Above the gate of Hell, cut into the stone, are nine lines of inscription ending in the most famous phrase Dante ever wrote: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate — "Abandon all hope, you who enter." The inscription is theological before it is frightening: it identifies Hell as the product of divine Power, Wisdom, and Love — the Trinity acting together in the act of creation. Hell is not a mistake, not an afterthought, not a failure of mercy. It is the permanent structure that Love itself requires when freedom is exercised absolutely against Love. It was made before anything else created; it will last forever. Abandon hope — not because God has abandoned you but because hope, the orientation toward a future that might be different, is simply no longer possible here. The present is all there is, and it is permanent.
Inside the gate, before the river Acheron, is a great plain filled with souls running endlessly and crying. Wasps and hornets sting them, and worms drink the blood and tears that fall from their wounds. These are the Neutrals — the souls who, in life, took no side. They were neither good nor evil; they committed to nothing; they lived for themselves alone. Hell will not have them; Heaven will not have them; they are rejected by both. Their punishment is to run ceaselessly after a blank banner that goes nowhere and means nothing — a perfect image of a life without commitment. Dante recognizes at least one of them and does not name him: some scholars believe it is Pope Celestine V, who abdicated the papacy and thus (in Dante's view) made way for Boniface VIII, the great villain of the Inferno.
At the river Acheron, Charon the ferryman appears — white-haired, ancient, eyes of wheel of fire — driving the dead toward his boat with his oar. He refuses to take Dante (who still lives) until Virgil invokes the will of God. An earthquake shakes the ground; a red light blazes; Dante faints. He wakes on the other side of the river.