Review- Hell and Damnation

Hell and Damnation: A Sinner's Guide to Eternal Torment by Marq de Villiers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Hell and Damnation examines different ideas of hell comparatively, with chapters on the purported rulers of hell, the various types of tortures that are inflicted there, and other questions, such as the amount of time that people sent to hell are supposed to stay there.

The book is fun in places- it is certainly true, as the author points out, that a great deal more imagination has been devoted to imagining what hell is like than to the various paradises. A number of common themes emerge, such as bridges and gates, and heroes traveling to hell to bring back lost friends or lovers. The rules by which hell are said to operate often appear curiously bureaucratic. In one chapter, the author describes Assyrian ideas of the afterlife, in which gods have to send messengers between the various heavens and hells, as the deities are not allowed to step outside their domains.

Another idea that is commonplace amongst the more modern ideas of hell is that of equivalence- the suggestion that punishments would 'fit' the wrongdoing. This is a curious idea, as if there are malevolent beings torturing people, there is no obvious reason why they would be bound by equivalence. Surely, a wholly evil being would not try to make a punishment fit in any reasonable way. This idea seems to me to be redolent of industrial modernity, where many aspects of life are divided into increments- for example, pay per hour, trains running according to schedule, and so forth.

There are some negatives to the book, however. Firstly, there is a heavier focus on Christianity that I would have preferred in a comparative work. Also, and somewhat oddly, the author references Daily Mail articles several times throughout the book, in a way that feels like settling scores. Obviously, tabloid newspapers print rubbish sometimes. It was not clear what those references added, and the book would probably have been better if they were editing out.

The tone is also distracting at times. The author feels the need to add regular sarcastic comments, almost as if he was worried that the reader might start to take the various depictions of hell too seriously. These were unnecessary, and, more importantly, were often more annoying than funny.

The epilogue openly gives way to commentary, and is often shallow. More newspaper columns are quoted with no obvious justification, certainly not the intellectual weight of the columnists. Furthermore, I wonder whether the author misrepresents atheism somewhat with dogmatic comments. When a proposition is by definition unfalsifiable, such as the existence of many types of hell, then trying to falsify it may be a foolish move.

Putting all those negatives aside however, by bringing stories together from various different traditions, the book does add something to the subject, and I would recommend it to that extent.



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