Over the Garden Wall
This article contains discussion of torture and suicide.
Several of thecharacters inOver the Garden Wallhave direct parallels to figures inInferno.
Wirt is Dante, the poetic traveler who has to overcome his sin.
Greg is Virgil, the braver guide through the Unknown and the Inferno, respectively.
Interestingly, both stories have characters named Beatrice.
Then, Dante found himself faced by three beasts: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf.
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Notably, neither Purgatory nor Pottsville was meant to be an especially tortuous layer of Hell or the Unknown.
Ms. Langtree and Jimmy Brown are the more straightforward interpretation of Dante’s concept of lust.
Over the Garden Wall is a fantasy-adventure series created for Cartoon Network by Patrick McHale. Two brothers named Wirt and Greg become lost in a winding wooded realm known as the Unknown and must work with various forest-dwelling people and creatures within to find their way home. The series was continued in a comic book run to expand the world further.
The animals, however, serve as a less direct example of lust.
InInferno, gluttonous sinners are forced to live in a sort of rotting muck and endure icy rain.
Over the Garden Wall’s connections to the Third Circle aren’t very strong, but they are present.
The dog at the tavern could also represent Cerberus.
The passive sinner is Wirt, who angrily complains to Beatrice about Jason Funderberker stealing Sarah away from him.
InOver the Garden Wall, the actively wrathful sinners are the frog passengers of the ferry.
Using frogs instead of humans could be referencing those base desires.
Lorna was also actually possessed by a spirit, which would make her quite like a witch.
Over the Garden Wallalso makes a less literal allusion to Dante’sInferno.
Viewing the Edelwood trees as suicide victims letsOver the Garden Wallmake perhaps its most direct allusion toInferno.
Greg’s dream isn’t an exact adaptation, though it shares some clear imagery.
It’s helpful to consider what Dante was trying to accomplish withThe Divine Comedy.
At several points in the poem, he specifically targets real people and uses them to expose corruption.
In the real world, both Wirt and Greg committed some form of fraud on Halloween.
Dante’s description of the Eighth Circle is also represented inOver the Garden Wall.
They then fall into a presumably ice-cold river, which leads them to the final Circle of Hell.
Dante describes the Ninth Circle as a frozen lake where traitors are trapped in the ice.
As such, there’s a clear connection to the Ninth Circle.
That already sounds extremely similar to Dante’s description of Lucifer and his three faces.
Additionally, Greg was trapped motionless in a growing Edelwood tree, while the sinners inInfernowere trapped in ice.
The series was continued in a comic book run to expand the world further.
