All authors are faced with a common first dilemma: how to get the public interested in reading their work, after all if the book was not read then no amount of information would be pertinent. This is what caused Shakespeare to begin Macbeth with a battle scene, and, according to Thomas Bergin's essay Hell: Topography and Demography, this is also what caused Dante to start The Divine Comedy with the Inferno; "Dante puts forth a great and calculated effort in the first chapter of his tale in order to seize our interest" . Focusing on the idea that Dante always had his audience in mind, Bergin claims that from the story telling perspective the Inferno is the richest of the three canticles; rich in action, variety, characterization, and dramatic description. This richness is necessary for a particular allegory "for there is but one way to salvation and there are...