Inferno

Born circa 1265 and dying in 1321, the horrors of the Black Death in Europe were central to Dante’s life and his writings, with Dante’s death coming just as the plague was subsiding and the Italian Renaissance—which he greatly influenced—was beginning.

This progression from untold horror and mass death to unprecedented prosperity preoccupies the mind of Bertrand Zobrist, who views the present world as parallel to Europe just before the onset of the Black Death—overcrowded, impoverished, unequal, unstable, and unprepared for such a catastrophe. In Zobrist’s mind, a humanity left to its own devices is incapable of returning from such a state to a state of prosperity without first passing through a time of misery, such as the Black Death, and he worries that with humanity’s advanced power over nature—which was not a variable to be considered in the 13th century—the pains of such an age of death will only be multiplied were it to occur in the present day. His turn to Transhumanism thus reflects his desire to break beyond the common progression of the species in order to explore more outside-the-box methods of overcoming the issue.

Many of the sights Langdon visits throughout the course of the novel are also famous for their connections to the Black Death, in particular the cities of Istanbul and Venice, each of which are considered by historians to be primary entry points of the plague into Europe.

A parallel of the Italian Renaissance in the novel can be seen in the transition from denial and inaction to a new understanding and the beginnings of the characters taking action on the issue. Langdon himself is the best representation of the blossoming of the changes that inspired the cultural growth that occurred during the Italian Renaissance. Just as cultural advances of the Italian Renaissance ushered in the dawning of the modern age, so too does Langdon’s adventure in Inferno enlighten and educate him about the problem of overpopulation and how dangerous his position of moral neutrality truly is. None of the characters in the novel will ever be the same after reaching the understanding that Inferno has brought them.