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Dante's version of hell
Dante's version of hell
Dante's version of hell
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Imagine waking up one day and finding yourself in hell. What do you picture hell looks like? Who is there and why are you there? Dante Alighieri answers these questions from his own perspective in the Inferno translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Hell is a controversial subject with many different ways to consider what hell is and who deserves to go there. Different religions have different ideals when it comes to explaining what hell is, if they even acknowledge one, and how you end up there. Inferno is just an interpretation by Dante to show how he views hell from how it looks and who, from his time, would be there. If the it were to be updated today, there are, unfortunately, many more different choices to pick from to add to his Divine Comedy. …show more content…
(Alighieri 104-11). We can all think of at least one “famous” serial killer from the past 100 years; in fact, there have been far too many. Jeffery Dahmer would be one of those serial killers who, very quickly after execution, found themselves in hell. Honestly, he is the type that showed absolutely no remorse for his actions and he actually falls into many different categories of Dante’s hell, however, those other sins wouldn’t place him low enough in the circles. Dahmer didn’t just kill people to kill them. He enjoyed it. He did various different things with the bodies of his victims such as experimenting with them in attempt to make them into “zombies”, kept body parts as memorabilia and even so far as to eat the hearts of some of his victims. Along with murder, he was ultimately charged with dismemberment, cannibalism, rape and necrophilia (Crime Museum). If I were editing Dante’s work today, I would move murders to the lowest circle of hell instead of the traitor’s. He is a terrible human being who showed no remorse to irreversible crimes he had committed and his sin stretches further out than just violence. Judging by his crimes he could also fall into the First Circle with lust, Fifth Circle with anger, also in the Seventh Circle with the sodomites, and in various other sins found in the Eighth Circle. The punishment for murders in the Seventh Circle is float in a stream of boiling blood (Alighieri 107). I don’t find this as fitting as I do as the punishment in the lowest level of hell. The devil himself chews on the sinners. I feel this would be more appropriate as Dahmer is also guilty of
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
In the Inferno we follow the journey of Dante as he wanders off the path of moral truth and into Hell. The Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia ask Beatrice, Dante’s deceased love, to send some help. Thus, Virgil comes to the rescue and essentially guides Dante through Hell and back to the mortal world from which he came. However, things begin to seem kind of odd. When reading the Inferno one may begin to question the way Dante describes Hell and the things that occur within, or even the things we have always believed about Hell. Despite the way it is described and well known in western civilization, Hell is not at all how we expect it to be because of Dante's use of irony throughout this poetic masterpiece.
Dante introduces Satan in the “Inferno” as the worst sinner of all times, and he relates his complexity with the sins that he committed and his punishment. Satan is described as the angel who rebelled against God, and hence he has wings. The wings of Lucifer are not the wings that an angel would have; instead he has bat-like wings, which demonstrates that now he has the wings the dark creatures as bats have. He is firstly in the story presented as an impure monster that is trapped in ice and unable to escape. “No feathers had they, but as of a bat their fashion was, and he was waving them, so that three winds proceeded forth therefrom” (Canto 34, 50).Dante’s depiction of Satan is different from the common known version of Satan, which is
When reading Dante’s Inferno, you could see that the worst possible sin for him was betrayal, especially that of a master. He put the people that directly betrayed their masters in the very center of hell. These people were eaten alive by the devil. He had different opinions on what the ultimate sins committed were. When looking at how I would create my own hell, I to would put people in different levels of hell due to the sins they committed on Earth. First of all, I would give souls who weren’t baptized the chance to change that. There are several factors that come into play; maybe their parents didn’t believe in religion, or maybe they died before they got the chance to be baptized. Either way, I would allow souls who haven’t been baptized the opportunity to change. If they chose not to, then they would spend forever in Limbo. It’s difficult to say where I would put each and every sinner; there are several different aspects to take into consideration. The severity of the sin, what it planned out of simply out of rage, etc., but there is a certain category of people I would put in the bottom of hell. Here would reside the souls of all those who hurt children. There is something truly awful about these people. Kids have no way of really knowing just how bad the world is, and the people that hurt them make them grow up much too fast. They take away their innocence. There are even
In The Inferno of Dante, Dante creates a striking correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in hell for that sin. This simple idea serves to illuminate one of Dante’s recurring themes: the perfection of god’s justice. Bearing the inscription the gates of hell explicitly state that god was moved to create hell by justice. Wisdom was employed to know what punishments would be just, power to create the forms of justice, and love to show that the punishments are conditioned with compassion, however difficult it may be to recognize (and the topic of a totally separate paper). Certainly then, if the motive of hell’s creation was justice, then its purpose was (and still is) to provide justice. But what exactly is this justice that Dante refers to? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the So hell exists to punish those who sin against god, and the suitability of Hell’s specific punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradiso. Dante presents these principles in Inferno where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell the degrees of sin get progressively worse as do the severity of punishment. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
... He could be placed in his own circle of the corrupt politics, for he was banished for choosing the side that lost the political struggle for Florence. He could be placed in his own circle of the false prophets, for he envisions the afterlife, without receiving God’s revelation. He could be placed in his own circle of the hypocrites, for placing people in hell, while he himself has committed their sins. Despite the obvious flaws of Dante himself, he does give a clear vision of how punishments will be taken forth in the afterlife.
