Gustave Dore’s illustration of Canto XXVIII of Dante’s Inferno: schismatic Mohamet is slashed from head to groin repeatedly by a demon in the ninth pocket of the eighth circle of hell.

For my paper, I discussed the ways in which the 1995 film Se7en was influenced by Dante’s Divine Comedy, particularly the similarities between the character John Doe and literary Dante, as well as their strategies for devising punishments and conveying their message, the word of God, to humanity.

My interest in the Se7en sparked from the oppressive, anonymous nature of the city it takes place in. I wondered if the dreary, bustling, every-man-for-himself vibe of the city is an environment that can breed resentment in idealistic individuals such as Dante and John Doe. I wondered if democratic Florence in the 1200s was also like the city depicted in the film, and maybe that’s why Dante was so unsatisfied with his government and with the people around him.

A main point of my paper is that Dante and John Doe both design punishments not just to make sinners suffer, but also to help readers and onlookers understand the nature of the punished sin. One way they do this is by demonstrating the effect of sin on the sinner’s victims. John Doe accomplishes this by forcing the client of a brothel to wear a strap-on knife and use it to brutally rape a prostitute to death, while repeatedly asking the client if he has a wife. This may represent the spread of deadly sexually-transmitted disease in societies that cannot control their lust, particularly to the spread of faithful spouses from unfaithful spouses. A similar punishment written by Dante in Inferno is in Canto XXVIII, where schismatics such as Mohamet are torn from head to groin, representing the way their words tore communities and relationships apart during their lifetime. Both of these punishments focus on the effect of the sin on the sinner’s victims, educating readers of the Inferno and onlookers of the crime of the natural consequences of sin on the sinner’s victims. While the punishments in the film Seven don’t exactly replicate the ones depicted in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the intent behind the punishments, which is as a tool to educate others, is retained in the modern interpretation.