The sinful Lucifer
In the book, Dante’s Inferno The Divine Comedy , it is filled with adventure, death, and drama. In this essay, I will tell you about Lucifer and contrapasso. Contrapasso is the idea that divine punishment in hell would mirror the sin being punished that Dante created. Sinners would be punished in a way that resembles the sin. In canto thirty-four, Dante is in Judecca which is a level of hell. He meets Lucifer and he is described as huge, ugly, six wings, and three faces. In Dante’s contrapasso, he needs to try and escape. Also, to try and escape the three faced satan. In this contrapasso of Canto thirty- four the three faces will stand for father, son, and the holy spirit. Dante described him as “ I marveled when I saw that, on his head, he had three
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faces: One— In front— blooded; and then another two that, just above at the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the first; and at the crown all three were reattached; the right looked somewhat yellow, somewhat white; the left in its appearance was like those who come from where the Nile, depending, flows ” ( 34.
38-45). Lucifer was known as the immense sinner, he is a colossal iridescent creature.
As Dante entered Judecca, he was taken back to the site of Lucifer. He looked around and saw the chilling frozen over ice; that covered everything known as Cocytus river. Dante also saw the sign above that stated “abandon all hope” there is no leaving the despondent kingdom known as ante-inferno. The journey before Lucifer came to his eternal hell, he was an appalling soul. This horrible soul was once a hellish angel, he trapped souls in frozen ice to suffer for the sins that were once committed with his bat-like wings. Whenever Lucifer would flap his wings he would trap souls inside of the ice, Lucifer was trapped inside of the ice himself. His wings are described as “…two wings spread out, as broad as suited so immense a bird: I’ve never seen a
ship with sails so wide. They had no feather but were fashioned like a bat’s; and he was agitating them so that three winds made their way out from him—and all Cocytus froze before those winds” (34. 46-52). Throughout canto thirty-four, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas suffer tremendously because they get chewed on with Lucifer’s gnashing teeth. In the book it said that “ …with their heads beneath, the one who hangs from the black snout is Brutus— see how he writhes and does not say a word! The other, who seems so robs, is Cassius but night is come again, and it is time for us to leave; we have seen everything” (34. 63-69). That previous quote means that, while they’re trying to escape hell; this goes back to the sign they saw when entering hell. Which stated “abandon all help”; throughout canto thirty-four it is pure suffering. When the three biggest sinners, Brutus, Cassius, and Judas entered hell; they didn't expect to suffer as much. Lucifer had three mouths, each of them holding a sinner. In the right and left mouths hang Brutus and Cassius, who murdered Julius Caesar. Brutus and Cassius appear with their heads out, but Judas head was headfirst inside the center mouth. In conclusion, the reason I picked canto thirty-four is because I like the way it sums up the whole book in a perfect way and what contrapasso really is. In the book, I picked this quote because it shows that even when Dante abandoned all hope for escaping hell he somehow got back on his feet, “be on your feet, the way is long, the path is difficult; the sun’s already back to middle tierce” (34. 95-97). Lucifer is the biggest sinner of all, this is the reasoning for why he is so huge. At the end of canto thirty-four Dante and Virgil explore a long path through this hemisphere, until they finally emerge to see the stars again on the opposite end of the Earth from where they began. Dante finally realizing he was lucky to live and Lucifer did not kill him. To conclude, Lucifer was one of the biggest sinners that was frozen in his own hell. He chewed on some of the other three biggest sinners throughout this ante-inferno which was a punishment named contrapasso. .
Fire and brimstone, flames engulfing people, and the endless cries from the souls that are suffering are all things that are commonly associated with hell. It’s not thought of as some place of just punishment, but filled with pain and torment. The question raised is whether or not it is actually full of fire and heat, or is it something different. When we read about hell in Dante’s Inferno, he describes the place not only full of fire, but also of ice, wind, and rain. All of the elements sit on different levels that have been thoughtfully laid out by Dante himself. Carol Forman speaks of how Dante set up his hell, “Hell is structured around Dante’s concept of sin.
