One of the most talked-about movies of the year, for so many different reasons, is Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey.” The film has generated identity-politics controversies, classicist controversies, and Christian controversies (from Christians and anti-Christians).

One of the lightning rods for arguments and thought-pieces is the proposed “Christianization” of Odysseus, illustrated by his guilt for the trickery of his comrades and gasp even his enemies, which lead to both parties’ deaths in the Trojan War.

Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” hypothesis in “The Hero With a Thousand Faces” shows how the greatest stories resonate with humans for different reasons. For Christians, humans are made in the image and likeness of God, so our shared human nature, including our inclination to create and be fascinated by stories, also reflects God. This is why Christians consider the greatest stories, regardless of whether they are explicitly Christian, to reflect and find their fulfillment in the story of the Gospels. This includes even a pagan story like Homer’s “Odyssey,” written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ with no known connection to biblical revelation.

One Christian who understood these connections was Dante Alighieri. Raised in mid-1200s Italy, he experienced Christendom at its most saturated. One sees this most clearly in his famous “Divine Comedy,” one of the most influential poems in Western civilization. In it, Dante travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. One of the characters we meet along the way is the tragic hero Odysseus, who speaks with Dante in the bowels of Hell.

Dante’s description of Odysseus (a.k.a. Ulysses) in Inferno canto 26 brings us to the eighth circle of Hell, which is dedicated to the sin of fraud. Odysseus is appropriately in this level, as he deceived Troy, leading them to believe the giant wooden horse was a gift when it actually hid soldiers waiting to open the impenetrable gates. Odysseus also hides details about the dangers of the voyage from his crew, leading some of them to die. Upon his return to Ithaca, Odysseus initially appears as a beggar to his son and wife before revealing his true identity.

While all these instances can be justified, they’re still deceptions. While Dante does place individuals in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, this is to make a literary point more than a literal point about the fate of these people. It seems Dante is trying to teach us more about the multitudinous, fracturing, and destructive nature of lying than he is trying to tell us whom he thinks is in Hell.

Odysseus’ punishment in the eighth circle is simple yet profound, allowing him to suffer a punishment that illuminates the nature of the sin itself. Because Odysseus used his tongue to distort the truth, he is engulfed in a tongue of fire.

This also calls to mind the biblical image of the tongues of fire that appeared over the Apostles heads at Pentecost in Acts as they received the Holy Spirit, which led to the Apostles speaking a variety of different languages. For Christians, the tongues of fire became the means by which the Church was created. By contrast, the Trojan Horse episode led to the destruction of Troy. In sacking the city, the soldiers burnt it to the ground, and Odysseus, who caused the fiery destruction of Troy by his deceitful tongue, now suffers eternal tongues of fiery destruction himself.

All this highlights the power of rhetoric to persuade. This power is present in whether one speaks the truth or not. Because rhetoric is so powerful, we must use it responsibly by speaking the truth. And when it is abused, one is responsible for whatever destruction it might cause. This is why there are laws against inciting riots, even if the inciter never physically attacks anyone himself. What Dante is trying to show is that while the speaker may indirectly cause the destruction of others by his words, he is causing even greater destruction to himself.

It is always tempting to over-literalize the captivating, sometimes haunting, imagery in macabre literature like Dante’s “Inferno.” However, the most practical application is to see the deeper instruction about the nature of sin and repentance. Dante put people from his own life in various circles of Hell, and he, in the narrative of the poem, wept for them. Dante’s point was never to revel in their demise but to see how destructive sin is from the spiritual point of view. This knowledge would, hopefully, lead one to live a life of virtue while still on Earth.

This is still true for us today. The deceitful tongue is just as destructive for us as it was for the hero Odysseus. Whether or not we feel our circumstances are extenuating like his, our responsibility for virtue remains the same. While the standard remains high, the threshold for forgiveness is low, we need only humble ourselves enough to see it.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image credit: Picryl