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Analysis about dante's inferno
Analysis about dante's inferno
Analysis about dante's inferno
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“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.
First of all, Limbo is a great part of hell in Inferno, because it gives humans a great sense of hope. “The concept of Limbo--a region on the edge of hell for those who are not saved even though they did not sin.”(Daily) Limbo represents a space where nothing bad can happen to you after you die. This is a place a group of people can gather and know that they did nothing wrong in life. Limbo represents more than the first part of hell. It represents that good in life will pay off for those who try not to sin, or those who ask for forgiveness. How Dante described it was “Dark, profound it was, and cloudy, so that though I fixed my sight on the bottom I did not discern anything there.” (Canto 4) Dante says that nothing is here, and you can’t see much.
Second of all, circle three is th...
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...ng from me.
That’s my hell. I hope I’m in charge and it ends up like that. I can beat anybody I feel like.
Works Cited
Daily, Stephen. "Circle 1, canto 4." The Unitvesity of Texas at Austin. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
Goodel, Robert. "Lessons in Manliness from Dante." The Art of Manliness. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
Smith, Shelby. "Inferno Gallery." Dante's Inferno. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
Stick, Matt. "What is heresy?" CARM. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
Taylor, Guy. "Inferno Inferno Canto VI (the Third Circle: the Gluttonous) Summary." Shmoop. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
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...
In analyzing this gradient of morality, it is useful first to examine a work from early literature whose strong purity of morality is unwavering; for the purposes of this discussion, Dante’s Inferno provides this model. It is fairly straightforward to discover Dante’s dualistic construction of morality in his winding caverns of Hell; each stern, finite circle of Hell is associated with a clear sin that is both definable and directly punishable. As Dante moves downwards in this moral machination, he notes that
Fantastic elements occur in both Dante’s Inferno and The Tales of Sinbad but it is obvious that Inferno uses a lot more of the fantastic than Sinbad. In Dante’s Inferno, there are several fictional creatures (Cereberus, the Furies, Geryon) in the realms of hell, which all serve a specific purpose in hell and in Dante’s journey through the depths of hell. Through Sinbad’s journey, we see a lesser quantity of fantastic creatures, but, similar to Dante’s Inferno, the creatures that appear in Sinbad’s voyages all serve a purpose to the plot of the story. The main connection that both Dante and Sinbad have in relation to the use of the fantastic in their journeys is the purpose of the fantastic creatures themselves—they serve to cause death among others, but oftentimes are the sources that help advance the plot of the poem forward.
Moreover, Dante, the narrator of the Inferno, has succeeded in not only telling the frightening story of the Inferno, but also pointing out the importance of the relationship between human’s sins and God’s retribution, using the monsters as the symbols for each kind of sin and its punishment throughout the progress of the story, which teaches his readers to be well aware of their sins through the literature – a part of humanities; the disciplines that teach a man to be a human.
When one tends to think of Inferno they tend to think of Hell and the fiery and evil place that it is. They think of all the terrible deeds that have been committed to put one there or the terrible things being done to the wicked people. Something that would slip most people's mind and really did not enter mine as I was reading it was the fact that a major theme of the book is actually love. Love is what motivated Dante to make this journey in the first place. Love is what kept him going when he wanted to give up. Love is the reason that Hell was created in the first place. God loved all his children so he created a place to punish those who deserved it.
“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.”(Alighieri 18) this statement is viewed while entering through The Gates of Hell. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri is one perspective of Hell that has been written. According to the Cambridge University Library, Hell is set up like a funnel that extends from the surface of the Earth located near Jerusalem; it expands down to the center of the Earth (Cambridge 2006). In this cone-like structure, there are circles that divide sins by the severity of the sin committed. Each circle is on a different ledge or level that separates them from each other (Alighieri 25). Dante and his guide Virgil travel through all the circles of Hell during the Lent season. Through their travels they inspect and comment on the variations
In Dante’s Inferno, hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number, the more likely 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. The first level of hell in the Inferno is for those unbaptized yet virtuous. Although some did not have a sinful life, if they did not accept Christ, they were sent to Limbo.
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.
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.
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.
... Moreover, such belief in human reason signifies Dante's hope towards a bright society and the pursuit of God’s love as the other part of self-reflection. In conclusion, a great deal of tension and contrast between “dark” and “light” in The Inferno helps us to explore Dante’s self portrait—he fears dangerous desires and sinful darkness, but shows much courage and hope towards life since he nevertheless follows his guide Virgil to dive into horrible Hell. As shown in Canto I, such emotional reaction to dark and light symbols lays a great foundation for developing Dante’s broad and universal traits as his journey progresses.
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.
Lawall, Sarah N. "Dante Alighieri." The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 1458. Print.
Dante organized Hell in cantos 2-10 by going through the 6 Circles of Hell. The six circles of Hell are Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, and Heresy. The first circle of Hell, Limbo, Dante meets non-Christians and unbaptized pagans who are punished with eternity in an inferior form of Heaven. In the second circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil finds people who were overcome by lust. They are punished by being blown violently back and forth by strong winds, preventing them to find peace
The Divine Comedy is a very interesting story, even though it is fiction one may wonder if hell is something similar of Dante how describes it to be. If one is a Christian one must not only believe that Heaven is a real things, but that Hell is also a real thing that people go to. However, a lot of Christians do not believe that Hell is a real place for them to go to until it is too late. Many people get caught up in the worldly things instead of focusing on the godly things on Earth, however the worldly things will catch up to one if they let it. The worldly things will catch up with them when their time on Earth is done and it is time for them to be judged, however by that time it will be too late. Unfortunately in The Divine Comedy we meet a lot of