to die rather than face pain. Fearing for his readers’ souls, Dante writes his famous Inferno to encourage them to escape Hell. People who comprehend the horror of God’s fury towards hell occupants but do not understand the implications of his cold absence from Hell lack a complete motivation to escape it. Knowing this, Dante intentionally encourages his readers to avoid Hell by describing it as a horrible, painful, cold place devoid of God’s presence.
