“Midway on our lives journey, I found myself in a dark woods, the right road lost” (Cantos I 392)
There is said to be three major parts of everyone’s journey on the path to judgement day; birth, life and death. As one travels through these three parts they must continue to push forward only following the right path (Christianity) and if one is to stray from the path they may lose their way to salvation. In Dante’s The Divine Comedy we travel alongside one such man who has lost his way, Dante the Pilgrim (he is to represent the “every day” man). As he awakens in a dark woods, a symbol for his straying from the righteous path, he is not truly aware of what is to come. As his journey begins his world views are that everyone deserves a second chance, as did he. As his journey through hell nears to an end, his world views have changed as he comes to term that sin should not be pitied and those who he has met through his travels deserve their punishments.
The poem was written in the early 1300’s after Dante the poet’s exile from Italy. Many religious and political issues lead to the creation of The Divine Comedy and the poem deals with those who Dante may have known or had knowledge of and those he liked or did not like. The beginning two Cantos, Dante is not fully prepared for what is to come. The foyer to hell or “the dark forest” is where Dante is greeted with the first set of threes. They’re multiple sets of threes, or divine trinities, throughout the novel. This is because it is said that three is seen as a holy number. In Christianity the trinity is represented as Jesus Christ, God and The Holy Ghost. The second set of threes is found in cantos two, as our “average man” Dante the Pilgrim is questioning if he is truly great eno...
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... (Cantos VIII 417). Here it is clear that his worldview has changed and his belief that the sinners should have a second chance is no longer. As they reach the Ninth circle where the greatest of sinners are damned, Dante no longer feels pity. As he approaches Friar Alberigo, he is cautious about wiping away his icy tears but after hearing his story about killing his relatives inside his own house he states to the man, “To be mean to him was a generous reward” (Cantos XXXIII 507)
Through symbolizing and allegory, Dante the poet is able to show his views of religious and politics through the journey of Dante the Pilgrim. As the journey began, Dante the Pilgrim was heavenly sympathetic towards all sinners in the beginning circles of hell but as the number of circles grew higher his compassion towards the sinners decreased as he gained a strong belief of divine justice.
The purpose of the pilgrim's journey through hell is to show, first hand, the divine justice of God and how Christian morality dictates how, and to what degree, sinners are punished. Also, the journey shows the significance of God's grace and how it affects not only the living, but the deceased as well. During his trip through hell, the character of Dante witnesses the true perfection of God's justice in that every sinner is punished in the same nature as their sins. For instance, the wrathful are to attack each other for all eternity and the soothsayers are forever to walk around with their heads on backwards. Furthermore, Dante discovers that hell is comprised of nine different circles containing sinners guilty of one type of sin, and that these circles are in order based upon how great an opposition the sin is to Christian morality and the ultimate will of God. We see here how Christianity plays a major role in the structure of hell and the degree to which each sinner is punished. Lastly, we can look at the story and see the importance of the grace of God not only to Dante during his journey, but how it affects the souls in hell and purgatory as well.
In the beginning, doubts are seen when Dante does not know that blaming others prevents one from moving forward. This causes him to wonder why some souls are placed in Hell. Moving forward can only be achieved by changing merit. Recognizing that one has sinned and accepting the fact that the sin was committed by his own will helps the soul reach grace. As seen in Inferno, Francesca recognizes that she has sinned for she tells Dante that her “[soul] …...
In Purgatorio, Dante’s journey continues under Virgil’s guidance from preparing to ascend the mountain of Purgatory until reaching the garden of earthly paradise, at which point Beatrice arrives to take on the role of guide through the rest of purgatory. However, along the way, Dante interacts with several other secondary guides on brief portions of his journey. Individually, Cato, Sordello, Statius, and Matelda serve as corrected counterparts to other characters in the Divine Comedy, classical mythology, and the Bible. Collectively, Cato, Sordello, Statius, and Matelda serve to bridge classical and Christian teachings, both of which are critical in defining the values of Dante-author’s Purgatory, and in shaping Dante-character’s will as the purpose of the journey through purgatory.
Throughout his journey Dante the pilgrims meets different souls who share their gruesome stories, and Dante the pilgrim does initially sympathize with them. Eventually as he gets lower into hell he does not pity the souls anymore. In Canto three Dante states "Inscribed on the lintel of an archway, master I said, this saying 's hard for me."(Inferno, III; 11-12). The claim can be made that Dante is very different from the dammed souls he sees in hell, and he is aware of that. In a way Dante sort of separates himself from those souls he meets. A single minded mentality is born unlike in Beowulf where his pride helps him to solve a problem that will help his
The Divine Comedy, written in the 14th century by Dante Alighieri, is a heroic epic. Throughout Dante’s literary work, he outlines his scientific understandings of the world, his political views and provides the reader with a moral compass and spiritual map of which to follow. This poem is written in three parts, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradisio, each of which is broken down into individual cantos. Inferno includes 34 cantos, whereas Purgatrio and Paradiso each contain 33 cantos, however, the first canto of Inferno is really an introduction to the poem.
Dante’s work is very hard to comprehend and understand to many modern readers hence the importance of using films or other poems with similar creativity in order for modern readers to understand the poem. The various journey of Dante to hell helps the readers to have a picture of how hell is and how real it is.Dante uses his poem to expose the rot in the church and also how dirty politics has become.
Rudd, Jay. "Inferno: Cantos 1–:4."Critical Companion to Dante, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc, 2008. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 June 2014
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
In conclusion, we can see that Dante presents the reader with a potentially life-altering chance to participate in his journey through Hell. Not only are we allowed to follow Dante's own soul-searching journey, we ourselves are pressed to examine the state of our own souls in relation to the souls in Inferno. It is not just a story to entertain us; it is a display of human decision and the perpetual impact of those decisions.
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 paradise. 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.
In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet. At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.
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.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
It would seem that everything Dante observes throughout his journey would be enlightening. However, through the admonishments of Virgil, it becomes apparent that there exist two distinct ways of perceiving: practical, active observation and unreceptive, disadvantageous perception. It is through practical and active observation that Dante comprehends the lessons of his journey. Unreceptive perception fails to provide valuable information for Dante to use during his life on Earth. In addition, with practical, active observation, Dante not only learns about the sinners but he learns about himself when his journey is reflected by a living soul in hell.
“Midway along the journey of our life” (Canto 1) Dante the Pilgrim says at the beginning of his journey. Through out the comedy and the Pilgrims vision of hell, I believe he was truly on a journey of self-discovery. Dante encountered a guide to help him in his journey throughout the nine circles of hell. Going deeper and deeper into hell Dante realized many different sins that he could have committed in his life and realized the things that he did not need anymore. Base on the end of his journey I believe that Dante truly found himself and found a new person within himself.