Words… Without them what would life be? They can mean so much when strung together correctly, but can also just be a senseless jumble of nothingness. Children often struggle to overcome the tiresome task of spelling: a seemingly meaningless string of letters. Even after that is accomplished, there are still so many different meanings to words. Words can be interpreted in any way the suits the reader at that moment in time. The word “spirit,” for example, according to Webster’s Dictionary, means the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power (Merriam-Webster). In Dante Alighieri’s The Dark Wood of Error, taken from The Divine Comedy, he uses the word spirit in line 25 while describing a dangerous “obstacle” that no one has ever survived. Spirit is a word that has multiple meanings to it, which can change the meaning of this portion of the poem- lines 22 through 27- depending on the way the reader interprets it.
Dante wrote The Divine Comedy in a new language he called “Italian,” which was based upon Tuscan Dialects, Sicilian and some elements of Latin, and various other dialects (Kahn). Spirit is derived from the Italian word “spirito,” which ultimately means one’s soul (Collins). One would believe that this meaning of the word is the one that Dante intended to use in this poem. He is saying that his “spirit” or “soul” is a fugitive to everything that he has had to endure. He is the first person to ever survive this sort of exhausting way of life, but even though he did, he is still not necessarily “alive.” The “dangerous waters” he encountered could have been hard times in his life that he will never be able to completely escape from. He will forever be a fugitive to his own soul, to his own ...
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...oever may be reading the poem; all of them have a surface level and a deeper meaning that affects the meaning of that part of the poem. Soul, ghost, attitude, each definition changes the way the man in the poem lives the rest of his life (or in one case does not live.) No one can be sure of how the narrator really ended up being; that is for the reader to decide on their own.
Works Cited
Alighieri, Dante. "The Divine Comedy, "The Dark Wood of Error"." n.d. 23.
Collins. Collins English-Italian Dictionary. 2014. April 2014 .
Harper, Douglas. Online Etymolgy Dictionary. 2001-2014. 2014 .
Kahn, Kathy. Poetry Liz Short. March 2014.
Merriam-Webster. Merriam- Webster Dictionary- Spirit. 2014. March 2014 .
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
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The poem starts out with the daughter 's visit to her father and demand for money; an old memory is haunting the daughter. feeding off her anger. The daughter calls the father "a ghost [who] stood in [her] dreams," indicating that he is dead and she is now reliving an unpleasant childhood memory as she stands in front of his
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Hell, it isn 't a place where anyone really wants to end up, well permanently that is. Dante Alighieri however really enjoys taking a “trip” to hell to teach us and enlighten us on the ins and outs and where exactly all the sinners end up. Alighieri tackles this daunting task of making all of hell fit into a small pocket-able, yet very enjoyable story by using a variety of literary styles and devices. However, let’s take a look at one specifically, symbolism. This is one of the most prevalent and obvious device, but it is the most important because it not only makes the story easier for the reader to understand, as well as make the book as enjoyable as it was.
As readers in the modern age, it is sometimes hard for us to examine and understand the words and messages due to the bridge between the ancient classical poems and the modern age poems. In Dante’s inferno poem, it is very challenging to analyze the information in such a rigorously written poem and relate the same poem to the said writer (Williams). Understanding the poem goes beyond the fiery depths of hell and into the real world of Dante and the surroundings that influenced his writing and creativity. The involvement of Dante Allegro in ancient political factions, in his own city state, led to his exile and consequently his demise. His mortality will forever be felt from his work as readers will constantly warn of the rot in the political and church corruption.
The Shadow of the Galilean by Gerd Theissen is a fictional narrative about a Jewish merchant, Andreas, searching for information about a group of people known as Essenes, John the Baptist, and Jesus of Nazareth. While traveling through Jerusalem Andreas was imprisoned by the Romans thinking he was a part of a demonstration against Polite when his mission was to find Jesus. Andreas writes, “I never met Jesus on my travels through Galilee. I just found traces of him everywhere: anecdotes and stories, traditions and rumors. But everything that I heard of him fits together.
There were multiple uses of the word soul in the final chapter, many of which talked of the inability for a man’s soul to escape the forest.
Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy is said to be the single greatest epic poem of all time. The opening story of the character of Dante the Pilgrim is told in the first of the three divisions: The Inferno. The Inferno is a description of Dante’s journey down through Hell and of the several degrees of suffering and many mythical creatures that he encounters on the way. Throughout his travel Dante displays many different feelings and actions but the emotion that summarizes the entire poem is fear. While some of his character traits change as his mind matures and acknowledges the justice being carried out, from the very beginning until the final Canto, his fear does not subside. This does well to reinforce the symbolism of Dante as Everyman and serves to direct the reader to the moral purpose of Divine Comedy, because of the humility and dependence upon God that fear produces. In the first Canto, which serves as an introduction to the entire comedy, Dante encounters the three beasts which impede his progress out of the dark woods. Coming upon the She-Wolf he writes: "This last beast brought my spirit down so low / with fear that seized me at the sight of her, / lost all hope of going up the hill" (I.52-54). Dante is so shaken by the appearances of the three beasts that he rushes headlong into the dark woods he has just come out of. This is only the first obstacle Dante encounters, but it proves an insurmountable one.
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In the end of the narrator’s consciousness, the tone of the poem shifted from a hopeless bleak
In the poem “The Raven” Edgar Allan Poe wrote about grief, sadness, and depression. He is writing about a young girl named Lenore. She is depicted as pure, beautiful, and the very thing that the main character lives for, his beloved Lenore. When he loses her, he is sent into a spiral of depression. This leads him to believe that a black raven pecking at his door was sent by Lenore. Through out the poem “The Raven” Poe uses many things to illustrate the theme darkness, such as the words he so carefully uses, the symbols that are chosen, and the description of everything.
From this quote, it shows how the rest of the poem was going to be dark and dim. At the time Poe had written this poem, he had already faced a lot of tragedy throughout his life. it was easy to see how the poem actually reflected a lot about Poe the troubles he faced in...
The heart, personified, seems to be referring to another person, unless the heart also talks in the third person. Since the he is capitalized, it is easy to believe that Dickinson is actually alluding to Jesus. If this is the case, could she be blurring the line of time in order to demonstrate how pain is recurring no matter the century, and the numbness that follows resonates with many. Line 5 does not quite give us the sense of ultimate death, but more of a zombie feel. The imagery of a person walking mechanically gives us the sense of someone caught between life and death.Once again, Dickinson is seemingly describing the emotional numbness of losing a loved one. My final point come from the final stanza,’Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the snow”. A simile comparing the people freezing to death in the snow to remembering the numbing pain after a death. Again, the contradiction gives the feeling that someone is caught between life and death. I think this particular poem conveys the sense of confusion that shakes us when we experience a great