Books are the most abundant items in the library and the key to escaping it. However, most of the books are filled with randomly generated gibberish. They thus symbolize the central theme of Searching for Meaning in Randomness; traditionally vehicles of meaning, the books in A Short Stay in Hell are, for the most part, impediments to it. 

This makes Soren’s millennia-long search for his book not only difficult but also boring. He describes his boredom vividly: “I pick up another book. Open it. See a page of random characters. Toss it over the edge. Pick up another. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat…on and on the dots signify. On and on I go, light-year after light-year, eon after eon” (95-96). The books, therefore, are the instruments of torture utilized in this version of Hell. Because books are frequently understood to be objects of leisure and enjoyment, this cruel use of them is highly ironic. Indeed, Xandern’s decision to send Soren to the library is based purely on that irony, as he dryly remarks, “Now, what Hell for you? Let’s see, you liked to read…in fact it seems you loved books. Interesting” (11). 

The ironic use of books to torment former book lovers is an example of a trope often utilized in depictions of Hell: a punishment that ironically mirrors the sin being punished. In the Inferno, for instance, those who committed violence against others during their lives are tortured by being submerged in a river of boiling blood. Dante scholars even have a word for this trope: contrapasso. Besides tying the novella to this literary tradition, Peck’s invocation of contrapasso underscores the senselessness of his particular iteration of Hell, as the punishment does not correspond to any sin on Soren’s part.