Perceptions of Hell in Literature

Jean Paul Sartre, a twentieth-century French philosopher, believed that humanity causes its own suffering. His famous quote “Hell is other people,” comes from the 1947 play, No Exit. The drama demonstrates this concept through the interactions among three of the eternally damned. By the end of the play, Sartre proves that people actually constitute one another’s pain. Every day, men and women sicken themselves with worry about how others perceive them. They desire what others have. They want to return anguish to those who gave it to them. As human beings, we create our own anger, jealousy, and shame from our reactions to other people.

From a Judeo-Christian perspective, the book of Genesis cements this philosophy at the beginning of time with the story of Adam and Eve. After all, about as soon as two people existed in Eden, sin and suffering automatically resulted. As time progressed, to “love thy neighbor” became a necessary virtue, not only for a more peaceful life, but also for survival.

In 1321, when strict religious codes still dominated most of Europe, a Florentine poet named Dante Alighieri wrote an epic poem on what he perceived to be true redemption and true damnation. Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy trilogy, portrays his imagined travels and discoveries through the moral underworld. In hell, the sinners endure the torture of their own sins. Like Sartre, Dante believed that the greatest pain of all draws from that which people create for each other. Therefore, he uses powerful imagery and poetic language to match fate with cause. For example, murderers and assassins meet their fate by forever drowning in a river filled with the blood of their victims. “So we moved beside our guide/along the bank of the scalding purple river/in which the shrieking wraiths were boiled and dyed.” The victims return their anguish to those who brought it upon them.

Written almost seven centuries after Inferno, Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel Fight Club involves the torture not of a multitude of sinners, but one. The narrator stays unnamed, yet the story is revealed through the dialogues he has with himself. He sees God as most Christians do—as a father figure. Unfortunately, his biological father left him as a child. His vision of an omnipresent, loving God consequently becomes distorted. Frustrated, the narrator begins to hold the same view of the Heavenly Father that he has for his own estranged father. He reasons that the more he were to infuriate God, the more He would have to strive to save him. Without God’s attention, one would have no hope of either redemption or damnation. “Which is better, hell or nothing?” These are his reasons for why he sets out to destroy the world.

However, it does not seem that what the narrator really wants the recognition of God alone, but rather that of His people. Before committing his anarchic crimes, this man lives as a paean of society. He works a dead-end job for an insurance company. He has no friends or family who would possibly care about him. The narrator’s lack of even a name symbolizes his anonymity. Palahniuk applies Sartre’s concept here through the main character’s dependence on acknowledgment. With other people constantly present but never really interested in him, they indirectly drive the narrator to insanity, much like what his own father did to him as a child. Once he realizes that he already lives in hell, he decides to create hell for everyone else.

The search cumulates as the casualty of madness finally finds his God, who asks him why he caused so much pain toward humanity. The narrator, though, does not answer His questions from a faithful perspective. His opinions of other human beings present a paradox: nothing makes them particularly special, but nothing makes them worthless either. The young man tells the Supreme Being that “we just are, and what happens just happens.”

Jean Paul Sartre explained his own philosophy simply by saying, “What happens to me happens through me, and I can neither affect myself with it nor revolt against it nor resign myself to it.” This gives each member of the human race a certain responsibility for the general happiness of all people. We cannot stop ourselves from affecting the lives of those around us. That's apparent  as soon as two people are put together in a garden.