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Dante's inferno analysis
Dante's inferno analysis
Dante's inferno analysis
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Hell has always been depicted with a negative connotation and has always been a place where no one wishes to be once they die. Hell is seen as a place where you go to and spend eternity, after you have died, due to the sins you have committed during your life on earth. Hell is a place where people who have committed sins go to and pay for their sins with pain that is inflicted on them. This essay informs about three different points of view on Hell. Which are Dante’s book titled The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno, Martin Luther’s point of view from his article titled 95 Theses, and my overall point of view. In the book, The Divine Comedy: Volume 1: Inferno Dante describes his view of Hell. In his Hell, Dante created Nine Circles …show more content…
The Third Circle is Gluttony, and the fourth circle Greed these souls could not control their appetite for materialistic goods. When the Pilgrim is in the Third Circle he states that Hell is a “. . . sad place, afflicted by such torture” (Dante 122). The Fifth Circle is Wrath, those who are active haters, and the Sixth Circle is Heresy, those who have gone against the Church. Dante states that the Fifth Circle was filled with hatred where the souls “fought each other, not with hands alone, but struck with head and chest and feet as well, with teeth they tare each other limb from limb” (133). The Seventh Circle is Violence, in this circle there are three sections, the first one for those who committed violence against your neighbors, the second one for violence against yourself, and the third for those who committed violence against God, Art, or Nature. The Eighth Circle is Fraud, within this circle there are also different sections called Malabolgia’s. The Ten Malabolgia’s are Panders and Seducers, Flatterers, Simoniacs, Sorcerers, Barrators, Hypocrites, Thieves, Deceivers, Sowers of Discord, and Falsifiers. The Ninth and final Circle is Treachery, where you find people who betrayed someone they had a special relationship with. This last …show more content…
When the Pilgrim meets Virgil and he offers to take him through Hell to God, he begins to feel doubtful about himself stating “But why am I to go? Who allows me to?” meaning that The Pilgrim is scared about the journey he is to face (80). Despite being already dead, the soul in Hell still have to suffer a great deal of pain. For example, in the Seventh Circle there is a sand land where there is “. . . a fall of slowly raining broad flaks of fire showered steadily” (Dante 197). Aside from being a place that afflicts great pain Dante also states that Hell is a “. . . disgusting overflow of stench” (168). All this is what Dante thought of when he spoke of Hell, however I think differently. I was raised as a Catholic who went to Church every other weekend. Despite being raised a Catholic I had never really thought about Hell before this course in such a depth. Everyone has an idea of Hell, but my idea was not as complex as Dante’s. In my opinion Hell was an empty space full of void. Unlike Dante’s Hell with different Circles, my viewpoint on Hell was all one endless space, because the souls in my Hell were all together no matter what sin they committed. In Dante’s Hell it had different authority figures within the Circles, my viewpoint was ruled by one ruler, The Devil. When I thought of Hell before this course I pictured a place where the
In most ancient literature some sort of divine justice is used to punish people's acts in life. This is that case with Dante's Inferno, where the Author categorizes hell in 9 circles. Circle 9 being the lowest sins and punishments as the circles decrease. From the time this was written to now in days many things have changed, and things are not seen the same no more. Back then sins like greed and gluttony were ranked as high sins but now people would probably rank those very low with other things like murder way on top. Yet the basic structure set by Dante remains.
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 Dante’s Inferno hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number correlates to the grimmer the sin and the pain you will endure. However, I do not completely agree with Dante’s version of hell, perhaps due to the difference in time periods. In this essay I will be pointing out my concerns with Dante’s description of hell and how I would recreate hell if I were Dante.
Dante begins his struggle when he becomes lost in the dark forest and then later finds himself in the deep depths of hell with Virgil. “Everyman—that is, any human being—finds himself in the dark state of sin and error after having wandered from the true moral course established by God” (Rudd 10). He encounters a ghostly guy named Virgil who was the amazing Latin/Roman poet that guides him through the nine chambers of hell ba...
