Skypiea, Impel Down and Blackbeard inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy
Before we go to the meat of the topic, I must ask: Has anyone read Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy?
Well, in short, it’s about a guy who goes and trespasses Hell, accompanied by Virgil, the Roman poet, and then explores every little detail out of it. He finds out about the 3 hells: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. He spends a week, for a way to get out and once he arrives in Paradiso, he understands the mystery of God’s divinity and humanity.
I’ll make an effort to explain this easier. Trust me.
SKYPIEA
In Skypiea, Oda wrote the exact name of the literature, as a title on chapter 275:
Funnily enough, Oda has added titles in the Skypiea arc that relate to it in some way.
We have Symphony, Oratorio, Fantasia, Play and Quintet in the Skypiea arc.
Dante’s Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has inspired a lot of poets, writers and musicians to write a work that illustrates the Divine Comedy. Amongst those were Franz Liszt, who wrote 2 pieces based on this work, and Tchaikovsky, who wrote a symphony fantasia.
Some people even made plays, that tell this story in their own way.
And indeed, the Skypiea story is related to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
In the Divine Comedy, Dante ascends from Inferno, up Mount Purgatory, to the top, arriving to the 3rd hell: Paradiso. In One Piece, Luffy and his crew climb up the knock-up stream, to get to Skypiea, where Enel self-proclaimed himself as God, who sees all and punishes those who are against his rule.
One thing to note however, is that Luffy climbed from “Paradise“, to Skypiea. This contrast could imply that Skypiea, despite looking like Paradiso in the Divine Comedy, may have actually represented inferno, due to Enel’s rule of the land and the turmoil caused by him.
