School...or Hell?
If Dante had been to high school; his tragic tale of woe inside the inferno may not have changed in the slightest. After all, is not school another form of the same? The bus one rides...an evil she beast, constantly hungering for gasoline and passengers? Going from middle school to high school; straying off the path of what has been handed to children for so many years? The people milling about in the lobby; lost souls, waiting fo somewhere to go, to be told where their place is? Of course, these are only speculations by an author. But can it be denied that the teacher checking schedules and telling people where classes are could be none other than Minos, the judgemental, sending the souls to their oblivion? The mind is sent back to the bus ride... bus drivers don't usually keep oars on buses...

After being slung to the first class of the day, new friends are made in an attempt to find an older person to help figure things out. Some guy named Virgil seems to be the only talkative one, but he has some useful advice and shares secrets of the way high school works. Due to a lack of anything else to occupy people the first few days of class, the teacher makes everyone talk about their summer vacation and everyone pretty much just whines about how horrible it was, or how their parents told them to get a job, or how they fell in love and got hurt (the general stuff.) Second period comes and goes with more of the same old ramblings only without Virgil or anyone else to talk to so listening is a must.

Third period hits and Virgil comes into the picture again along with his friend, only known as "Ugolino", who constantly refers to his animal crackers as Archbishops and devours them, pausing only to talk about how they wronged him by starving his kids. How disturbing. This aside, another friend of Virgil's runs over to the table everyone is at and begins to rant about how he got in trouble recently for putting laxatives in his brother's food and is now grounded for months and months. Virgil stares at him blankly and tells him to bugger off. It works thankfully and he ask "Ugolino" if he'd noticed the guy's change. "Uggie" nods and continues to ravage his cookies. Getting away from the table as quickly as possible is no problem when the bell rings. Saying goodbye to Virgil is close to too much with "Ugolino" chowing down just a few feet away. The rest of the day passes uneventfully except for the fact that every classroom seems to get colder than the last...

Arriving home, after another frightful bus ride, all is well. The day is behind, the night is ahead. Reflecting on the day is no longer an option--except secenth period... The room was freezing. The teacher was so odd...and small. For some reason people kept refering to her as some sort of devil. And did she have wings? High school is WAY too strange....

"Dante's Inferno" By Dante Alighieri.
From: World Literature: Revised Edition. Austin: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1998.
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston comp and eds.
This compilation of stories from different cultures and lands tells an abridged version of Dante's story of his trip through hell and the souls and beasts he encounters with his spirit guide, Virgil the Greek poet. All though the actual poem has 34 cantos (or chapters) the book only covers 1, 3, 5, 33, and 34.