The title and subject of this paper might raise a few eyebrows. An Italian novel written 700 years ago, serving as both praise and critique for the Catholic religion, and a French memoir of the Holocaust from 1954 seem, at a glance, night and day. However, the literary structure of these two books creates interesting parallels between what it means to survive, to push through unspeakable horrors, and to convey those horrors to another. Both of these works use simple language (basic sentence structure for Night, and verse for Inferno), and yet the messages they convey are no less potent.

Night begins much similar to Inferno; Elie feels deeply connected to his religion and, like most adolescents, wishes to learn more about his purpose in regards to his religion. Inferno is much the same; Dante wishes to learn more of the world and what awaits him after death. This is where the first major parallel between the two works occurs; they each have their own guide. Elie’s is in the form of the beadle Moshe, who gives him advice: “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him...Man asks God questions and God replies. But we don’t understand his replies. We can’t understand them. Because they dwell in the depths of our souls and reside there until we die.” It is likewise for Inferno; the poet Virgil acts as Dante’s guide, saying, “Should you desire to ascend to these/you’ll find a soul more fit to lead than I/I’ll leave you in her care when we depart.” Both Moshe and Virgil do not claim to have all the answers, but they claim to know where to find them; Moshe encourages Elie to look deeper into himself not knowing the worst is yet to come, and Virgil urges Dante to find his own answers as he descends into the darkest parts of humanity. This particular comparison also provides one of the greatest contrasts between the two novels. Dante, throughout the narrative, never leaves Virgil’s side. Virgil explains everything Dante is seeing and helps him understand the horrors of hell. In the typical bildungsroman-style narrative, the protagonist will usually have an older figure in their life who acts as a semi-shield between them and true adulthood, who helps them come to terms with their own adolescence. However, Moshe disappears very quickly in the narrative, and Elie is forced to navigate his hell himself, even acting as guide for his father when he gets sick. Elie is deprived of the coming of age narrative, of the opportunity to grow up on his own terms, by the events of the story.

Judaism does not have a strict form of hell; their idea of hell is to live with the shame of your deeds until you are ready to repent, and then to move forward with your life. However, Christianity’s depiction of hell is extremely vivid and graphic, giving the exact details of your sentence the second you commit it, with no hope of true salvation other than the hope of maybe making it to purgatory. As Dante journeys deeper and deeper into hell, he sees increasingly terrifying sights; people being forced into inhumane circumstances to be punished for their perceived sins. I am sure it goes without saying that there are obvious parallels between this description of hell that correspond almost eerily well to Elie’s descriptions of the concentration camps he was forced into. He goes from his home to the ghetto to camp after camp, similar to the way that Dante goes from circle of hell to circle of hell. With context, this almost makes sense; the Nazis believed in the supremacy of the Christian faith over all, and tried to subtly indoctrinate Jews into their beliefs before sending them to their deaths. What better way to convert others against their will than to create for them the Christian hell- a punishment for their
sin of being a Jew? It is in this insidious way that the Nazis are similar to demons from the circles of hell- they force others to believe their word is God by making them suffer for their perceived slights, the worst type of conversion. “I suffer hell in my soul and in my flesh,” one of the concentration camp victims says after months under the Nazis. Hitler created a veritable hell on earth for the Jews, whereas the hell of Inferno is still trapped firmly in the pages.

Most believe Inferno to be in support of Catholicism, verifying the teachings of the Bible and adding to the original motifs of the church, giving people a renewed sense of faith. However, Inferno functions as so much more than just pro-church propaganda, because it gives the tormented souls of Hell a voice. The people who reside in the circles of hell are allowed to tell their stories without a middleman tampering with them (Virgil acts as narrator for the location but remains silent when the people are telling their tales). This creates sympathy for the damned; although you know they are imprisoned for their perceived slight, you can find compassion as they recount their stories of the deeds that led them to this point. The same is with Night; there are several background characters who Elie meets who share their stories with them, giving added context to the suffering they would have experienced. We hear the stories of the old man and the young boy who are both hung at the gallows for stealing bread and contemplating revolt, Juliek, the violinist who dies with his violin trampled at his side, Stein who lives only in the hope of seeing his wife and children again and then vanishes. All of these characters help build upon the horrors of the concentration camps, adding their unique flavor of misery. The damned having their chance to speak gives them agency over the narrative, and allows the reader to form their own attachment-or lack thereof- to the character.

In conclusion, Night and Inferno share extremely interesting comparisons and contrasts, with one being a coming-of-age within one’s faith and the other being the exact inversion. Elie
and Dante are both passive voices, merely trying to survive among the hells that they have been sentenced to in the hopes of one day being free. Dante’s journey ending with his faith deepened contrasts well with Elie, who ends the story with his faith destroyed. The reasoning is simple; Dante was a mere sightseer to hell, while Elie survived the worst of it. The lines “I did not die, nor did I stay alive. You will wonder what I became, deprived of both,” echo remarkably next to the final lines of Night, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me.” These narratives’ stories of venturing somewhere beyond humanity and returning barely intact resonate, even after so many years.