The images of suffering, flames, the smell of burning flesh, the shrieking of those who have fallen from grace are what come immediately to the western mind when the word ‘hell’ is articulated. Biblical imagery combined with a long tradition of literary imagination is responsible for the popular concept of hell as a torture chamber. For centuries man has sought out ways to cleanse his soul, to repent for his sins and possibly secure his passage into paradise, all evoked by the fear of eternal damnation and pain. However, there are instances of representation of hell outside the strict Christian context, in an attempt to see hell not in a metaphysical concept or as an actual place where the sinned souls end up, but as an earthly situation. Hell is here and now and according to Sartre ‘hell is other people’.
In this essay I examine a characteristic example from each one of these two different approaches towards the notion of hell.  Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy, is definitely the ideal text for this purpose due to its vivid and analytic descriptions, its biblical references and the great impact it had on later texts. On the other hand, Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit (Huis Clos) is representative of the new way of thinking about issues of religion and how it affects human life. As the primal existentialist, Sartre saw life as an endless realm of suffering and a complete void of nothingness. His pessimistic ideals of life echoed his beliefs on death, as death for him was a final nothingness. If death was a final nothingness, his view of hell was actually a statement on life.
Both writers were very influential for their time and their beliefs continue to inspire, to provoke and to invite new interpretations. The Inferno is doubtless the most famous and most frequently read part of The Divine Comedy (Bloom, 2000:6) while No Exit was the play that promoted the Sartre’s views expressed in Being and Nothingness, written a year earlier. Each text is definitely a product of its era, hence Inferno is a 14th century work and No Exit a World War II play, but what makes an author and his/her writings significant is their temporality; their power on the one hand to be in front of their time, introducing new ideas and concepts, and on the other hand their survival through time. Both texts have proved that they have these qualities; I find very interesting the fact that both texts use hell as a way of commenting not on death but on life. Dante saw The Divine Comedy as a new, apocalyptic Scripture, not replacing the two Testaments, but expanding them (Bloom, 2000: 5) Therefore, Inferno’s part is fundamental, since it reminds the readers not only of the inevitability of hell for the unrepentant sinners but also of the severity of punishment once there. Sartre on the other hand, relies not on gruesome descriptions of torture in his vision of hell but rather to a feeling of suffocation and despair, which for him exists not in afterlife but in life on earth. Both portraits of hell, although different, have a strong effect that does not fade easily from the reader’s mind.

HELL IN DANTE’S INFERNO
As Peter Hawkins notes in his essay ‘Dante and the Bible’ ‘underwriting the entire world in which Dante lived is a single book, the Bible’ (1993:120). Bible had an authority beyond any human text since it was believed to be the direct transfer of the word of God. Dante not only used most direct citations from the Bible than any other writer but he had so absorbed the text that it almost seemed to have become one with his writings. It is therefore natural that his representation of hell would be directly influenced from the biblical descriptions of it. However, the reader of the Divine Comedy apart from catching the resonances of the Scriptures will realise that these are there ‘less as a source of proof texts than as a divine ‘pretext’ for his own story’ (Hawkins, 2003:123).
Dante’s writings should be expounded in four terms; literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. Dante thought of his work as didactic and the meaning of it was not of one kind but rather polysemous.  The moving purpose of the poem is to remove those living in this life from their state of misery and lead them to the state of felicity. That is why, after the almost terrifying descriptions of hell, the hope returns with the sequence of the Purgatory and finally Paradise. But not all have the chance to enter the Purgatory and hope for their salvation and entrance to Paradise. Those appointed to Hell are hopeless. As Harold Bloom notes, in Hell everything is absolutely fixed; no change can come. Fulfilment has come, though it be damnation. (2000: 6-7) Hell for Dante is the place where there is no possibility of repentance. It is eternal, in the sense that is ever-enduring and without change. The sinners see the folly of what they did; actually, as Phillip H. Wickstead comments, Dante transforms his vision of hell ‘into a revelation of the nature of the evil choice itself and of the state of mind that it expresses’ (2000: 49) George Santayana when he comments on Paolo’s and Francesca’s punishment claims that Dante ‘needed no other furniture for hell than the literal ideals and fulfilments of our absolute passions’ (2000: 45) It is worth noticing the use of the word ‘furniture’ since in No Exit, Sartre actually decorates Hell with second empire style furniture.
