The Divine Comedy/YMMV


 * Ass Pull: At one point, Dante uses a cord around his waist to lower himself and Virgil into a section of Hell. Scholarly opinion is still divided as to whether this cord was actually an Ass Pull or was a result of Dante wearing a Franciscan habit.
 * Evil Is Cool: Guess what part of the trilogy is overwhelmingly the best-known?
 * First Installment Wins: As noted above, there is much more awareness of Inferno than Purgatorio or Paradiso.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: The punishment of corrupt politicians -- being trapped in boiling pitch -- is especially ironic considering the politics behind oil today.
 * Intended Audience Reaction: Beatrice is used by This Wiki as the example of a "good" Mary Sue to show that Tropes Are Not Bad. Dante is similarly a "good" Marty Stu.
 * Dante isn't a Marty Stu, he's got loads of character faults: he's cowardly, petty, violent at times and he submits himself to the penances for Pride, Lust, and Wrath in Purgatory. Beatrice's faultlessness can possibly be explained by the fact that Dante was madly in love with her when he wrote the poem.
 * He is also a Marty Stu in the sense that he lavishes a huge amount of praise on his own writing skills. In Canto IV of Inferno, Dante and Virgil meet up with the ghosts of Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan. All five of these great poets from history -- the 4 they meet, and Virgil -- then accept Dante as a sixth member of their exalted group, as if to say he was their equal.
 * While there's no doubt that Dante was being a bit egotistical keep in mind that he is still studied centuries later and his work receives numerous allusions in modern fiction. He seems to be pretty on the level with them in terms of how much he influenced society.
 * Memetic Mutation: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
 * Moment of Awesome: The episode of Ulysses' last journey (Hell, 26th canto) is usually regarded as an epic one and one of the best-remembered moments of the whole poem (Men are not thou to live as brutes... etc).
 * Nightmare Fuel: There's probably at least one Infernal punishment that will tap into a person's primal fears, even if they're not guilty of the associated sin; if they are, maybe it'll Scare'Em Straight.
 * If you're just passing through, there's the wood of suicides, where you have to walk through a forest where the trees bleed from every snapped twig and torn leaf. Through the bleeding holes in their wooden flesh, they wail in pain or ask why you're hurting them. And then one of the local denizens comes crashing through, leaving a trail of blood and agony in its wake...
 * Ugolino.
 * There are two possible meanings to what Ugolino says: Yes, he did OR No, he didn't. The line is fairly ambiguous.
 * Would he really be in Hell if he didn't do it?
 * Painful Rhyme: Since terza rima is much harder to pull off in English than in Italian, some translations fall into this.
 * Tear Jerker: Ugolino's backstory and tragic death.
 * Unfortunate Implications:
 * In Canto IV of Paradisio, Dante asks Beatrice why the nuns who have been raped (in both the old school meaning as well as [very likely] the contemporary meaning) are placed in the sphere furthest from God's love, to which Beatrice replies that people are complicit in the violence acted upon them.
 * The part of Inferno where Dante meets a certain religious figure suffering in the Eighth Layer for being a "schismatic" is omitted from modern adaptations and analysis, for obvious reasons.
 * While Dante does feel sorry for what happened to his mentor, homosexuality is still considered in this work an act of treason against God. To put this in perspective, those who have committed bestiality are on the same layer, and the layer itself is lower than the ones for murderers. And not to beat a dead horse, it still must be said, this is Dante's opinion, not that of the modern church (or even the church at the time, actually, although they did frown upon it) as a whole.
 * Values Dissonance: A'plenty. Remember, this is medieval Christianity.
 * Heresy.
 * Sodomites are on a burning plain. Nuff said.
 * Dante's homosexual mentor, found on the same plain, is treated sympathetically, however.
 * That may be Values Resonance, as his teacher was assumed to be a pedophile. It should also be noted, quite a few homosexuals end up in Purgatory/Heaven, for various reasons.
 * Similarly, suicides are turned into trees. We tend to think of suicides as Too Good for This Sinful Earth, Thanatos Gambit, and related tropes, but they're all sinners here.
 * The most logical view of this is that 1) No life is man's to take, not even his/her own, and 2) suicide is basically murder for which you cannot absolve yourself since you're, you know... dead.
 * Usury —- lending money and charging interest for it -— will get you into the worst section of the Seventh Circle.
 * Considering that usury is one of the most despicable ways to exploit people in need, there's not much dissonance about it.
 * Actually, in medieval times, any interest, not just exploitative interest, was considered a sin. Europe did not start to advance until people ignored this.
 * Consulting fortune tellers. While it's generally agreed that you shouldn't, most people think of it as a harmless game.
 * No doubt followers of the Prosperity doctrine would view simony as a virtue rather than a sin.
 * The example of sowers of discord? Muhammad.
 * In Dante's Hell, thieves and counterfeiters are regarded as worse sinners than murderers. The First Circle (Limbo) consists of "virtuous pagans" and the unbaptised, whose only real crime is not being Christian. Nowadays, condemning someone to hell for such a fact is generally considered a wee bit harsh.
 * However, and perhaps ironically, quite a few "virtuous pagans" end up in Purgatory. Some translators noted that this was usually due to some Heroic Sacrifice and general messianic ideals.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The final cantos of Purgatorio describe creatures that wouldn't be out of place in the biblical Book of Daniel or Revelation to John. These included 6-winged angels with eyes covering their wings, a gryphon, an analogue for the Whore of Babylon, and a giant who abused said Whore of Babylon.