The Inferno: Dante, translated by John Ciardi

This was my first time reading this and it wasn't what I was expecting...very difficult to get through. It seems like something from a dream or Stephen King. Dante, who faints an awful lot, finds himself lost one day and encounters strange beasts. Dante then meets the spirit? of Virgil who says he will climb this hill past the beasts with him, but first they have to go through hell and purgatory before they can get to heaven. Once in hell they are helped by a woman, a lost love of Dante's? Hell is filled with people who didn't necessarily do right or wrong, they just didn't make decisions based on if it were good or bad. They get on a boat to cross the river and are told only damned souls can enter- there is a crash and Dante loses consciousness. When he wakes he is on the other side of the rive after having been carried by Virgil. They enter the second level of hell where Minos, a serpent,? decides the fate of those who enter by wrapping his tail around the person. The people in the second level of hell are lustful. However many times he wraps his tail around the person determines which circle of hell the person must spend eternity. When Dante walks up from fainting this time he finds himself in the 3rd circle of hell, which seems like a port a potty. Cerberus resides over this hell for the gluttonous. The forth circle is ruled by the demon Plutus and is filled with hoarders and squanderers. The fifth circle of hell was for the wrathful and sullen with the boatman Phlegyas ferrying souls over the river Styx. The 6th circle of hell is for those who lived life with pleasure believing the soul died with the body. The 7th circle was for the Violent and the 8th was for the fraudulent, those who were hypocrites and flatterers. The 9th was for those who betrayed others. Each hell has different layers or pouches and Dante wanders among them because he evidently had quite the imagination and ran out of hells to put all these creatures into. Eventually Dante meets up with Satan who has three heads and in each mouth are the greatest betrayers of all time; Judas, Brutus, and Cassius. Virgil Tells Dante it is time to leave and they use Satan as a ladder to crawl down into their world to make their exit.