Dante’s Inferno References in Over the Garden Wall
By: Samantha Merri
Image credits: Over the Garden Wall (Patrick McHale & Katie Krentz, 2014)
Over the Garden Wall is an animated limited series streamed on Cartoon Network. It follows two brothers, Wirt and Greg, on their adventure through the Unknown forest with the goal of getting home. It mirrors Dante and Virgil’s journey through Inferno, with many similar events. Greg’s character is comparable to Virgil, as the reassuring force, while Wirt is analogous to Dante, as the cowardly one. There is also a character in the series named Beatrice, who Wirt comes to admire. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante has a lover named Beatrice whom he wishes to find. Over the Garden Wall also creates scenarios that connect to those that happen in Dante’s Inferno. Each episode follows the main plot of the brothers trying to get home, but has differing stories. Episode two shows Greg and Wirt traveling through an odd town with odd people. This represents when Dante and Virgil have to walk through Limbo in canto IV. One of the characters in this episode also parallels Charon from Inferno. While Dante and Virgil encounter souls whose greed caused them to reside in the fourth circle of Inferno, Greg and Wirt meet a rich man whose greed led him to believe he was being haunted by a ghost. Throughout the whole cartoon series, there is an entity called The Beast. It controls the Unknown and spreads fear into the boys and anyone who passes through. This beast and its assumed danger corresponds to Lucifer in Inferno. The Beast is known for capturing souls, although it is not until the final episodes that we see what he does with them. Like the punishment for violence against oneself, these souls become trees. There is a woodsman who is forced to chop these trees, similar to how the harpies rip at the leaves of the sinning souls in canto XIII. Although this show was created for children, it has the underlying messages of Dante’s Inferno.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante & Mandelbaum, Allen. Inferno. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980.
Crable, Margaret. “Why Dante and his ‘Divine Comedy’ remain relevant 700 years after his death.” USCDornsife. University of Southern California, 13 September 2021. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/dante-devine-comedy-still-relevant/.
“Digital Dante.” Digital Dante, digitaldante.columbia.edu/.
Over the Garden Wall. Created by Patrick McHale, Cartoon Network, 2014.