The Problem of Loneliness

The Problem of Loneliness

In theology class, loneliness was defined as the experience of being disconnected, unrelated, or cut off from the Other. The Other is something that fulfills a dimension of the human person, that pushes one to enter into relationships, be it with God or another human. In core humanities we examined St. Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, The Confessions of St. Augustine, and credited him with defining the concept. However, many other writers since Augustine’s time have also worked with this notion of loneliness. Dante while writing his famous cantos about the afterlife and, more recently, Sr. Helen Prejean in her novel Dead Man Walking both eloquently elaborated on the idea that it is necessary for humans to enter into relationships.

Humanity’s need for the Other becomes more and more apparent in Dante’s Inferno as Dante descends deeper into Hell. In the upper circles of Hell, Dante describes punishments that fit the various sins the sinners committed while they were alive. The sinners are punished with an overindulgence of their sin. For instance, the circle of the angry is filled with angry people who yell at each other for eternity just as the circle of the wrathful is filled with wrathful people who will, similarly, hit each other for eternity. While being placed in these circles is not desirable, it should be noted that the sinners do have contact with one another and, in a demented way, are happy because they are getting to do what they most wanted to do on Earth.

When Dante crosses the wall of Dis, he begins to describe more severe punishments; what was described in class as "Little Mermaid Hell" disappears. Pain is now inflicted from a source outside the sinners. Actual physical pain becomes an issue. For instance, one group of sinners is described as being torn limb from limb by devils and then thrown back into a river of boiling blood. At this point the reader should notice that the sinners are no longer able to interact with each other.

Dante illustrates this lack of contact even more clearly when he reaches the deepest regions of Hell. There, Dante describes how the sinners are kept completely isolated from one another in blocks of ice. Virgil, Dante’s guide, informs Dante that the worst sinners are punished in this fashion because their sins completely cut them off from the rest of humanity. And, just as in the rest of Dante’s Hell, these sinners are placed in Hell according to what their actions were on Earth.