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Dante's Inferno
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During Reading
Reading Questions & Paired Texts
Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.
CANTOS 1-15
Reading Check
1. Where is Dante wandering at the beginning of the poem?
2. Whose shade greets Dante and promises to become his guide?
3. What is the name of the first souls Dante meets on the outskirts of Hell, who committed to neither good nor evil?
4. Who is the frightening creature who judges the souls who first arrive in Hell?
4. What is the City of Dis?
5. Which event on Earth caused an earthquake and landslide in Hell?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Dante try to climb the mountain? Why does he give up?
2. Why does Virgil say he cannot guide Dante past Purgatory?
3. According to Dante, what is the true nature of Fortune? How is this view of Fortune different from the view embraced by the avaricious and prodigal?
4. How does Farinata explain the ability of the dead to predict the future? Why are the dead unable to know what is happening in the present?
5. What are the three major divisions of Hell?
Paired Resources
- The Poetry Foundation provides this brief and readable biography of Dante Alighieri.
- This biography connects to the theme of Language.
- How did events from Dante’s life impact the writing of his Inferno?
- This collection of maps and charts of Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso includes annotated and interactive views of Sandro Botticelli’s famous Chart of Hell (ca. 1480-1495).
- These visuals connect to the themes of Sin and the Contrapasso and Divine Grace.
- What is the structure of Hell as depicted by Dante? What is the significance of this structure?
CANTOS 16-25
Reading Check
1. Which sin is punished in the region of Hell known as Malebolge (“Evil Pockets”)?
2. What is the term for the clergymen who sinned by exploiting their privileged religious status for money?
3. Who is the leader of the Malacoda, who allows Virgil and Dante to pass through the Evil Claws without being harmed?
4. Who was the Jewish High Priest who advised that Jesus be crucified?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Why does Dante warn the reader against telling truths that sound like lies?
2. Who is Nicholas and why is he in Hell?
3. Why does Virgil scold Dante when he weeps at the punishment of fortunetellers and diviners?
4. How do Dante and Virgil escape the treacherous demons who try to betray them?
CANTOS 26-34
Reading Check
1. What hero does Dante meet in Canto 26 who is burning with his fellow warrior, Diomedes?
2. Which sinners are punished in the final pocket of Malebolge?
3. What type of sinners are evenly spaced around the deepest circles of Hell?
4. What is the name for the region of Cocytus reserved for those who betrayed their family?
5. From whom does “Judecca” take its name?
Short Answer
Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.
1. Who is Mohammad and what is his punishment in Hell?
2. Why does Dante say his poetry is too limited to describe the deepest regions of Hell?
3. Why are the souls in Cocytus particularly reluctant to reveal their identity to Dante?
4. Who is Ugolino and why is he in Hell?
5. What does Satan look like? What is he doing when Dante and Virgil see him?
6. How do Dante and Virgil leave Hell?
Paired Resources
- Book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey contains the account of the hero Odysseus’s journey to the Underworld.
- This text connects to the theme of Sin and the Contrapasso.
- How is Dante’s depiction of Hell similar to Homer’s depiction of the Underworld? How is it different? Which aspects or characteristics of Homer’s Odysseus do you see in Dante’s Ulysses (note that “Ulysses” is the Roman name for Odysseus)?
- This article from the History Channel discusses the origins and history of the figure of the Devil, or Satan.
- This article connects to the themes of Sin and the Contrapasso and Divine Grace.
- How does Dante represent the Devil’s role in Hell? How does Dante’s Satan depart from other depictions of Satan you have encountered?
Recommended Next Reads
Aeneid by Virgil
- Virgil’s epic poem about the wanderings of the hero Aeneas was one of Dante’s main literary influences.
- A shared theme includes Language.
- Shared topics include epic poetry, fate, and the afterlife.
- Aeneid on SuperSummary
Paradise Lost by John Milton
- Milton’s epic poem about Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve is generally considered the greatest epic poem written in English.
- Shared themes include Sin and the Contrapasso, Language, and Divine Grace.
- Shared topics include Christianity, Hell, and Fate.
- Paradise Lost on SuperSummary
Reading Questions Answer Key
CANTOS 1-15
Reading Check
1. A “dark wood” (Canto 1, Lines 1-3)
2. Virgil (Canto 1)
3. The lukewarm (Canto 3)
4. Minos (Canto 5)
5. The capital of Hell (Canto 8)
6. The Crucifixion (Canto 12)
Short Answer
1. Dante begins climbing the mountain to try to escape the dark wood, but his way is blocked by three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a female wolf. The female wolf finally frightens him so much that he gives up trying to climb the mountain. (Canto 1)
2. Virgil can only guide Dante as far as Purgatory because he was never baptized, and so cannot enter Heaven. (Canto 1)
3. Dante explains that whereas the avaricious and prodigal love Fortune as a god, Fortune is an angelic power that is in charge of distributing goods according to a sense of balance. (Canto 7)
4. Farinata explains to Virgil that the souls in Hell can see the future, albeit dimly, while knowledge of the present is forbidden to them. (Canto 10)
5. As explained by Virgil, Hell is divided into three major regions: The deepest circles of Hell punish fraud, the circles above punish violence, while the higher circles punish incontinence. (Canto 11)
CANTOS 16-25
Reading Check
Short Answer
1. Addressing the reader of his poem, Dante warns that it is best not to tell truths that sound like lies because the teller will be blamed and condemned even if they are telling the truth. All the same, he cannot help but swear that his fantastic report of Hell is true. (Canto 16)
2. Nicholas is Pope Nicholas III, the latest pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Dante encounters him being punished with the simoniacs because he abused his position as the head of the Church. (Canto 19)
3. Virgil scolds Dante when he weeps at the punishment of fortunetellers and diviners (in the fifth bolgia of Malebolge) because Hell is not a place to have pity: The punishment of all the sinners in Hell is from God and therefore just and right. (Canto 20)
4. When their treacherous demon guides try to betray them, Virgil lifts Dante in his arms and leaps down the banks of one of the bolgias. Since demons are forbidden from leaving their own territory, they are unable to give chase. (Canto 23)
CANTOS 26-34
Reading Check
1. Ulysses (Canto 26)
2. Counterfeiters and falsifiers (Cantos 29-30)
3. The giants (Canto 31)
4. Caina (Canto 32)
5. Judas (Canto 34)
Short Answer
1. Mohammad was the prophet of Islam. In Hell, Dante shows him punished with the schismatics, whose bodies are mutilated and dismembered until they heal, at which point they are mutilated again. (Canto 28)
2. Dante laments that he does not have words ugly enough to do justice to the horrors of Cocytus, the deepest region of Hell. (Canto 32)
3. Though many of the souls in Hell long for fame in the world of the living, the souls punished in Cocytus want precisely the opposite, as they do not want it to be known that they have been sent to suffer in the deepest region of Hell. (Canto 32)
4. Count Ugolino was a Pisan who was the enemy of Count Ruggieri. When Count Ruggieri locked him up in a tower with his sons, Ugolino ate his sons to survive, a sin for which he is now punished in Hell. (Canto 33)
5. Satan is a giant frozen up to his chest in the ice; he has three faces (one red, one yellow, and one black). Dante and Virgil see him devouring the traitors Brutus, Cassius, and Judas in his three mouths. (Canto 34)
6. Dante and Virgil leave Hell by climbing down Satan’s side and then turning upside down: Having reached the center of the Earth, they reascend in the opposite direction toward the world above. (Canto 34)
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By Dante Alighieri
