Inferno: Thoughts From A First Year English Teacher

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

-Dante Alighieri

Dante is running through a wood somewhere in Italy being pursued by panthers, lions, and wolves. Tomorrow is my first day of school in a new city. I am panicked, afraid, a little excited. I am the teacher. I smooth the turquoise folds of my dress on its hanger. I check my alarm clocks thrice over. I examine my ink black pumps for dirt because I have just read that Dante is running through a wood somewhere in Italy and there is probably mud on his heels and the parents will not approve. I am skidding across linoleum in my dreams that night, leaving the straightforward path behind.

…

Most of us will have first encountered Dante Alighieri's Inferno in high school, but I returned to it this year in a middle school. This is a fascinating poem that illuminates the landscape of hell as clearly as the faults of man and society. I enjoyed traversing the winding way through the marshes and along the backs of demons leisurely, it is no thriller. However, while the references to Italian society where somewhat soporific after a full workday, I felt myself longing to share glimpses of Dante’s world with my students. Did they realize that as they groaned through PARCC testing their tortured sighs were echoed in the pages of his tome? Did they gravitate towards the book as they played with their homemade slime, somehow magnetically drawn to unite two things gruesome and viscous?

The red dust of Takis burns my eyes as Dante descends past The Violent and I implore a student to KHFOOTY (keep hands, feet and other objects to yourself). Deep into the fifth bolgia, Dante encounters a raucous bunch of devils, one of whom “had made a trumpet of his rump.” I walk the aisles of a 50 person study hall to hear the hideous cry of “ Ms. Levin, I farted!” Onlookers hide their faces in shame, their lamentations long and plaintive. The parallels are unending, each more hideous than the last. When you really stop to savor it, though, line by line, Inferno is glorious poetry. It is a journey of instances that fuse fierce belief, passion, and the horror that fascinates us, mopey twelve-year-old and self-professed literary nerd alike.

Rating: 3.5/5