Several passages of the Qur’an depict conversations among the dead; nameless individuals who find themselves in the afterlife, discussing, lamenting, or protesting their placement in the beyond. In other words, the Qur’an presents parables in which the blessed and the damned converse amongst each other or even speak across the divide to those on the other side. In Q al-Saffat 37: 50–59, a resident of paradise recounts that he once had a friend (qarin) who doubted the resurrection. He then manages to peer into the pit of hell to see his unfortunate friend and lambasts him for nearly ruining him with his doubt (v. 56). Q Sad 38:59–64 depicts an argument within a group of the deceased rushing into hell, debating who deserved the worst punishment and expressing shock at the absence of some of their acquaintances whom they held in derision (who are presumably in paradise). Other examples abound (Q 7:44, 50; 26:91–102; 35:37; 39:71–74; 40:46–50; 43:77; 74:40–47; 83:34). They are, in effect, stories about the hypothetical dead for the sake of the actual living. In this paper I examine the rhetorical, literary, and performative function of these otherworldly parables, particularly those featuring more than one dialogue partner. I argue that the Qur’an’s rhetorical strategies, such as ekphrasis and energeia, are concise –albeit effective—uses of ancient rhetorical techniques found in other texts of antiquity yet with distinctively qur’anic flavoring in accordance with the text’s theology. I draw upon the insights of scholarship on the rhetoric and paideia in the New Testament’s discourses on hell (e.g., Meghan Henning, Educating Early Christians Through the Rhetoric of Hell, 2014), like the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16, to highlight the impact these stories are intended to have on the hearer or reader (with insights from Gwynne, Logic, Rhetoric and Legal Reasoning in the Quran, 2004). Following Christian Lange (Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions, 2016), the Qur’an’s material on the Otherworld appeals to our sense of imagination to provoke a powerful emotional response, especially if we put ourselves in the place of the nameless speakers of the parables. With our mind’s eye we are meant to see hell, imagine it, feel it, taste it, and—particularly in the case of these dialogues—hear the pain of the condemned.