In most cases the punishment of the sin takes the form of contrapasso, namely the just punishment of sin by a process either resembling or contrasting the sin itself.  Especially in the cases of the similar punishment of the sin in each circle of hell the level of violence is maximised. This can be seen for example in the Third Circle of hell, where the Gluttons are punished by being forced to live in filthiness and they are battered with rain and snow, guarded by Cerberus, a three-headed, dog-like beast.
Thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow/comedown in torrents through the murky air/ and the earth is stinking from this soaking rain. (Canto VI, 10-12)
His eyes are red, his beard is slobbered black/ his belly swollen, and he has claws for hands; /he rips the spirits, flays and mangles them.  (Canto VI, 16-18)
Violence is clearly seen in most circles of hell; even before entering the hell, the souls rejected by both hell and heaven because of their indecisiveness in life are tormented by flies and hornets. In the Second Circle the Lustful are whirled in a stormy and dark wind. The Wrathful, placed in the Fifth Circle, constantly tear and crush each other. The scenes of violence seem to reach a crescendo towards the end of hell, where the more serious sins are punished. From an intense war amongst the Hoarders & Wasters, to the Suicides who are encased in thorny trees, and the Grafters who are stuck in boiling pitch and are torn to pieces by demons. Scenes such as the following: this wasteland was a dry expanse of sand/ thick burning sand […] some souls were stretched out flat upon their backs/ others were crouching there all tightly hunched/ some wandered, never stopping, pound and round. (Canto XIV, 13-24). These scenes contribute to the complete meaning of the Inferno; the vivid graphic punishments of each circle point to the severity of the sins committed. Also, the continuous references to the wailing and fiendish noise of hell enforce the realistic imagery of this terrifying underworld. The reader has to participate with all his senses in order to truly comprehend the severity of hell. It is through the descriptive violent punishments that the reader is allowed to see the error in the ways of the hell-ridden sinners.
The dominant image after leaving hell and leading towards the Paradise realm is light since for Dante and generally for Christian theology God is associated with light; the pilgrim’s process was from darkness of hell to the heavenly light. This is an interesting contrast to Sartre’s use of light as element of hell in No Exit which I intend to comment on the next part of the essay. It is essential to note, however, that although Dante proceeds towards a happy ending in his poem by presenting Paradise as the final destination, he nevertheless appears strict to his belief that the unrepentant souls will suffer eternally to Hell, with no hope of redemption. This view, in a way, is close to Sartre since Sartre does not allow any hope to those condemned in hell but their main difference lies to the fact that Dante writes from a very theological perspective and is indeed concerned with afterlife whereas Sartre is primarily concerned with life and uses hell as a metaphor.

HELL IN SARTRE’S NO EXIT
Jean-Paul Sartre’s depiction of hell in the play No Exit reflects his belief on humanity and society.  When Garcin remarks that “Hell is other people” he is simply voicing Sartre’s own view on humanity and human relationships. Sartre believes that the fate of humankind is to torment and be tormented and hell is no different from reality. Sartre’s hell is merely a system of exploitation as Inez observes it, “an economy of manpower”. Hell is the same as society, where it exploits those who exist in it and fill their lives with suffering and meaninglessness. Sartre’s philosophies would dive into the dreadful, and his outlook on life would be cloudy and dark. To him life was hell. Hell was just an extension of the human condition; it embodied every aspect of reality and there is no need for supernatural demons or punishments. I’m not the torturer, madam (p.10).
As Marcel points out, the hell of No Exit is a very earthly hell. It is actually the third person in this trio who constitutes hell (2002: 73). Furthermore, Cooper talks about the process of objectification in Sartre’s work, namely the idea that human, from being the subjects, are turned into objects through the other’s look (1990: 180). No Exit’s hell is a single room, decorated in Second Empire style furnishings. The surroundings seem more comforting and even familiar than the traditional conception of hell, as opposed to Dante’s Inferno or the Bible. However, from an existentialist’s point of view, the setting in itself is rather hellish, because of its superficiality. Existentialists believe that human life is lived in suffering, sin, guilt and anxiety and for Sartre’s hell exists for him not in the supernatural world, but in reality. By examining closely what are the elements of hell in No Exit, we can also compare it to the Inferno.
a) The idea of eternity: there is no ending or hope for change in their situation just as Dante does not allow an escape from his hell.
b) The sense of futility: there is nothing to be done anymore. “Well? What’s going to happen?” “I don’t know. I’m waiting.” (p.10)
c) The bell/buzzer which does and doesn’t work: you can never be sure of the future.
d) No privacy: the characters will be forever together, sharing the same room that cannot abandon. “I’d rather be alone. I want to think things out, you know; to set my life in order, and one does that better by oneself” (p.9). This is not the case anymore.
e) Always light: Actually the characters will come to miss darkness. A very different representation of hell, all lighted up, contrasted to the dark imagery of the Inferno.
