The Journey of the Inferno

Everyone has a different perception of what really is heaven and hell and where people end up in the after life. Some people are not even religious and have their own personal thoughts about what is next after death. The Inferno or to be more precise “Hell” can be described and defined as a place where people end up after death in the natural world, when people have not followed God’s ways and laws of living. It is has been depicted throughout the years of time that suffering in hell is horrific, gruesome, and unimaginable. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante portrays the protagonist as he is guided by his ghostly friend Virgil the poet through the nine chambers of Hell. The transition from one circle to another is very shocking and graphic at what he witnesses through each circle. Dante uncovers where each sin will lead people to once the sinners souls face death. He faces many trials and tribulations through the beginning to end of the Inferno. Dante felt impelled to write the Inferno because he was going through his own personal struggles at the time. In a way he was extremely depressed because he was exiled out of Florence, and the love of his life Beatrice died. While Dante was in exile for so many years, it allowed him to write some of his most significant works of literature that people still read to this day.

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...

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...r Sunday. The journey is later continued through purgatory.

Works Cited

Alcorn, John. "Suffering In Hell." Pedagogy 13.1 (2013): 77-85. Academic Search Complete.Web. 11 June 2014.

"Inferno." Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Vol. 1: Ancient Times to the American and French Revolutions (Prehistory-1790s). Detroit: Gale, 1997. 174-180. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 June 2014.

Jacoff, Rachel. The Cambridge Companion to Dante. New York:Cambridge University, 2007. Print.

Rudd, Jay. Critical Companion to Dante: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York. 2008. Print.

Rudd, Jay. "Inferno: Cantos 1–:4."Critical Companion to Dante, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc, 2008. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 11 June 2014