Dante’s Hell and Salvation in Castlevania
by Bella Lee
Introduction and background
Who doesn’t love a good TV show with magic and monsters?
Castlevania is an animated TV series based on a Japanese video game franchise of the same name. It is set in Wallachia, a region in modern-day Romania, and centered around the vampire Dracula’s wrath. After the Church persecutes his wife, Lisa, for being a witch, he terrorizes cities with his army of night creatures to eliminate all humans from the region. The religious imagery, corruption of the Church, and beings from Hell create a dark, tense, and infernal atmosphere. The show follows a classic fantasy plotline of a hero’s journey, but imbues it with elements of Dante, from its tone to its presentation. In Castlevania, director Warren Ellis incorporates direct references, contrapasso, iconographic inversion, and models of redemption from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Each season of Castlevania builds on previous seasons’ plotlines. Season 1 establishes the backstories of the main cast: Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard. The protagonist, Trevor Belmont, is the last descendant of an excommunicated family of monster hunters. Though he is cynical, he is also naturally righteous. On his journey, he meets Sypha Belnades, a magician from a traveling caravan, and Alucard, Dracula and Lisa’s son. The three form an alliance to stop Dracula’s rampage. In season 2, they slay Dracula amid a vampire society power struggle. The second season also introduces the human Devil Forgemasters Hector and Isaac, who resurrect corpses by implanting souls from hell within them. They are loyal followers of Dracula; after his death, they must fight their own battles and find their purpose. Season 3 is the climax of the series and follows four plotlines surrounding these five characters to establish the foundation for Dracula’s return from Hell. Season 4 concludes the four storylines with character redemption and Dracula’s resurrection.
Direct references
The show references the Divine Comedy through its episode titles and depiction of Hell in season three. Throughout the season, Trevor and Sypha solve a supernatural mystery in a small village’s priory, Hector is captured and tormented by a rival vampire faction in Styria, Isaac seeks to amass an undead army to take over Styria and take revenge on Hector for betraying Dracula, and Alucard trains two young vampire hunters who seek his guidance. In the end, Trevor and Sypha fail to save the village and witness the corrupted Church using the souls of the inhabitants to open the gates of Hell, Hector is enslaved and exploited, Isaac summons a colossal undead army from Hell, and Alucard’s two students betray and attempt to kill him. The title for season 3 episode 10, “Abandon All Hope,” references the inscription “ABANDON ALL HOPE YOU WHO ENTER HERE” on the gates of Hell and mirrors the characters’ entrance into a state of living Hell (Inferno 3.9).
Fig. 1. Hell in Castlevania; Ellis, Warren, director; “The Harvest”; Castlevania, season 3, episode 9, 2020; https://castlevania.fandom.com/wiki/Hell_(animated_series)
Season 3 also features an overview of Hell that mirrors Dante’s conception of its topography in Inferno. The portrayal features a barren landscape, rivers of blood, souls entangled in trees (see fig. 1), ditches, people encased in ice, and settlements that reflect Dante’s use of Hell’s structure as an allegory for society. Ellis derives these depictions from the overall landscape of Inferno and the punishments for murderers in Inferno Canto twelve, spoilers and suicides in Canto thirteen, the fraudulent beginning in Canto eighteen, and traitors beginning in Canto thirty-one.
Contrapasso and iconographic inversion
Besides direct references, Ellis creatively incorporates Inferno’s contrapasso and iconographic inversion. The first notable instance occurs in season 1 episode 4, where a priest who sows discord faces is ripped apart by a crowd. After Trevor calls him out for encouraging the persecution of Sypha’s nomadic family, a mob rips him apart with swords and pitchforks, mirroring the punishment for schismatics in Inferno Canto 28.
