Recently, I rewatched a short miniseries called Over the Garden Wall, a cartoon produced by Cartoon Network in 2014. The show focuses on Wirt and Greg, two brothers who are lost in the woods and trying to find a way back home. The series was the first miniseries Cartoon Network’s produced and draws inspiration from the Regency Era to the 1920s. What I found to be interesting was the ties between the show and Dante’s Inferno along with the inspiration from Alice’s Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland, and various Victorian and early 20th century pictures and styles.
The story takes the viewer through a simple enough journey of Wirt and Greg trying to make it home, ignoring The Woodsman’s warnings and venturing deeper into the woods known as The Unknown. Wirt and Greg don’t seem to notice how they’re meandering through time periods; in one episode you meet a woman inspired by Beatrix Potter complete with her animal students, in another you see a girl from a more Puritan-esque era, and in another you see people looking to be from a mid-19th century period. The way the show is animated and how the stories all blend together somehow manage to not completely remove the audience from the animation, but rather adds to the mysticism and the fantasy elements of the show. My theory on why it’s so easy for everything to blend together comes from the early 20th century musical influence, with musical numbers and soundtracks that are fairly uniform in the style.
The two main antagonists in the show are genuinely unsettling and serve as more serious villains than what’s typically shown on Cartoon Network. What I want to focus on is The Beast, a silhouetted figure whose symbolism coincides with black turtles that are seen throughout the show. The Beast himself only appears a total of four episodes, but he’s referenced as a dangerous omnipotent being in just about every episode. Wirt and Greg go through their journey being warned of the danger in The Unknown and how they could be forever lost to “The Beast” the farther they venture. This does seem to be the case that as the series goes on, the two brothers become more and more involved in a plot that keeps them from their home.
The show itself also draws on many similarities to Dante’s Inferno. Wirt and Dante have similar personalities and even have similar occupations or hobbies--poetry. They both go into The Unknown led by their companions. Both are guided through their path by characters named Beatrice, and both encounter a dark, shadowy figure that represents the main threat. The series itself follows a very similar path to the Nine Circles, with one episode per circle not including the first episode, which can be seen as an entrance piece. It’s fascinating to watch this with the idea of Dante’s Inferno in mind.
Over the Garden Wall is a terrific series with so much to offer and read into in only ten short episodes. I’ve seen this numerous times myself and it never grows old, and I strongly recommend anyone who wants to see a simply good mini-series to watch this. The characters work well together, the story is captivating, and it feels so easy to get lost in the world of the story.
