The Angel Of The Fifth Terrace In Dante's Inferno

The angel of zeal then appears and directs them forward to the fifth terrace, avarice and prodigality. Dante speaks with the former Pope Adrian V, who explains why their faces are bound downward. He shares that it’s due to their eyes being fixed on earthly goods and not heavenly ones. Hugh Capet, who established the Capetian dynasty, calls out more examples of greed to Dante and Virgil. After Dante and Virgil speak with Hugh, they leave him and the mountain begins to shake, but Dante does not stop and continues on his way. Later on a soul explains to Dante that the mountain shakes when a soul has reached purification. Dante then leaves the fifth terrace and has yet another P removed from his forehead, he then enters into the sixth terrace, gluttony. Dante makes his way through this level and is greeted by the angel of Abstinence who moves him along to the seventh terrace, lust. Here Dante finds “a wall of flame that shoots out and up from the inner bank of the cliff, forcing them to walk at the extreme outer edge” (Dante 334). The angel of chastity removes the last P from Dante forehead and Virgil leaves Dante with a speech on his moral development. Dante lastly enter the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden. He is finally cleansed and feels freer.

He was taken on a journey that no living human had ever gone on before. He travels had him, “taken up by seven cornices or terraces which ring the mountain, on each of which one is purged in systematic fashion of one of the seven deadly sins” (Stephany). Dante encountered the seven deadly sins first hand, and was able to look into his own soul and search for his shortcomings. Each terrace Dante traveled through revealed one area in his life he was struggling with internally. During the terrace of envy, Dante reveals that one of the seven deadly sins he relates with most is