This city was poles apart from the one I was forced to desert. Concrete towers scarred with bullet-holes. Infantile screams amplifying on every street corner, like the one of my baby girl, deceased with her mother, merely hours old. Blood varnished limbs, maimed by mines. The grass a field of rose petals, scattered with the parts of those divorced from themselves. No hearts to be broken. Except mine. I had barely wandered into the tin maze when a small boy, no taller than my waist, brought out his rusty Stanley knife, and implanted it into the unsuspecting dog’s loin in front of me, spraying blood onto my thighs. A girl wandered to my right, ribcage protruding to where it created red stretch marks. Christmas. A table, on the decking, surrounded by family. Obesity at every seat, the guilt of their stoutness reminding me of the moments before they all perished. Forever. I had been helpless. She turned around. I saw the flies biting at her, a buffet of self-decline. This was life at its most pure, fighting God to survive as you eke to the brutal end. I was woken by a truncheon lambasting my buttocks. I bitterly murmur away at school, before the teacher hollers towards my corner, and requests I stand up, hands together in front of me. I close my eyes and the excruciating pain hits me, punishment for my acrimoniousness. I see through the half eye that wasn’t shrouded with sleep or Trachoma, which for weeks now had made any attempt to see futile. The officers surrounded me, whilst my fellow inmates observed them beat me once more, as I developed bruises like an apple. Then they release me from the cell, leaving the captives to squabble over the bed furthest from the excrement and closest to the dormer, showing them life away fro... ... middle of paper ... ... and I had already lost my family, dignity and hope. It is time to join my family in heaven, although that’s unlikely. I most likely shall journey my way into one of the circles of Hell. I should probably be divided up between them. Dante Alighiere had written that poem especially for me, and it represented the voyage I was about to embark on. From an affluent position in life, I had found the bitter end. But it didn’t have to be this way. If I wasn’t desperate I would never have went to prison. I am fully literate, and fluent in not only English, but Portuguese too. The clang of the level crossing bell thunders through my ears. My fate is in my hands. If I roll now I can live, and be a better person, and return to my old life. I roll towards the rosebush, ready to start my new life. As soon as I leave the tracks I am going to become an interpreter. Then it hits me.
A storm such as Katrina undoubtedly ruined homes and lives with its destructive path. Chris Rose touches upon these instances of brokenness to elicit sympathy from his audience. Throughout the novel, mental illness rears its ugly head. Tales such as “Despair” reveal heart-wrenching stories emerging from a cycle of loss. This particular article is concerned with the pull of New Orleans, its whisper in your ear when you’ve departed that drags you home. Not home as a house, because everything physical associated with home has been swept away by the storm and is now gone. Rather, it is concerned with home as a feeling, that concept that there is none other than New Orleans. Even when there is nothing reminiscent of what you once knew, a true New Orleanian will seek a fresh start atop the foundation of rubbish. This is a foreign concept for those not native to New Orleans, and a New Orleanian girl married to a man from Atlanta found her relationship split as a result of flooding waters. She was adamant about staying, and he returned to where he was from. When he came back to New Orleans for her to try and make it work, they shared grim feelings and alcohol, the result of which was the emergence of a pact reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. This couple decided they would kill themselves because they could see no light amongst the garbage and rot, and failure was draining them of any sense of optimism. She realized the fault in this agreement,
In spite of the “pleasing human traits” of some of the sinners, Hollander argues that “we are never authorized by the poem” to truly sympathise with the sinners, because Dante insists on God’s justice (106,107). Indeed, inscribed over the gates of hell is “Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore” (Sacred justice moved my architect, III,4).
Individually, the characters of Cato, Sordello, Statius, and Matelda each serve as corrected counterparts to other characters, allowing Dante to learn by comparisons. As a whole, these secondary guides are critical in shaping Dante-author’s vision of Purgatory and the lessons Dante-character is meant to learn. They bridge the gap between classical and Christian wisdom, and further the development of his Christian poet identity, to allow him to progress beyond his poetic models. They exemplify freedom, hope, divine guidance, and love as the key values in Purgatory, defining Dante’s Purgatorial experience and shaping his will to be virtuous enough to enter Paradise, the next step of his journey.
With matted hair and a battered body, the creature looked at the heartless man outside the cage. Through the dark shadows you could only see a pair of eyes, but those eyes said it all. The stream of tears being fought off, the glazed look of sheer suffering and despair screamed from the center of her soul, but no one cared. In this day in age I am ashamed to think that this is someone's reality, that this is an accurate description of a human being inside a Canadian women's prison . Exposing the truth behind these walls reveals a chauvinistic, corrupt process that serves no greater purpose. The most detrimental aspect of all is society's refusal to admit the seriousness of the situation and take responsibility for what has happened.
