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Reflection about dante's journey
Dante's inferno sins and punishments
Dante's inferno sins and punishments
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Righteous Indignation and the Sin of Intemperate Anger in the Inferno
Allora stese al legno ambo le mani;
per che 'l maestro accorto lo sospininse
dicendo: 'Via costà con li altri cani!'
Then he reached out to the boat with both hands; on which the wary Master thrust him off, saying: "Away there with the other dogs!"
Dante's and Virgil's scorn seems at first glance to echo the sin of intemperate anger which infects the foul waters of the Stygian marsh. Filippo Argenti, the weeping sinner who emerges from the mire, is eternally punished for his anger. However, the pilgrim's denunciation of Filippo is not only permitted, but lauded by Virgil with the praise given Jesus: "Blessed is the womb that bore thee!" (VIII, 43-44) Even the pilgrim's further, seemingly sadistic request to see Filippo attacked by his brethren is granted and accepted as appropriate. This seeming discrepancy in behavior can be reconciled by understanding the underlying motivations of the speakers. The pilgrim and Virgil travel with Divine sanction through Hell. The pilgrim's entire being learns to become entirely subject to the will of God. Virgil's journey is in obedience to the three angelic women who are Dante's patronesses: Our Lady, St. Lucia and Beatrice. However, Filippo Argenti is described by Virgil as "full of arrogance" (VIII, 46) Filippo Argenti's primary concern is Filippo Argenti. The essential element that separates the pilgrim from the sinners in the marsh is his subservience to God. Due to their divergent natures, the treatment of Filippo Argenti by the pilgrim and Virgil reflects the supreme triumph of the righteous over evil and serves as a warning to the reader.
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...ind of the reader is what method or process was required for the pilgrim to acquire this self-abasing attitude. One key element appears to be the realization of his inability to survive without God's assistance. The failed attempt to climb Mount Purgatory serves as a moment of revelation. After being driven back by the embodiment of his faults, he receives divine assistance in the person of Virgil, who is the medium by which the grace granted by Our Lady is dispatched. The example of docility towards the divine will is a challenge to each reader to cry out in the words of the Psalmist "Not to us Lord, but to your name give the glory." (115:1) The reader is called to shift allegiance, as it were. In order to achieve the redemption promised "in the fullness of time," it is necessary to identify with the self-denying pilgrim rather than the self-edifying sinner.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
In examining the two distinct characters of Nel (Wright) Greene and Sula Peace from Toni Morrison's Sula, a unique individual soul emerges from the two women. This soul takes into account good, bad, and gray area qualities. They gray area qualities are needed because, while Nel exhibits more of the stereotypical "good" qualities than Sula, the stereotypes of good and bad don't fit the definition completely. Nel and Sula combined create a type of ying and yang soul, each half including some of the other half. While at times the two women are polar opposites of one another in point of view, they arrive at their opinions with the help of the other. The two characters need each other in order to exist to the extent that they become "two throats and one eye" (Morrison 2167). A physical example of how connected the two girls are is seen when they line up head to head forming a straight, continuous, and complete line (2124).
In The Inferno of Dante, Dante creates a striking correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in hell for that sin. This simple idea serves to illuminate one of Dante’s recurring themes: the perfection of god’s justice. Bearing the inscription the gates of hell explicitly state that god was moved to create hell by justice. Wisdom was employed to know what punishments would be just, power to create the forms of justice, and love to show that the punishments are conditioned with compassion, however difficult it may be to recognize (and the topic of a totally separate paper). Certainly then, if the motive of hell’s creation was justice, then its purpose was (and still is) to provide justice. But what exactly is this justice that Dante refers to? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the So hell exists to punish those who sin against god, and the suitability of Hell’s specific punishments testify to the divine perfection that all sin violates.
... Celie’s life she would have never overcome her oppression and hardships. With the wonderful women who all displayed different qualities, Celie would never have been able to become a self reliable woman. Celie started as a shy, passive woman and turned into a woman who can rely on herself and who is not oppressed by the power of men.
In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet. At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see man’s spiritual journey towards understanding God. While God loves man regardless of his faults, His greatest desire is to see man attain greater spirituality, in that man, already created in God’s image, may truly become divine, and in doing so, attain eternality.