In addition to punishments straight from Dante, Ellis introduces novel penalties fitting the show’s supernatural tone. In season 4, Hector triumphs over his captors and reverses the power dynamics. Lenore, Hector’s vampire captor (and now, his prisoner), decides to commit suicide instead of spending the rest of her life enslaved. She says, “[Power] becomes a parasite you have to feed. Power does nothing but eat." Hector replies, “Like a vampire” (Ellis, “It’s Been” 3:17). Because vampires originate from mortals’ thirst for power and immortality, their slow, eternal punishment is to constantly be thirsty for blood, for conquest, and for more — they can never be satiated, and they cannot adapt to changes in power. After recognizing this, Lenore liberates herself by perishing in the sun.
Ellis also perverts Dante’s inspiration for love through iconographic inversion. For Dante, love is “the spiritual union of the soul and the beloved object” (Mazzeo 148–149). Since Divine Love is central to the Divine Comedy, Dracula’s motives introduce a twisted take on this theme. For him, if there is no love, there can only be death. Though the main characters vanquish him in season 2, the central plotline for seasons 3 and 4 involves his resurrection. In multiple scenes, he embraces his wife, Lisa, in a dilapidated house in Hell. The antagonists aim to revive the two souls as one in the form of a Rebis, a hermaphroditic creature hailed to be the ultimate alchemical creation. His soul is indeed united with his beloved, but in a painful, unstable form against his own will, thus demonstrating an ironic inversion of his driving motivation, love. Ellis’ play on this concept pays homage to Dante’s creative punishments in Inferno by incorporating the poet’s philosophical exploration into the show.
Redemption
In contrast to gruesome punishments, Ellis also includes the Divine Comedy’s themes of redemption in Dracula’s, Trevor’s, and Isaac’s character arcs. Dracula’s and Trevor’s salvation follow the example of Dante and Beatrice, while Isaac’s character journey mirrors Dante’s in Inferno and Purgatorio and uses Islam to contrast the central Christian theme of the show. Season 1 of Castlevania opens with Lisa and Dracula’s first meeting. Initially, Dracula shuns humanity, viewing it as livestock. However, after meeting Lisa, he is “redeemed” and grows to support his wife’s goal of healing and providing. The introduction of Lisa as a figure of Divine Good transforms him from a monster to a man. After he loses her, he once again strays “from the straight and true” and copes by committing genocide (Inferno, 1.3). Lisa’s role mirrors Beatrice’s, as she brings Dracula to happiness and “beautifies” his life, much like Beatrice does for Dante in Paradiso. Dracula’s character arc demonstrates an alternate progression of Dante’s redemption story, where the lady as an embodiment of light departs before redemption is complete, leading to corruption and despair.
Sypha’s role in Trevor’s character development mirrors Beatrice and Dante more completely. At the beginning of the series, Trevor is a drunk with no purpose in life but to wander from town to town and sleep under trees. However, after defeating Dracula with Sypha and Alucard, he realizes his mission. In season 2 episode 8, when Sypha tries to convince Trevor to travel with her, she says, “You're better than you were when I met you. Do you know why I think that is? It's because you're doing what you were born for” (Ellis, “End Times” 13:23). He has returned to his path on “the straight and true” with the help of Sypha, his female guide as the embodiment of light (Inferno 1.3). The series ends with Trevor defeating Death itself, disappearing for two weeks, and returning a renewed person, thus completing his path of redemption. His character arc mirrors Dante’s incorporation of Aristotle’s telos in the Comedy and the narrative of constant ascent, uplifted by Love and a holy woman figure (Alighieri and Esolen xiv).
