Dante Allighieri's Inferno

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Every human being must find a certain motivation or inspiration to give them the momentum they require to achieve the goals they have in life. For some it is the incentive to be active, to accomplish tasks, even to do the mundane a simple tasks life may demand. Several influential individuals who have reached a level of recognition in their life will give words of advice to those who are seeking to become successful themselves. Often these are words of encouragement through the periods we find strenuous, their words are meant to help us weather the storms that may come our way in trying times. Dante’s The Inferno is meant to motivate in a similar manner as the successful in our day attempt to do, only Dante uses his personal hell to create speculation and to stimulate people to act with a more moral behavior than they were in his day. The lines from the passage quoted above were not only written for the readers, but most likely for the author as well, asking that we take heart even in the difficult moments and to continue forward because there is much more yet to come. Dante uses many examples leading up to this point to help motivate those who venture to read his poem. For example, the wrathful and the sullen in the fifth circle of Dante’s hell, the heretics in the sixth, and the violent in the third circle. Each depicts a punishment fit for the crime and it is when these lines are spoken that we begin to connect the inspirational words to the very identity of the entire poem.
One of the first punishments we observe comes from the fifth circle of Dante’s hell, the wrathful and the sullen, as the author expresses his thoughts of the fitting consequence with each sin linking it to the motivational passage in the twenty fourth ca...

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...arming one’s self and the punishment is the incentive the value the body we have in much the same way as the passage in the twenty fourth canto is incentive to continue on even in hard times.
Humans are a generally lazy species and are often in need of a spiritual or emotional motivation before we are physically able to do what is expected of us either by others or personally. For Dante, at one point he needed the a personal uplift and as a result wrote the lines from canto twenty four to create the motive for himself. Now his lines, not only at that portion of the poem but the poem as an entirety, serve as inspiration to all who read his work. Whether it is the marsh of circle five, the morgue of circle six, or the forest in circle seven, each have their own purpose and are design to inspire moral behavior and use of the talents an individual was given upon birth.

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