...t continues to thrive in today’s society because it presents a question of one’s actions and faith. The description of this work is both beautiful, in terms of wording, and grotesque, in punishment. Dante makes his audience contemplate their reason for being. The severity of sin and their horrid punishment made me ponder the way I live my everyday life because I feel that Hell is both real and a place for punishment. The action of doing the right thing presents a person with Paradise and thievery will award you with snake bites.
The Inferno is more than just a fictional story about someone traveling through the universe. It is actually more like an autobiographical journey of life through its author, Dante Alighieri’s eyes. Written in the early 1300s by a disgruntled Dante living in exile, he literally describes a man who has been trapped, and must find a way to escape. Allegorically, he’s telling us about the terrible moment of crisis that occurs in each one of our lives “when evil inside and outside of ourselves seems to block any hope for further constructive development”. Written originally as a long poem separated into cantos or songs, he basically wrote with the personal purpose of recording where all of the people he came in contact within his life, will go when they die. This could be one of three places; Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. He went on to design specific, fitting punishments or rewards based on the life each person led. Dante then tied this all togethor and made himself a character that walks the entire length of the conceptualized...
Inferno is the first and most famous of a three part series by Dante Alighieri known as the Divine Comedy that describes his journey to God through the levels of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise written in the early fourteenth century. Scholars spanning over nearly seven centuries have praised its beauty and complexity, unmatched by any other medieval poem. Patrick Hunt’s review, “On the Inferno,” states, “Dante’s extensive use of symbolism and prolific use of allegory— even in incredible anatomical detail—have been often plumbed as scholars have explored the gamut of his work’s classical, biblical, historical, and contemporary political significance” (9). In the story, each of the three main characters, Dante, Virgil, and Beatrice, represent
In the fourth and fifth circle the punishment is created by the actions of the souls to one another. In the cases of Caiaphas, Master Adam, and Archbishop Rugieri their punishments are worse than their fellows due to the actions of the souls around them. Even when it may appear contrary as the case of Francesca and Paolo does, or when a soul claims otherwise like the man from Navarrese one can learn that they are not contrary, but truly support the nature of soul’s interactions in hell. In this way the structure of hell pits soul against soul, further separating them from the community they lived in during their lives. As their actions wronged the community it is a just punishment that they are denied its gifts in the afterlife, as such they can only interact with souls in a manner that increases the punishments they
Many arguments have been made that Dante’s Inferno glimmers through here and there in Milton’s Paradise Lost. While at first glance the two poems seem quite drastically different in their portrayal of Hell, but scholars have made arguments that influence from Dante shines through Milton’s work as well as arguments refuting these claims. All of these arguments have their own merit and while there are instances where a Dantean influence can be seen throughout Paradise Lost, Milton’s progression of evil and Satan are quite different from Dante. Dante’s influence on Milton is noted by many scholars and is very apparent in several instances throughout Paradise Lost, however, Milton shows a progression of evil through his own vision of Satan and creates a Hell that is less meticulously constructed than Dante’s and more open to interpretation.
Hell is a place full of wonder and mystery. No one is quite sure as to what it is like, but many people have an opinion as to the mystery that is the dark underworld. Hell is a place one would imagine with suffering and punishment for the damned, ruled by Satan. Satan is almost as much of a mystery as Hell is. There are many images that give an idea as to what Satan may look like, but no one is true certain of the real face of the beast. Many people have theorized the structure of Hell, but two poets have captured two centralized ideas of how Hell is set up and the images of what Satan may look like. Dante Alighieri and John Milton have created two different yet universal depictions of Hell and Satan. Dante Alighieri was an Italian poet who based some of his book after Milton, The Inferno was a literary piece who depicted Hell as many levels and Satan as a suffering monster. Whereas John Milton, an English poet, showed Hell as a dungeon beneath the Earth created to imprison Satan for his betrayal against God. These two poets had very different opinions on Satan and Hell, but also showed similarities in their description of the two.
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Inferno, the first part of Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is the story of a man's journey through Hell and the observance of punishments incurred as a result of the committance of sin. In all cases the severity of the punishment, and the punishment itself, has a direct correlation to the sin committed. The punishments are fitting in that they are symbolic of the actual sin; in other words, "They got what they wanted." (Literature of the Western World, p.1409) According to Dante, Hell has two divisions: Upper Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of incontinence, and Lower Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of malice. The divisions of Hell are likewise split into levels corresponding to sin. Each of the levels and the divisions within levels 7,8, and 9 have an analogous historical or mythological figure used to illustrate and exemplify the sin.