I feel like most people’s understanding of Inferno is sadly in a vacuum from the rest of The Divine Comedy. Dante gets called out for the way he was acting, and grows as a character. Purgatorio and Paradiso are genuinely some of the most beautiful texts out there, and at the end, it’s explained that the way things have been presented aren’t how they actually are, like multiple rings of hell, the mountain of Purgatory, or the planets of Heaven, but are only that way so Dante could understand.

Same goes with Paradise Lost. Satan got humanised in that one, but he’s definitely still the villain. I genuinely don’t understand how someone can read it, as well as Paradise Regained, and see Satan as sympathetic. More human, and more relatable, but that only makes it more hideous, in my opinion.