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” This maxim applies to the poet Dante Alighieri, writer of The Inferno in the 1300s, because it asserts the need to establish oneself as a contributor to society. Indeed, Dante’s work contributes much to Renaissance Italy as his work is the first of its scope and size to be written in the vernacular. Due to its readability and availability, The Inferno is a nationalistic symbol. With this widespread availability also comes a certain social responsibility; even though Dante’s audience would have been familiar with the religious dogma, he assumes the didactic role of illustrating his own version of Christian justice and emphasizes the need for a personal understanding of divine wisdom and contrapasso, the idea of the perfect punishment for the crime. Dante acts as both author and narrator, completing a physical and spiritual journey into the underworld with Virgil as his guide and mentor. The journey from darkness into light is an allegory full of symbolism, much like that of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which shows a philosopher’s journey towards truth. Therefore, Dante would also agree with the maxim, “Wise men learn by others’ harms; fools scarcely by their own,” because on the road to gaining knowledge and spiritual enlightenment, characters who learn valuable lessons from the misfortunes of others strengthen their own paradigms. Nonetheless, the only true way to gain knowledge is to experience it first hand. Dante’s character finds truth by way of his own personal quest.
The night was tempestuous and my emotions were subtle, like the flame upon a torch. They blew out at the same time that my sense of tranquility dispersed, as if the winds had simply come and gone. The shrill scream of a young girl ricocheted off the walls and for a few brief seconds, it was the only sound that I could hear. It was then that the waves of turmoil commenced to crash upon me. It seemed as though every last one of my senses were succumbed to disperse from my reach completely. As everything blurred, I could just barely make out the slam of a door from somewhere alongside me and soon, the only thing that was left in its place was an ominous silence.
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.
The story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.
As I inched my way toward the cliff, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I could feel the coldness of the rock beneath my feet when my toes curled around the edge in one last futile attempt at survival. My heart was racing like a trapped bird, desperate to escape. Gazing down the sheer drop, I nearly fainted; my entire life flashed before my eyes. I could hear stones breaking free and fiercely tumbling down the hillside, plummeting into the dark abyss of the forbidding black water. The trees began to rapidly close in around me in a suffocating clench, and the piercing screams from my friends did little to ease the pain. The cool breeze felt like needles upon my bare skin, leaving a trail of goose bumps. The threatening mountains surrounding me seemed to grow more sinister with each passing moment, I felt myself fighting for air. The hot summer sun began to blacken while misty clouds loomed overhead. Trembling with anxiety, I shut my eyes, murmuring one last pathetic prayer. I gathered my last breath, hoping it would last a lifetime, took a step back and plun...
Dante makes himself everyman, and the journey that God decreed through hell is one man’s personal transcendent journey from deep intellectual moral confusion to a sound and steadfast faith and hope, in which Dante renews his faith. Dante awakens our hope, and warns against moral complacency by peeling away the dangerous illusions of adequacy, leading one upward, toward the eternal heart of reality. Dante compels the reader to share his growing abhorrence of sin and his obligation to uphold God’s will. The poem’s purpose is to re-awaken Dante, and, by extension, the reader, to the reality of sin and the accompanying need for confession and repentance, to return to the straight path that leads to eternal salvation.
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.
In The Inferno Dante’s Immortal Drama of a Journey Through Hell is a work written by Dante Alighieri. In this work, Dante allows the reader to experience his every move. His art of language, sensitivity to the surroundings of nature, and his knowledge allow him to capture and draw the attention of the reader. In Canto 6, the Gluttons; Canto 13, Suicide, and Canto 23, the Hypocrite is where you see Alighieri do his best work. He excels in portraying the supernatural world of hell. In each canto, Dante combines his art of language with his sensitivity to nature to set the stage. He then reinforces the image with examples that call upon his knowledge.
“If one speaks about torture, one must take care not to exaggerate,” Jean Améry view of torture comes from a place of uneasiness (22). He discusses in his book At The Mind’s Limits, about the torture that he underwent while a prisoner in Auschwitz. In his chapter titled “Torture”, he goes into deep description of not only the torture he endured, but also how that torture never leaves a person. Améry goes to great lengths to make sure that the torture he speaks of is accurate and as he says on page 22, not exaggerated.
Gresham M. Sykes describes the society of captives from the inmates’ point of view. Sykes acknowledges the fact that his observations are generalizations but he feels that most inmates can agree on feelings of deprivation and frustration. As he sketches the development of physical punishment towards psychological punishment, Sykes follows that both have an enormous effect on the inmate and do not differ greatly in their cruelty.
This short story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. It is unclear to the readers how the world got to be this way. This story takes place four years after all this chaos began. The narrator does an excellent job setting the scene throughout the story using lots of details. It is revealed throughout the story that it takes place during