Critiquing a Few Lines from Dante

Poems can say many things, mean many things, and represent many things. You can read a poem, think it is about flowers in a field, but if you look at it at a more in depth perspective, it can talk about the depression of someone, or some issue the author wants to address. There can also be other many issues or ideas discussed in a simple line of poetry, depending how you approach it. The poem The Inferno by Dante is a poem describing Dante’s journey through hell. He describes hell in nine different circles, all having different punishments for different sins. For example, if you murdered your neighbor, you would drown in a pool of blood for eternity. However, the particular passage that will be discussed is the “Up on Your Feet” passage in canto twenty-four. This piece of the poem is broken into four stanzas, “’Up on your feet! This is no time to tire!’ / my Master cried. ‘The man who lies asleep / will never waken fame, and his desire—and all his life drift past him like a dream, / and the traces of his memory fade from time / like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream. —Now, therefore, rise. Control your breath, and call / upon the strength of soul that wins all battles / unless it sink in the gross body’s fall. — There is a longer ladder yet to climb: / this much is not enough. If you understand me, / show that you mean to profit from your time.” (Pg. 207, lines 46-57). This passage, as you can see, contains many messages that are contained in this poem. The “Up on Your Feet” Passage from Dante’s The Inferno has three specific messages: never give up, when you start something always finish it, and lastly if you do not try you will not succeed.
To begin, a major message from “Up on Your Feet” is that you should never give up no ...

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..., the “Up on Your Feet” passage from Dante’s The Inferno has three messages: never give up, do not start something unless you are going to finish it, and lastly you will never succeed if you don’t try. The first message that was discussed was that you can never give up; Virgil was trying to motivate Dante into continuing on their journey because Dante was getting ready to give up. The next message was do not start something unless you intend on finishing it. Dante started this journey, and Virgil was going to make sure he finished there unpleasant journey. The last message that was discussed was the fact that if you never try, you will never succeed. If Dante didn’t try to get through the rest of their journey, he would never become successful, or gain what he desired. Many messages can be shown through a poem, and there is a huge variety of messages for us to find.