The Heroic Journey In Dante's Inferno

In The Inferno of Dante, the first part in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, expresses the hinderance and assistance Dante the Pilgrim faces in his heroic journey. Throughout Dante’s treacherous journey through Hell, he encounters multiple threshold guardians; some of them hindering his continuance, while one provides assistance through this dark and brimstone-like pit such as Cerberus, Medusa, and Geryon. One of Dante’s many challenges arise when he encounters a beast named Cerberus; the multi-headed guardian of the Underworld who prevents the dead from leaving. Cerberus was a monstrous and cruel beast with “eyes [of] red and [a] belly of a meat-feeder” that did not let Dante and Virgil enter the underworld, forcing Virgil to “[throw] gobbets of [dirt] down each of [Cerberus’] throat” (Dante IX.

Dante the Poet expresses how he saw Cerberus as a symbol of gluttony, an overconsumption of food or drink, when he saw the beast’s meat-feeder belly. When Virgil hurls dirt down Cerberus’ three throats which chokes him, it allows them to bypass him and enter the Underworld. Another challenge Dante faces while on his spiritual journey was the three hellish furies, and the Gorgon, Medusa; a female with living venomous snakes in place of hair and gazing upon her hideous face would turn you to stone. When the three hellish Furies, Erinyes, Alecto, and Tisiphone appear, they scream “[to] let Medusa come” and turn “[Dante] into stone” but Virgil, Dante’s guide and master, “turns [Dante] around and [covers] [his] face” (Dante IX. 46-47, 53). Medusa could have stopped Dante’s journey right there by turning him to stone; completely ending his mission of self improvement and awareness. Before entering the Eighth Circle in hell, Malebolge, Dante and Virgil encounter a beast named Geryon, a half hairy reptile and half hairy beast that does not pose a huge threat to them, but an opportunity to travel through and experience