Under the Volcano: Earth’s Inferno

By Grace Petrie

       Towards Popocatépetl View from Malcolm and Jan Lowry’s Villa, Cuernavaca by Mary Hoover Aiken.

        I chose to explore Dante’s Inferno through interpretations of other authors who have drawn on his works for inspiration. For this project, I focused on Malcom Lowry’s novel, Under the Volcano, and how it both draws on and critiques Dante’s Divine Comedy. Lowry originally intended his novel to be the first of a three-part series, with each book corresponding to either Hell, Purgatory, or Paradise.^[1] Unfortunately, due to Lowry’s own early death, the series was never completed. Under the Volcano instead stands alone and functions as a critique of Dante’s notion that Hell can be escaped. The novel follows a man– and his ex-wife and his brother– living in the city of Quauhnahuac, Mexico as he loses his battle to alcoholism.^[2] The main character slowly becomes drowned by mezcal and tequila, despite his ex-wife trying desperately to save him from himself. The three characters themselves are a direct nod to Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, where the main character’s ex-wife and brother attempt to guide him through his hell before he gets caught up in his own temptation. I found this response to Dante’s work very interesting because it takes a stance on human nature that Dante avoids in a work rooted in religion. Lowry’s work calls into question the human condition; it explores the human fixation on temptation and our inability to override certain urges even when people try to lead us down the right path. Because The Divine Comedy revolves around catholicism, temptation isn’t factored in so much as repentance and salvation. Sins of incontinence exist in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but they are only punished in Hell when the sinner doesn’t repent. From Lowry’s perspective, it’s not the lack of repentance that dooms his main character, but the temptation itself.

Works Cited

Lowry, Malcolm. Under the Volcano. Harper Perennial, 2007.

Marks, Jason. “The ‘hell in Paradise’ of Malcolm Lowry.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Oct. 1973, www.nytimes.com/1973/10/14/archives/the-hell-in-paradise-of-malcolm-lowry-burned-manuscript.html.