The Comparison of Dante's Inferno and the Purgatorio
There are many differences in the Inferno and the Purgatorio of Dante Alghieri,
from the differences in atmosphere and attitude, darkness and light, between sins and their punishments as well as the characters of the Comedy. My purpose is to shed light on what I found to be interesting differences of the two.
I would like to begin with the comparison of the coming of the old men in both the Inferno and the Purgatorio. In the Inferno it starts by saying:
And Lo! Coming toward us in a boat, an old man, white with ancient hair, crying, woe to you wicked souls! Hope not ever to see Heaven! I come to carry you to the other bank, into eternal darkness, to heat and frost.
Further, in the Purgatorio it starts out as:
I saw to me an old man alone, worthy in look of so much reverence that no son owes more unto his father. He wore a long beard and mingled with white hair, like his locks, of which a double list fell upon his breast.
In this depiction of the old men we can see the paths they have chosen, and for their choices they have been assigned their duties. The other similarity of these men is that we can find them placed in the story before Dante reaches Limbo, the first circle of Hell, and before he is able to enter into the Ante-Purgatory, or Limba in Purgatory.
With the idea of the coming of the boats fresh in our minds, we can also see a distinct difference in the atmosphere in both areas. First in the Inferno we get the description of the atmosphere in these lines:
But those souls, who were weary and naked, changed color, and gnashed their teeth. They blasphemed God and their parents, the human race, the place, the time and the seed of their sowing and of t...
... middle of paper ...
...the way down to the traitors were Satan himself dwells. It continually gets more serious. In Purgatory, the climb is aggressive and difficult in the beginning, working your way up the mountain you find the journey gradually getting easier. This depiction of what the whole scheme of things was a completely forging idea, but makes sense. After leaving Satan and Hell we find that some of the sins that are punished in hell are also punished in the first stages of Purgatory. The difference in why some individuals made it and others didn’t is all in the repentance and recognition of God in their lives. This is the basic message I got from these books, when in fact we all stray from the narrow path, we must never hesitate to seek forgiveness and to inline our lives with the ways of God, for we know not the day nor the hour when our souls will be called to the next life.
For centuries humans have been drawing parallels to help explain or understand different concepts. These parallels, or allegories, tell a simple story and their purpose is to use another point of view to help guide individuals into the correct line of thought. “The only stable element in a literary work is its words, which if one knows the language in which it is written, have a meaning. The significance of that meaning is what may be called allegory.”(Bloomfield) As Bloomfield stated, it is only how we interpret the words in an allegory that matters, each person can interpreted it in a slightly different way and allegories are most often personalized by a reader. Dante’s Inferno allegory is present throughout the entire poem. From the dark wood to the depths of Dante’s hell he presents the different crimes committed in life as they could be punished in death.
In conclusion, we can see that Dante presents the reader with a potentially life-altering chance to participate in his journey through Hell. Not only are we allowed to follow Dante's own soul-searching journey, we ourselves are pressed to examine the state of our own souls in relation to the souls in Inferno. It is not just a story to entertain us; it is a display of human decision and the perpetual impact of those decisions.
In Purgatorio, Dante’s journey continues under Virgil’s guidance from preparing to ascend the mountain of Purgatory until reaching the garden of earthly paradise, at which point Beatrice arrives to take on the role of guide through the rest of purgatory. However, along the way, Dante interacts with several other secondary guides on brief portions of his journey. Individually, Cato, Sordello, Statius, and Matelda serve as corrected counterparts to other characters in the Divine Comedy, classical mythology, and the Bible. Collectively, Cato, Sordello, Statius, and Matelda serve to bridge classical and Christian teachings, both of which are critical in defining the values of Dante-author’s Purgatory, and in shaping Dante-character’s will as the purpose of the journey through purgatory.
Dante went through each level of hell with his guide the poet Virgil starting from the top, from the sinners whose punishment was not as bad as the last level of Hell. To show , from high to low it was first, limbo in which the sinners in which did not sin, but were never baptized. Secondly, lust the sinners who have a sexual desire and were punished by have winds pushed them back and forward. Thirdly, Gluttony, here the sinners who are selfish suffer day and night in
When going through the stories The Odyssey by Homer and Inferno by Dante, you get the feeling of how diverse, yet similar the two stories are. When reading The Odyssey, you find Ulysses trying to get home to his love, Penelope. He has been gone for twenty years, and through those years, he has struggled with good and evil, just like Dante in Inferno. Ulysses finds himself time after time fighting off gods and their children. Dante, struggling with good and evil, works his way through the nine levels of hell. He is struggling to find where his faithfulness lies. He also is trying to find his way to his love, Beatrice. When reading The Odyssey and Inferno, we find many similarities and differences, from the main characters characteristics, to the experiences within religion during Dante and Homer’s times.
