Dante’s, The Divine Comedy

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In Dante’s, The Divine Comedy, Virgil leads Dante through the Inferno, where Dante undergoes changes in his compassion. I am going to argue that Dante expresses less compassion during his journey when Virgil leads him through the Inferno. This essay will prove how Dante shows more feelings at the beginning of the Inferno compared to the end of the Inferno.
Dante is being a coward by thinking he is unable to make his journey:
I’d be too slow had I obeyed by now.
You need no more declare to me your will.
But tell me why you take so little care and, down to this dead middle point, you leave the spacious circle where you burn to go.
In this particular part, in Canto two, Dante is saying that their journey is over because he doesn’t want to go any further in it. He is telling her not to waste her time anymore because he is no longer interested in their journey due to things he has seen throughout it. He is afraid that if the journey goes on any further then he will get hurt so he wants to back out of it right then before it becomes too late.
Virgil was sent there to take Dante through this journey so Virgil prevents Dante from backing down by telling him:
She replied, ‘I’ll tell you why
I feel no dread at entering down here.
‘We dread an object when (but only when) that object has the power to do some harm.
Nothings can otherwise occasion fear.’(Dante, Inferno, 2: 88-90)
In this part of the Inferno Dante and Virgil are just at the beginning of their journey in the Inferno. Dante starts to become afraid of what he is seeing through their journey. Virgil tells him not to be afraid of the journey be...

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... of sentiment” (Dante, Inferno, 33: 100-102) This quotation is saying, his face is frozen now in the cold, the feeling has completely gone out of his face and he no longer has any kind of feeling. This period is the last Canto of The Inferno in The Divine Comedy. Dante has just discovered all six circles of hell with Virgil leading him the whole time. During this moment, in Dante’s life, he is showing no emotions from the experiences he went through on his long journey in the Inferno.
This essay directed the reader’s attention on how Dante’s compassions changed throughout the Canto’s in the Inferno sections in The Divine Comedy with Virgil’s directions along the way to help Dante reach his new direction in his life.

Works Cited
Dante, Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Robin Kirkpatrick. New York, USA: Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2012. Print.

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