Phillip Pullman's Amber Spyglass and Dante's Commedia

Title: Boats and Rivers

Link: The book is in the Level B Stacks of Rush Rhee

Although The Amber Spyglass is explicitly anti-religion, Phillip Pullman draws a lot of material from the Commedia in his chapters of the underworld.  According to the acknowledgements, Pullman drew heavily from Paradise Lost, and Milton drew heavily on the Commedia.

The world of the dead has an area where people must wait until they are ready to cross the river.  This area resembles the shores of ante-Purgatory since these people cannot return to the living, nor can they advance to the dead in the same way that the souls on ante-Purgatory cannot advance to Heaven, nor can they return to life and correct their mistakes.  However, these people are living who stumbled in from life (it's not clearly explained how that happens).   

Like Charon, the boatman is impossibly ancient with an oar and refuses to ferry the living unless they leave behind their animal representations of life.  Here, Dante and Pullman separate because the protagonists temporarily lose their representations of life whereas Dante presumably conquers his cowardice before crossing Acheron.  As the boatman ferries across the river, he refers to popes and kings who refused to believe that they died.  This is a bit similar to the soul in Canto 27 who believed he would go to Heaven only to have a demon thwart his salvation.

Unlike the Inferno, Pullman’s underworld is a bleak wasteland.  The harpies in The Amber Spyglass parallel the Furies at the Tower of Dis and the harpies in the wood of suicides in that the antagonists harass the protagonists in both stories.  The antagonists in both stories fail to cow the protagonists, but they subdue other souls, much like how the poets resist until the Angel arrives, but the harpies shred Iacopo in the wood of suicides.  In both stories, the harpies and Furies block the entrance to the underworld proper, but the protagonists force their way into the underworld. 

The souls in Pullman’s story resemble the souls of Purgatory in that both marvel at life such as Dante’s shadow or the protagonists’ warm bodies in a cold world.  The stories the protagonists share with the dead are like the conversations Dante has with the souls in the afterlife.  The conversations tend to focus on what was important to the dead when they were alive, such as nature or fame.  

The harpies guide the living protagonists through the underworld to a place where the underworld meets the surface.  Pullman adapts Virgil to the harpies, giving the harpies the ability to see through deception and guide the protagonists through the underworld.  The last word of the underworld arc ends with stars, just like how each canticle ends with stars, suggesting a new hope or future for the protagonists and Dante.

This is one of my favorite books, and connecting what I read years ago with other literature makes me want to reread other books.  Although fewer people read Purgatorio and Paradiso of the Commedia, their influences still tug on generations of authors. Contrary to what naysayers of humanities insist, the Commedia’s enduring power shows that it is alive and relevant.