Rather than redemption through external guidance, Isaac instead redeems himself through an introspective journey mirroring Dante’s realizations in Inferno and Purgatorio. Isaac is a character who follows “a mystical form of Islam,” Sufism, and whose backstory is colored by betrayal from his former master and his fellow Forgemaster Hector (Specia). He initially aligns himself with Dracula’s cause because he despises humanity and only believes in God. At the end of season 2, Dracula saves his life by casting him into a desert in Tunis, yet this act of kindness stings of abandonment due to his past trauma. Despite being cast aside, he still feels a strong sense of loyalty. Hence, he aims to take Styria to enact revenge on Hector, the traitor. Throughout season 3, he journeys across the desert and embarks on a voyage to Europe, accumulating an undead army along the way. As he travels, he witnesses the suffering and kindness of others and realizes that human nature is not as black-and-white as he believes it to be. Though he does not have a fixed mentor, he encounters many figures along the way that drastically change his outlook on humanity. His journey and encounters renew his faith in his Divine mission to act as the right hand of God.
This time, he aims not to cull humanity, but to liberate all beings from Hell. At the climax of season 3 episode 9, he conquers a corrupted magician’s tower and converts the magician’s human slaves into night creatures. In a conversation with Flyseyes, a night creature who was a philosopher before being sentenced to eternal damnation, Isaac references the prophet Muhammed and presents an unconventional view of salvation according to Muslim beliefs. He says, "One day, hell will be emptied and its doors will rattle in the wind. . . . Through my hand, God lifts the damned from hell in his mercy to enact their penance on the Earth as my soldiers. . . . Should their penance on Earth be eternal too?" (Ellis, “Walk Away” 5:40). The invocation of Muslim beliefs is reminiscent of Mohammed’s dramatic declaration in Inferno Canto 28. However, in Dante’s epic, Mohammed’s beliefs are portrayed as a cause for division within the Christian Church, whereas in Castlevania, Isaac’s unorthodox Muslim beliefs create dramatic tension and separate him from the Christian cast.
Throughout the four seasons, Isaac transforms from a vengeful individual to someone seeking to lead the damned to Salvation. At the culmination of his journey, by fighting his way up the magician’s tower circle by circle in a personal Purgatory, he achieves salvation by cleansing his distrust in humanity and establishing his philosophy of God’s will. He leaves behind his sins and remembers his purpose. His redemption mirrors Dante's drinking from the River Lethe and River Eunoe at the end of Purgatorio. He emerges renewed and ready to proceed to the next realm; in Isaac’s case, this means conquering the Styrian vampire stronghold and reigning as king. He ascends from servant to master, from lost to divine, in his purgatorial journey across the continent and up the magician’s tower.
Conclusion
Upon close inspection, Castlevania is full of Dante references. Though they may not all be direct incorporations, they demonstrate how impactful Dante’s work is on modern literary tropes and canon. Iteration and adaptation keep classical literature alive in our contemporary collective consciousness.
Works Cited
Abrahamov, Binyamin. "MISZELLEN" Der Islam, vol. 79, no. 1, 2002, pp. 87-146. https://doi.org/10.1515/islm.2002.79.1.87.
Alighieri, Dante. Inferno. Edited by Anthony Esolen, translated by Anthony Esolen, Random House Publishing Group, 2002.
Ellis, Warren, director. “Abandon All Hope.” Castlevania, season 3, episode 10, 2020.
Ellis, Warren, director. “End Times.” Castlevania, season 2, episode 8, 2018.
Ellis, Warren, director. “It's Been a Strange Ride.” Castlevania, season 4, episode 10, 2021.
Ellis, Warren, director. “Monument.” Castlevania, season 1, episode 4, 2017.
Ellis, Warren, director. “The Good Dream.” Castlevania, season 3, episode 6, 2020.
Ellis, Warren, director. “The Harvest.” Castlevania, season 3, episode 9, 2020.
Ellis, Warren, director. “Walk Away.” Castlevania, season 4, episode 3, 2021.
Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. “Dante’s Conception of Love.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 18, no. 2, 1957, pp. 147–60. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2707621. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.
Specia, Megan. “Who Are Sufi Muslims and Why Do Some Extremists Hate Them? (Published 2017).” The New York Times, 24 November 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/world/middleeast/sufi-muslim-explainer.html. Accessed 19 November 2023.