... a deep change. He is now hardened towards the sins of others and understands the meaning and presence of God's grace. He has overcome the perils of hell on his path towards paradise, and is well-adjusted for the next step of his journey. By gaining a new knowledge of God's methods of justice and punishment, Dante will be able to enter purgatory with a stronger, harder heart and an increased will to find God and His love. Inferno does well to teach Dante the pilgrim the importance of separating yourself from sin and entering into God's grace. The message of the piece can be applied to all mankind as well; that the ultimate goal of every man should be to overcome sin and to find God's love.
When they first find the old man, the villagers claim that “he’s an angel” (Marquez 1). There is no denying the man’s divinity but he seems to represents much more than your average angel. In fact, the old man doesn’t resemble the typical image of an angel at all. Rather than being a young and pure angel, he is “much too human” with his “unbearable smell”. His angelic wings are even “strewn with parasites” with mistreated feathers (2). This contrasting imagery, however, doesn’t completely undermine the old man’s divinity; rather it draws attention to his lackluster appearance. The disappointments we feel towards the old man along with his particular characteristics make him remarkably similar to the one of bible’s tragic heroes; he is th...
“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.
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.
The Divine Comedy and the Bible are similar and different in many ways. Dante includes Paradiso (Heaven), Purgatory, and Inferno (Hell) in The Divine Comedy. It talks about where people go when they die. The Bible differs from this because there is only Heaven and Hell. There is not a middle place, such as Purgatory, where people go to repent of their sins even after death. Also, unlike Inferno, Hell is not split up into many categories. In the Bible they go straight into Heaven or Hell. Also, everyone’s new bodies in the two stories are different. The Divine Comedy and the Bible have several complex ideas, and the comparisons and contrasts of the two are interesting.
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 ...
Despite the obvious flaws of Dante himself, he does give a clear vision of how punishments will be taken forth in the afterlife. He gives reason to fear and respect the law of God lest eternal punishment be your only promise in the afterlife. These punishments are as relevant as can be, so he offers a very vivid picture of hell. The men that he puts in hell give it a realistic twist, enhancing the fear that is felt upon reading this work
Before talking about purgatory, the subject of why there are two beliefs needs to be addressed. The Catholic and Protestant churches have two different views on purgatory. These views, actually, are one of the reasons the two churches split in the first. Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk was not happy with the state of the catholic church at that time. So, in 1517, Pope Leo X, in order to raise money to build St. Peter's Basilica, offered indulgences for sale to the people. Indulgences offered partial remission of the penalty for sins to anyone who made donations of money. Luther believed that this should not happen. On Oct. 31, 1517, Luther nailed a list ...
One way in which death can be viewed comes across the Catholic religion. The Catholic believers look life after death in a prospective of three different worlds, such as Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise according to the deeds committed during life. If a person during his or her lifetime committed any sins, this person’s next world will be the Hell. The traditional view in which people refer to hell can be found in the book written by Dante Alighieri, “La Divina Commedia”. The book states that the formation of Hell was given by the crash of Lucifer (the angel that wanted to be better than God) from the sky onto the earth. Crashing on the Earth in Jerusalem, his head formed an upside down cone inside the Earth. This is where is located the Hell. In the Hell, people pay for their sins with different penitences (12-13). For instance, a person that committed homicide will freeze in a lake frozen by the breath of Satan (XXXIV canto). If a person during his or her life commits any sins but asks for forgiveness, then he or she will go to the Purgatory. The purgatory is represented by an island with a mountain (23). One source states that “Purgatory is very similar to Hell; the main difference is that one will eventually be released from torture. The souls that go in the Purgatory are tortured with fire. These souls remain in purgatory until they become sufficiently purified to enter heaven”(2). For example, if a soul in the purgatory asks for forgiveness and pays the punition with some tests, the soul will be released and moved immediately to Heaven (2).