“Early in the spring of 1300, "midway along the road of our life," Dante is lost and alone in a dark, foreboding forest. To survive this ordeal, he must visit the three realms of the afterlife, beginning with Hell.” (Smith) Dante’s Inferno, one of the great classical poems that have come out of literature that’s topic is hell. Dante’s Inferno, gives a descriptive look into hell, from the eyes of Dante. Dante goes into detail about every part of hell. The people, what it looks like, sins to go there, the whole shah-bang. Dante splits up hell into nine different parts. In which he sends different types of sinners to each part. Each hell is made up differently, each has different systems that make up that particular systems. For example, circle three, has Cerberus the three headed dog, and another circle is completely frozen over. There are three circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno that are the best in the book: Circle one, circle six, and circle three.
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 Alighieri's The Inferno is a first-person poem that tells the story of Dante’s journey through the nine circles of Hell after he strays from the rightful path. Each circle of Hell contains sinners who have committed different sins during their lifetime and are punished based on the severity of their sins. When taking the beliefs and moral teachings of the Catholic Church into consideration, these punishments seem especially unfair and extreme. Souls residing in Purgatory receive punishments despite the fact that this level is not considered part of Hell. As Dante and his guide, Virgil, enter Ante-Inferno (also known as Purgatory), Virgil explains to him that this is where the souls of those who did not take a side between God and Satan or did not do anything during their lifetime that would determine whether they would go to Hell or Heaven (III. 30-37.
Fire and brimstone, flames engulfing people, and the endless cries from the souls that are suffering are all things that are commonly associated with hell. It’s not thought of as some place of just punishment, but filled with pain and torment. The question raised is whether or not it is actually full of fire and heat, or is it something different. When we read about hell in Dante’s Inferno, he describes the place not only full of fire, but also of ice, wind, and rain. All of the elements sit on different levels that have been thoughtfully laid out by Dante himself. Carol Forman speaks of how Dante set up his hell, “Hell is structured around Dante’s concept of sin.
...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.
The geography for each circle of Hell's misery is distinctly arranged to coincide with the sin of the sinners contained within. In Canto V, we are taken to the prison of those souls who were unable to master their own desires. These are those who "betrayed reason to their appetite" (1033), allowing the lust of flesh and carnal things overcome their God-given human reasoning. It is here that we see a dark and deafening Hell, full with the roar of the anguish of the condemned dead. Dante sees a great whirling storm of souls that are forever tossed and battered on their "hellish flight of storm and counterstorm" (1033). It is conveyed to us that each soul's path in the whirling cyclone is all but steady, blown about in a constantly changing torment with no direction or destination...
As mentioned above, the structure of Hell is determined by the sins people commit during their lifetime (the specific morals people disobey) and how ‘bad’ these sins are considered to be (within their respective divisions). The sins being described in The Inferno abide by the rules written for the Catholic religion in The Bible, which is why The Inferno is often viewed as a religious text. This explains why Aristotle and Dante would disagree on a few key points of what it means to be virtuous. Aristotle is adamant about not having excess nor deficiency and rather finding a middle ground (mean), whereas Dante abides by the virtues laid out in The Bible. Hell usually personifies what would be considered excessive rather than deficiency in Aristotle’s code of ethics because of its background in the Catholic religion. One example of this exists with humility. In the Catholic context, humility stands a virtue that is praised in The Bible (and therefore Inferno) whereas in Nicomachean Ethics humility is a vice to be looked down on. This continues to be the case with many different excesses and virtues for
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is taken on a journey through hell. On this journey, Dane sees the many different forms of sin, and each with its own unique contrapasso, or counter-suffering. Each of these punishments reflects the sin of a person, usually offering some ironic way of suffering as a sort of revenge for breaking God’s law. As Dante wrote this work and developed the contrapassos, he allows himself to play God, deciding who is in hell and why they are there. He uses this opportunity to strike at his foes, placing them in the bowels of hell, saying that they have nothing to look forward to but the agony of suffering and the separation from God.
Inferno begins with Dante lost in a dark wood. When he tries to exit, three impassible beasts blocked his path. Dante is rescued when Beatrice sends the spirit of Virgil to lead him to salvation. However, Dante must journey through hell first. Dante and Virgil then journey through the nine circles of hell, with the occasional help of a heavenly messenger sent to aid Dante in his journey. Dante meets many significant people and hears their stories in each circle. The First Circle of Hell or Limbo is resided by virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans. In the Second Circle, Dante and Virgil find people who were overcome by lust. In the Third Circle, they find souls of gluttons that are seen as more than the usual excessive eating and drinking but also drug addiction. In the Fourth Circle, Dante and Virgil see the souls of people who are punished for greed.
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.