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante takes a journey with Virgil through the many levels of Hell in order to experience and see the different punishments that sinners must endure for all eternity. As Dante and Virgil descend into the bowels of Hell, it becomes clear that the suffering increases as they continue to move lower into Hell, the conical recess in the earth created when Lucifer fell from Heaven. Dante values the health of society over self. This becomes evident as the sinners against society experience suffering greater than those suffer which were only responsible for sinning against themselves. Dante uses contrapasso, the Aristotelian theory that states a soul’s form of suffering in Hell contrasts or extends their sins in their life on earth, to ensure that the sinners never forget their crimes against God. Even though some of the punishments the sinners in Hell seem arbitrary, they are fitting because contrapasso forces each sinner to re-live the most horrible aspect of their sin to ensure they never forget their crimes against God.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
The purpose of the pilgrim's journey through hell is to show, first hand, the divine justice of God and how Christian morality dictates how, and to what degree, sinners are punished. Also, the journey shows the significance of God's grace and how it affects not only the living, but the deceased as well. During his trip through hell, the character of Dante witnesses the true perfection of God's justice in that every sinner is punished in the same nature as their sins. For instance, the wrathful are to attack each other for all eternity and the soothsayers are forever to walk around with their heads on backwards. Furthermore, Dante discovers that hell is comprised of nine different circles containing sinners guilty of one type of sin, and that these circles are in order based upon how great an opposition the sin is to Christian morality and the ultimate will of God. We see here how Christianity plays a major role in the structure of hell and the degree to which each sinner is punished. Lastly, we can look at the story and see the importance of the grace of God not only to Dante during his journey, but how it affects the souls in hell and purgatory as well.
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.
There are many racial components in this novel that are easy to point out. These take place in the American South and also in Africa. It starts with the way that all the black men and women are treated at the start of the book. The main character’s real father was a successful store owner who was black. This man was hanged for a reason that is known only as him being a successful black man. All the characters that we are introduced to in this book by Celie are exploited by the fact that they are black. Sophia is beat up and jailed for her refusal to want to work for a white women. Of course she stood up for herself and the white element tried to tell her where her place was. There is also an intra racial theme that starts at the beginning of the book that is hard to actually believe. But to me it would make sense after awhile, because if the people tell you something over and over you would start to believe and accept it. This is shown by the acceptance of what happen to Sophia by her peers. Albert shows this with his denial that Celie could do anything well because she is a black, poor, ugly woman. If there was not any self disapproval among these people than that Albert’s black comment would not be prevalent. All the black characters in the book with the exception of Shug are poor and have a bad educational back round. It does not describe these characters as stupid just not well educated. This is inflicted by people selling them on how it is wrong to educate a black person.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradiso. Dante presents these principles in Inferno where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell the degrees of sin get progressively worse as do the severity of punishment. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
The Color Purple depicts the struggle within the life of the female protagonist, Celie. Celie, a clear victim of abuse, narrates the story through a collection of writings that starts with her confession of “Dear God.” Celie’s story encompasses around her life and the characters that breaks the common gender depiction. The story heavily addresses the subject of social and behavioral standards for either men and women. It raises an issues on traditional marital subjects, family patriarchy, and social topics. In a traditional take of the family structure, the man often exhibits the dominant male figure head with the final say. The father provides the money and security for the wife and children as well as claim authority over the family. He becomes very work oriented and cares for the children only in times of need. On the other hand, the woman acts to be passive and pleases her husband. She plays a major role in raising and educating the children in every way possible. Often times, the woman takes a small part in maintaining a profession; although, she holds responsibility for all house work. The societal perspective of the patriarchal family system relies so heavily on gender roles that it becomes an expectation and the regulated norm. The Color Purple disrupts this gender norm by introducing characters that faces marital issues due to being the opposite of the typical gender role. Because they embody the opposite gender’s likely attributes, it becomes a questioning issue that leads to striving to live up to social norms or dealing with society disapproval. Within the progression of the novel, the women possess a sense of empowerment while as the men accept how things are in the world. The introducti...
Conflict can be found in many stories and it is one of the key pieces to making a story. Without a central conflict in a story the story will seem generic or boring. Writers like to put a conflict in the story to add life to their work and keep the reader interested in what they are reading. It is a way to keep the reader wondering what happens next. In the Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno, the main character in the story, Dante, encounters all five types of the different conflicts on his journey through Hell. Some of these conflicts include: person against self, people against people, and Dante against Society.
The Black woman struggles against oppression not only as a result of her race, but also because of her gender. Slavery created the perception of Black inferiority; sexism traces back to the beginning of Western tradition. White men have shaped nearly every aspect of culture, especially literature. Alice Walker infuses her experiences as a Black woman who grew up in Georgia during the Civil Rights era into the themes and characters of her contemporary novels. Walker’s novels communicate the psychology of a Black woman under the Western social order, touch on the “exoticism of Black women” and challenge stereotypes molded by the white men in power (Bobo par. 24). In The Color Purple Walker illustrates the life of a woman in an ordinary Black family in the rural South; in his article “Matriarchal Themes in Black Family Literature”, Rubin critiques that Walker emphasizes not only that the Black female is oppressed within society, but also that external oppression causes her to internalize her inferiority. Every theme in Walker’s writings is given through the eyes of a Black woman; by using her personal experiences to develop her short stories and novels, Walker gives the Black woman a voice in literature. Walker demonstrates through her writings that the oppression of Black women is both internal and external.