Written by Wyatt Reu
Photos by Patrick Markovics and Nick Caprio
Talking about hell in Freshman Honors English can only mean one thing: The infamous Dante project. Many students are frightened away from honors English by this project, and students who partake in it understand that they are signing themselves up for the ultimate freshman literary challenge.
The task given to these intrepid students is to recreate Dante’s hell, (after reading The Inferno By Dante Alighieri) replacing characters in the story with their own characters. The project is huge. Students many times spend hours typing 20 page stories, creating countless scrapbook pages to complete this assignment.
Although the project is lengthy and at times tedious, recreating hell can be fun. Choosing funny or ironic people to put in particular spots that seem perfect makes the project personal. Outside of the computer, popular phrases like, “Hey can I put you in hell?” and “Oh you’re such a glutton” create a true, empathetic, sense of community among the students.
After completion of the Dante project, the accomplished freshmen shared their projects with one another in the library and reveled in their hard-work and creativity. Freshman Cameron LeClaire explained, “After all of my hard work and effort it feels great to finally have completed this project. I really enjoyed doing the scrapbook because I like being creative and the writing was not as bad as I expected.”
On Wednesday, June 3rd, the library turned into a “Dante exhibition”, and many upperclassmen, who completed the project in the past, came to visit and see the freshmen’s projects. Although the Dante Project is notoriously tough, in the end, it is quite the feat.
Congratulations to all of the freshmen honors English students for completing the project!