The Cartoon That Hides Dante’s ‘Inferno’ In Plain Sight

In recommending one of my favorite shows to friends and family, I face a peculiar hurdle: It’s a cartoon. It is unfortunately common today for adults to be obsessed with shows aimed at children that have little else to commend them beyond juvenile humor and psychedelic art styles (think of the particularly peculiar phenomenon of “My Little Pony”). I must overcome this negative reputation if I want to persuade people to watch “Over the Garden Wall.” But if I can successfully convince them to indulge, I have yet to meet one person who has disliked the show. 

“Over the Garden Wall” aired as a 10-part miniseries on Cartoon Network in 2014. It won two Emmy Awards (Outstanding Animated Program and Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation) and quickly spawned an obsessive group of fans who dutifully purchase the show’s associated physical media, accessories, and memorabilia. When I say obsessive, I am quite serious. Check out the resale price on “Over the Garden Wall” merchandise on eBay if you’re doubtful. 

Since I first saw the show in 2015, my family has made “Over the Garden Wall” a lovely yearly occasion, getting together with friends and extended family to host a fall-themed party with rich soup, decorative pies prepared by my talented wife, and themed cocktails. Through the years, we’ve introduced dozens of people to the show, many of whom have become repeat viewers or started their own viewing party traditions.

But what is it about this show that inspires this group of fanatics, me included? What keeps us coming back to the show year after year? What has made the show achieve its current heights of popularity over a decade after its first airing? For my part, I consider the show’s popularity justified by its exceptional writing, memorable music, and truly heartwarming story. Two compellingly written children carry the narrative, whose references to American folklore and classic literature give the miniseries a weight that exceeds what one might expect from your average cartoon. (A warning for mild spoilers ahead.) 

The story begins with two brothers, Greg the younger and Wirt (voiced by Elijah Wood) the older, wandering in a wood, at first humorously discussing what to name a frog but then slowly realizing they have become lost. With no idea how they have arrived where they find themselves, they panic. The boys encounter a terrifying woodsman (given gravelly voice by Christopher Lloyd of “Back to the Future” fame), who warns them they are in “The Unknown,” says they are “more lost than you realize,” and speaks to them of “The Beast” who preys on weary, hopeless travelers in the wood. After some terrifying misadventures, the boys set off for a nearby town, hoping to find a way home.

On their way to the town, Pottsfield, the boys encounter a talking bluebird named Beatrice, who offers to lead the boys to Adelaide, “the good woman of the woods” who can give them safe passage home. What follows is a series of trials featuring rich aristocrats, village craftspeople, a talking horse, singing frogs, and the ever-present threat of despair. 

Astute readers have probably already noticed the immediate parallel many viewers draw between “Over the Garden Wall” and Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” particularly his “Inferno”:

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, 

I woke to find myself in a dark wood, 

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. 

Ay me! how hard to speak of it — that rude 

And rough and stubborn forest! the mere breath 

Of memory stirs the old fear in the blood; 

It is so bitter, it goes nigh to death; 

Yet there I gained such good, that, to convey 

The tale, I’ll write what else I found therewith.

How I got into it I cannot say, 

Because I was so heavy and full of sleep 

When first I stumbled from the narrow way.

So read the first lines of Dante’s “Inferno” in Dorothy Sayers’ translation. The poet Dante recounts his pilgrimage as beginning with a period of sleep, drowsiness that set his foot on a wayward, sinful path. The viewers of “Over the Garden Wall” will find, in the series’ penultimate episode, that wayward wandering was the path Greg and Wirt followed into The Unknown. The pilgrim Dante, too, ends up guided by Beatrice, though he does not meet her until paradise, while Greg and Wirt’s Beatrice guides them through a far darker place. 

The parallels to Dante’s “Inferno” are not perfect, though many viewers have attempted to sketch them (some in lengthy video essays you can peruse on YouTube at your leisure). Some of the characters in The Unknown seem to share some sins punished in Dante’s hell (Quincy Endicott’s “unnecessary excess of wealth” perhaps speaks of avarice, for example), and viewers learn early in the show that the pumpkin-adorned residents of Pottsfield are skeletons who come to life and don pumpkins to “celebrate the harvest.” Is this the land of the dead? Have the young boys passed over the threshold into the afterlife?

Many clues throughout the show point this way. A song in the penultimate episode speaks of an “old black train a’comin’” that will “take you when it’s time” to a place “you can’t come back from.” This folksy song contains an undeniable reference to death. The viewer learns that the boys fell into The Unknown after narrowly escaping being hit by a train and falling into icy water. Perhaps, then, the whole tale is a hallucination on the threshold of death, a sort of “near-death experience” giving them lessons about what a horrific afterlife awaits.

But the setting is surely not unambiguously one of punishment or suffering. There are “lost souls” throughout The Unknown, who give in to despair and become ghastly oil-producing trees that fuel the Woodsman’s spooky lantern. But there are also people participating in life, love, and festal celebration throughout The Unknown in scenes hardly fit for Dante’s demonic hell. It is far more plausible that the boys — including Wirt, who accepts the title of “pilgrim” from a chorus of people at a small country inn — are passing through multiple possible afterlives, like Dante on his pilgrimage through limbo, hell, purgatory, and paradise. The conclusion of the story supports this developmental reading, as the boys return to their home after learning the lessons of The Unknown, possessed of a newly forged close relationship, a hope for the future, a named frog, and tantalizing evidence that what they experienced in The Unknown was not merely imagined.

However one ultimately interprets The Unknown, by the end of the story, the viewer will have enjoyed a delightful display of fall-themed animation, an impossibly captivating American folk soundtrack, and a heartwarming ending. What more could you ask for to celebrate the harvest?

***

Philip D. Bunn is an assistant professor of political science at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, where he teaches political theory and American politics.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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