Introduction

The opening lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri launched Rod Dreher on a journey that rescued him from exile and saved his life. Dreher found that the medieval poem offered him a surprisingly practical way of solving modern problems.

Following the death of his little sister and the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dreher found himself living in the small community of Starhill, Louisiana where he grew up. But instead of the fellowship he hoped to find, he discovered that fault lines within his family had deepened. Dreher spiraled into depression and a stress-related autoimmune disease. Doctors told Dreher that if he didn’t find inner peace, he would destroy his health. Soon after, he came across The Divine Comedy in a bookstore and was enchanted by its first lines, which seemed to describe his own condition.

In the months that followed Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante’s great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.

Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing. Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness. It worked for Rod Dreher. Dante saved Rod Dreher’s life—and in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.

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Excerpt

This was my life now, and I thought I must be in a kind of paradise. In retrospect, I think this is when I began to lose my sister.

The following is an excerpt from How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher.

One Friday night, after I had been there for about six weeks, Daddy and I were out driving down a country lane. “I’m so glad you came home, son,” he said. “You finally realized that I was right.” ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Do you have to fall to be saved? Dreher writes, “to save yourself from the dark wood, you have to first believe that you are lost” (pg. 57). Can spiritual awakening only happen during times of crisis?
2. Now more than 700 years since Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, how has the concept of sin changed? How does Dreher address Dante’s levels of hell/sin and what is his explanation as to why Dante believed fraud to be the worst sin of all? Were you to write your own inferno, would you choose the same sins (lust, gluttony, heretics, etc.) to define humanity? Why or why not?

3. Dreher struggles to reconcile his feelings of admiration and resentment towards his father and sister. In light of his comparison to Dante’s interactions with Brunetto, what does Dreher say about our role-models? Like Dreher does with Ulysses in The Divine Comedy, discuss some of today’s societal heroes and how they have evolved from the classical archetype.


4. Dreher claims that the artist is “the creator of others’ dreams” (pg. 83). Discuss the responsibility of the artist and the impact of their work on society. What kind of ‘dreams’ are promoted in modern/contemporary art and are these unique to the current generation?

5. A book focusing on the power of literature, why does Dreher feel that Dante’s poem is an appropriate and useful tool for navigating his own life? What are some pieces of literature that you feel have greatly impacted your life and why?

6. Both Dreher and Dante confuse passion and true love. How does Dreher explain the difference between the two and what is there to learn from this? What does it mean to become a “slave to our own passions” (pg. 54)?

7. After Ruthie’s death Dreher has the epiphany that “the same tight familial and community bonds that felt so constricting to [him] as a teenager had held Ruthie and the others in [his] Louisiana family together” (pg. 23). What does he mean by this and what does this realization reveal to him about the importance of love and faith?


8. What is the importance of a guide? Dante is guided by Virgil, Dreher by Dante, and now Dreher guides his own readers. Is it possible to guide oneself on one’s own spiritual pilgrimage or might this be dangerous? Why or why not?
9. Dreher is surprised to discover that truths he could only accept intellectually made emotional sense to him when he encountered them in Dante's poem. Is fiction a better conveyor of truth than non-fiction? Why or why not?

10. Dante -- and Dreher -- find consolation in Piccarda's words in Paradiso: "In His will is our peace." Is it a sign of strength or weakness to accept inexplicable suffering by chalking it up to the mysterious will of God?

11. In Canto 26 of Inferno, we learn that Ulysses' restlessness led him away from home in Ithaca, where he belonged, to his doom. It seemed to Dreher that when he came back to his childhood home, he unexpectedly met a kind of doom -- but the experience healed him. Like Ulysses, Dreher returned from his travels in the world expecting too much from home. Discuss the difference in their responses to dissatisfaction with home.

12. The penitents on the mountain of Purgatory have to don a reed as a sign of their humility before they can proceed up the mountain. Why is humility necessary for moral and spiritual growth?

13. Compare and contrast the two father figures in the book: Dreher's father, and his priest Father Matthew.

14. In his encounter on the mountain with Marco the Lombard, Dante protests that his world back in Tuscany has come apart socially because everyone is looking out only for his own interests, not the common good. Is this an accurate diagnosis of our own society? To what extent is Marco's advice to the pilgrim Dante -- to start repairing the world by turning from his sins and repairing his own heart -- relevant today?

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