In No Exit scenes of violence hardly exist and are not as descriptive as in the Inferno yet there is a constant sense of disgust, pity, and suffocation in the reader. The first pages set the tone of hopelessness; from beginning to end, Sartre plays with the readers’ expectations, the readers familiar with the images of the Inferno that have been familiarised with demons, flames and tortures. But here hell is a hotel room. It is for us to think that hell can actually be anyplace in the world because it is a state of mind. The scenes of violence refer to the characters’ past sins, Estelle’s hands painted with the murder of her own baby and both Garcin and Inez being indirectly responsible for the death of those close to them. Estelle, Garcin and Inez all exist with no real purpose and therefore are damned to suffer not only in their life, but in their afterlife.
In order to be rejected from heaven and sent to hell, one must sin. Common in all religions, sin exists almost as a written law. For Christians it exists in the Ten Commandments and the seven deadly sins, which we saw being punished in Inferno. Sartre, however, does not address what prerequisites his hell contains. According to Fowlie, the drawing-room scene in hell, where there is no executioner because each character tortures the other two, has the eeriness of a Gothic tale, the frustration of sexuality, the pedagogy of existentialist morality. All three characters are inevitably going to torture each other: “When I say I’m cruel, I mean I can’t get on without making people suffer. Like a live coal. A live coal in others’ hearts. When I’m alone I flicker out.” (p.26) “No, I couldn’t leave you here, gloating over my defeat, with all those thoughts about me running in your head” (p.42).
The least guilty of the three seems to be Garcin, and he suffers the most under the relentless intellectualizing and even philosophizing of Inez. Garcin complains of dying too early and therefore he did not have the chance to make his deeds: I died too soon. I wasn’t allowed time to- to do y deeds. (p.44) Inez’s answer “One always dies too soon- or too late. And yet, one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are- your life and nothing else.” (p.45) is a Sartre’s expression of life and responsibility. The line that ends the play, delivered from Garcin, ‘well, well, let’s get on with it…’ (p.47) as well as the one in the very beginning: “Well? What’s going to happen?” “I don’t know. I’m waiting.” (p.10) was to be echoed ten years later in the concluding line of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.

CONCLUSION
When Dante was composing The Divine Comedy Christianity was the dominant element in society, in people’s life and therefore in every aspect of culture. Although Dante was mistrustful towards the high clergy, as the encounter of Dante the Pilgrim with Pope Anastasius’ tomb reveals, this did not affect his faith in Bible and in the Holy Scriptures. As I have mentioned in the introduction, Dante aspired to write a prophetical poem, complementary to the Scriptures; therefore his description of hell is similar to the Bible’s but as the majority of the critics argue, Dante’s writing is more vivid, more passionate and more detailed. Dante felt the need to warn his readers that the sinners who would not repent belonged to Hell, an eternal, horrifying Hell that would provide equal punishment for their sins. Dante strongly believes that people are responsible for their course in afterlife, since it is our acts in life what determines our place in death. It is a just system of punishment versus reward. If someone is a sinner in life, he will be punished in Hell, without hope of escaping. The virtuous, on the other hand, will be rewarded with the eternal light of God in Paradise.
The eternal light in Sartre does not belong to God or to heaven. It is a light in a room that never turns off. Hell is not what people have learned to imagine. ‘’so this is hell. I’d never believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the ‘burning marl’. Old wives’ tales. There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is –other people’ (p.47) Garcin words are Sartre final statement about hell. Sartre, as a proper existentialist, believed that people do not need a God. People can create their hell by themselves. Sartre share with Dante the idea of human responsibility of their actions but do not see any divine punishment or reward. For Sartre hell is mainly a state of mind and therefore it does not a concrete place to exist, as Dante believed. The main point to which their opinios coincide is the fact that both believe that those condemned (either by God or by themselves) to hell have nothing to expect, their state will be eternal, without hope of change.