The Good Place Through the Lens of Dante’s Divine Comedy

Abstract

By Nisha George

Dante’s Divine Comedy is the second most translated book in the world - second to the Bible, and it really only takes reading a fraction of the book to understand why. The Divine Comedy is a highly visual work of literary fiction that draws from spiritual and mythological theories of the afterlife. Considering the long history of our obsession with the afterlife, it is not surprising that the Divine Comedy has been a source of inspiration for countless works of art and literature for centuries. One relatively recent piece of media that I was reminded of after reading the Divine Comedy was the TV show, The Good Place. The Good Place, like the Divine Comedy, explores the afterlife from an ethical and theological point of view. In this paper, I will analyze some of the ideas that the show explores and compare them to similar ideas in the Divine Comedy. Reading the Divine Comedy has certainly given me a newfound appreciation for The Good Place and has allowed me to broaden my understanding of interpretations of life after death that are different from traditional religious interpretations. Through my paper, I hope to shed some light on some of those connections I have made between the TV show and the book. To support my comparisons, I will make use of sources that include articles that review the show.