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 the third circle Dante is found in a cold mucky place where cerberus the hellhound takes care of this circle. Cerberus is a glutton just like the sinners themselves in this circle, he eats the sinners to his content in which he keeps eating and eating. Gluttony makes the third circle into a sort of pig pin, where every soul is rolling around in muck, and just like how a pig is that eats with incompetence of stopping. The souls are, later on devoured only to leave cerberus with a big belly full of
Lucifer in other words knows as Satan had three faces, three sets of wings attached, each face had two eyes in which constantly shed tears, each mouth also chewed a sinner. To illustrate, in Canto 34 it states, “ When I beheld three faces on his head! The one in the front vermilion was, two were the others, that were joined with this above the middle part of either shoulder And They joined together as a crest” ( Pg. 47. line 36). Moving forward, Lucifer is the biggest sinner because he was once an angel and he was no longer that angel because he went behind Jesus back and perform acts that Jesus nor God would permit. To show, “ in Canto 34 it states, “ The creature who once had the beauteous semblance” (Pg. 47 Line 18). To explain, Lucifer is the angel who rebelled against
Dante efficiently uses contrapasso to punish the souls that sinned in their lifetimes. All the sinners experience ultimate suffering as they act to extend or continue their sin for eternity. The suffering in Hell is ultimately unbearable, regardless of the nature of sin. The sinners have no hope of their condition becoming any better because the only change will be at the Final Judgment. Then their punishments will be perfected because they will then have bodies and a new way to experience suffering. Contrapasso ensures that these souls will exist in an eternity of complete despair.
First, it is important to note that throughout Inferno, Dante (as the author) uses four different terms to refer to the king of hell; the names used are: Lucifer, Dis, Beelzebub, and Satan. In Canto 34, the first three terms are each used once. According to the notes in Allen Mandelbaum’s translation of Inferno, The first term Lucifer, means “light bearer” and was used to describe “the most beautiful of all the angels before he rebelled against God.” After his Rebellion and expulsion from heaven, “Lucifer was renamed Satan” (fourth term). The second term Dis, was “used by Virgil in the Aeneid to describe Pluto; Dante then adopts this term to refer to Lucifer instead.” Lastly, the term Beelzebub, comes from the bible where it was “the name given to the chief of all devils in the Gospels.” The term Beelzebub also refers to “a false god who is powerless in front of the true divinity.” Lucifer’s appearance is described in great detail in what seems to be an effort to emphasize the theme of deceit; After all, it was Lucifer’s betrayal of God that landed him, a once beautiful creature, in a pitiful place and what gave him the most repulsive physical features. In lines 28-37, Dante (the pilgrim) narrates the sight of Lucifer in the
...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.
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.
Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice, wrath and unworthiness. He is lead by Virgil, who is a representation of intellect. Through Dante's experiences he will purge his sins.
One of the most interesting literary techniques an author or poet could include in his or her literary work is the use of cruxes. A crux is a crossroad which consists of a difficult or ambiguous passage in a literary text that can determine a certain direction of the literary work as a whole, depending on the reader’s interpretation of such passage. Within Dante’s The Inferno there are a variety of instances in which he provides an example of a crossroad. The Inferno contains the journey through hell that Dante the pilgrim undertakes, guided by the poet Virgil, in order to eventually reach heaven. One example of a significant crux in the poem is the instance in which Dante (the pilgrim) and Virgil explicitly demonstrate the act of being wrathful
Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost is a complex character meant to be the evil figure in the epic poem. Whenever possible Satan attempts to undermine God and the Son of God who is the true hero of the story. Throughout the story Milton tells the readers that Satan is an evil character, he is meant not to have any redeeming qualities, and to be shown completely as an unsympathetic figure. Satan’s greatest sins are pride and vanity in thinking he can overthrow God, and in the early part of the poem he is portrayed as selfish while in Heaven where all of God’s angels are loved and happy. Satan’s journey starts out as a fallen angel with great stature, has the ability to reason and argue, but by Book X the anguish and pain he goes through is more reason for him to follow an evil path instead. Even so, Milton uses literal and figurative imagery in the description of Satan’s character to manipulate the reader’s response to the possibility that Satan may actually be a heroic figure. As the plot of the story unfolds there are moments where the reader can identify with Satan’s desires and relate to his disappointments.
He strikes the contrast between "dark" and "light" to strengthen that he fears the dark and sinful desires within himself but he pursues the hope of light at the same time, which is the key of his spiritual journey. To symbolize the dark side, Dante illustrates his encounter with three beasts while the rescue from Virgil signifies the light side. The image of “light” and “dark” as well as their allegorical meanings is shown through these lively imagery, rich metaphors and strong voice in order to present a self portrait of Dante’s character.... ... middle of paper ...
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is taken on a journey through hell. On this journey, Dane sees the many different forms of sins, 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.
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 paradise. 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.