The Divine Comedy 311and, more important, has abandoned the “tattered
man,” whom he should have helped.
Although other images reinforce the possibility
that Conklin is a Christ figure, with his movements
called “ritelike,” Crane undercuts this possibility by
declaring that “there was a resemblance in him to a
devotee of a mad religion, blood-sucking, muscle-
wrenching, bone-crushing.” Crane’s ironic stance
indicates that perhaps Henry and the other troops
have elevated this levelheaded but doomed young
soldier to the status of a deity, but that he, too, has
fallen in battle. Jim, the leader of his small group
from the beginning of the story, is after all only
mortal, his quiet authority stilled forever.
During the course of the book, Henry goes
from victory to defeat to victory again in his various
battles, and at the end he seems to have overcome
his fear of failure. He cannot, however, dispel the
nagging of his conscience over his abandonment
of the tattered soldier. Henry knows that he should
have stayed with the badly wounded man, who
would almost surely die without help. At that point,
however, Henry was too concerned with himself,
with the fear that he would reveal his cowardice to
the tattered man, so he had hurried away from him.
Henry now sees this abandonment as a “sin,” and
at the end of the last chapter, he is still trying to deal
with his action: “Yet gradually he mustered force to
put the sin at a distance.” The young recruit must
come to terms with a moral precept that his mother
had given him when he left for the war: to do what
is right. What is right for Henry is to treat others as
he would want to be treated, and he finally sees that
cowardice is not nearly as important as brotherly
love, an important component of most religions.
Joyce Smith
DANTE ALIGHIERI The Divine
Comedy (1308–1321)
The Divine Comedy is one of the best-known works
in all of literary history. Penned by Dante Alighieri
sometime between 1308 and his death in 1321,
it is an intricately detailed and beautifully crafted
14,000-line epic poem considered the masterpiece
of Italian literature. The poem is written in terza
rima, or three-line stanzas with a particular rhym-
ing pattern, and is divided into three books of 33
cantos each. Written in the first person, it tells of
Dante’s journey through the Christian afterlife: hell
in Inferno, purgatory in Purgatorio, and heaven in
Paradiso. The Divine Comedy is a complex allegory
about life, religion, and love—both the love of
a human woman and the love of God. The work is
filled with historical, biblical, and literary references,
and it is rife with symbolic language, leaving it open
to a wide variety of interpretations. The poem both
asks and answers questions about the justice of
God and the nature of man by making parallels
between the spiritual world and the natural world.
Not much is known about Dante’s background
and education, but one of the most important
events of his life is documented in his work La
Vita Nuova—his encounter with Beatrice Portinari.
Dante writes that he first saw her when she was
eight and he was nine, and then again when he was- She was deeply devoted to God, and her love of
religion is actually what influenced Dante to become
a Christian. Beatrice died suddenly at the young
age of 24, leaving Dante heartbroken. She would
become to him a mix of a human woman and a
perfect fantasy, idolized within the pages of history
forever through The Divine Comedy.
In 1302, Dante was exiled from Florence for
supporting an anti-papal regime. The Divine Comedy
is a result of his sorrow for losing the only woman he
cared about and for being forbidden to return to the
city he loved, and his anger with the politics of the
time. The poem, which has been translated numer-
ous times, is a classic tale of passion, sacrifice, reli-
gious devotion, and spiritual discovery. It has been
quoted and studied by students and scholars around
the globe, and it will certainly continue to be exam-
ined and appreciated in the years to come. After six
centuries, The Divine Comedy is still a brilliant work
that represents the core of every human experience:
the search for love and spiritual understanding.
Sara Tomedi
Justice in The Divine Comedy
When Dante had his first glimpse of Beatrice, she
was young and radiant. Kneeling in her garden,
luminescent with sunshine and the adoration of
prayer, she could easily have been mistaken for a