“Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.”(Alighieri 18) this statement is viewed while entering through The Gates of Hell. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri is one perspective of Hell that has been written. According to the Cambridge University Library, Hell is set up like a funnel that extends from the surface of the Earth located near Jerusalem; it expands down to the center of the Earth (Cambridge 2006). In this cone-like structure, there are circles that divide sins by the severity of the sin committed. Each circle is on a different ledge or level that separates them from each other (Alighieri 25). Dante and his guide Virgil travel through all the circles of Hell during the Lent season. Through their travels they inspect and comment on the variations …show more content…
of geography in the three divisions of Hell. In this novel, the physical structure of Hell helps the division of sinners become isolated in the levels of it through Upper Hell, Lower Hell, and the Center of Hell. The first portion of Hell, or Upper Hell consists of the incontinent sinners, which reside in circles one through five. Before entering circle one, a river has to be crossed that separates the small sins and punishments from the rest of Hell. This river helps Upper Hell and the Gates of Hell become separated because sinners have to ride over on a ferry that is strict as to who goes into the rest of Hell. (Alighieri 18). The geography of the circles often coincide with the punishment. An example of this is in circle two, the sin is being in love and the punishment is being caught in a tornado (Alighieri 35). The geography of this circle is the tornado that punishes the sinners. The geography of this circle is different from circle three in many ways. Circle three is a garbage dump that rains sewage on the sinners (Alighieri 44). Since it is different from each other, the geography separates the circles. Many sinners do not want to go into other circles because of the geography and punishment. The separation of Upper Hell and Lower Hell is very noticeable in the novel. A boatman carries the sinners across a river towards walls around the Lower part of Hell. Iron block walls surround the lower part of Hell allowing very few to enter (Alighieri 59). Since the geography allows the parts of Hell isolated, it also makes the sinners isolated too. The sinners being isolated is a good part of Hell because other sinners cannot tell what different punishments are. The next portion of Hell is called Lower Hell.
This part of Hell is set up inside of concrete walls. This is also the part of Hell where punishments get more severe. This part of Hell is also guarded with demons at the entrance. In each circle there is are different geographical parts, but in this section it gets more complicated. Circle seven is broken apart into 3 sub-circles, this is because they sins are related to each other but are punished differently. For example, circle seven the major sin is violence. This major sin is broken up into violence against neighbors, self, God, and nature. Since there are sub-circles this means that there are different punishments and physical structure in each part. One section in circle seven is a river of boiling blood, and in another section there is a forest with trees. Even though the different geological forms are in the same circle, they divide the different sins apart. Circle seven and eight differ in not only sins, but also in physical structure too. Circle eight is divided into ten ditches that lead further into the center of the world (Alighieri 143). The Lower part of Hell was surrounded by iron blocks, but the eighth circle alone “...is a great circle of stone that slopes like an amphitheater.” (Alighieri 143). This shows that the the physical appearance and land is getting more serious because of the sin and it is getting closer to the center of
Hell. The Center of Hell is where Satan and the major sinners reside. Since Hell is from the Earth's surface to the middle of the Earth, the center of Hell is lower than the rest. This creates a gap and barrier between Lower Hell and the Center of Hell. Giants stand in the Center of Hell but tower into the Lower part of Hell (Alighieri 251). These giants are the guards for the center and they lower sinners into it (Alighieri 251). Once they are lowered there is no returning to the other parts of Hell. This separates the sinners from each other. The Center of Hell only has circle nine in it. This provides isolation of this circle from every other circle. The nature of this portion of Hell is ice (Alighieri 259). It provides freezing of sinners into the middle of the Earth and no return. Hell is more complex than one may think. It consists of different sections of Hell such as Lower, Upper, and the Center. In these sections Hell is divided into circles according to their sin. The closer to the middle of the Earth, the worse the sin is. The physical structure of Hell helps determine and separate the sinners from each other. It also provides isolation from the different categories of sins. The Inferno is one example of the way Hell is set up and portrayed.
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
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.
The geography for each circle of Hell's misery is distinctly arranged to coincide with the sin of the sinners contained within. In Canto V, we are taken to the prison of those souls who were unable to master their own desires. These are those who "betrayed reason to their appetite" (1033), allowing the lust of flesh and carnal things overcome their God-given human reasoning. It is here that we see a dark and deafening Hell, full with the roar of the anguish of the condemned dead. Dante sees a great whirling storm of souls that are forever tossed and battered on their "hellish flight of storm and counterstorm" (1033). It is conveyed to us that each soul's path in the whirling cyclone is all but steady, blown about in a constantly changing torment with no direction or destination...
This canto does two interesting things. It lays out the physical description of what lies ahead and provides the philosophical outline of the why the divisions in hell exist. The seventh circle, of which Dante and Virgil were about to descend into, deals with violence. The damned souls in this circle are divided up into three smaller circles: Those who inflict sins of violence on themselves, their neighbors, and against God (28 & 31). To elaborate further, the infliction of pain on oneself shows that the person disdains himself or herself while this same person should be doing the opposite. The second one applies to those possess malicious intent when inflicting harm on their victims and these include the murderers, plunderers, and robbers (37). How can one commit acts of violence against God? Although not physical, the violent act committed is by being blasphemous and exhibiting scorn when speaking of God. These are sufficient enough to commit acts of violence against God.
Dante 's Inferno discusses the nine circles of hell, each circle corresponding with a different sin. The nine circles follow respectively: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. The first circle is called Limbo, where "virtuous non-Christians and unbaptized pagans" live (History lists). Here, those reside in a castle with seven gates symbolizing the seven virtues. The second circle inhabits those who were overcome by the sin of lust. This people are tortured by being violently blow back and forth by severe winds. The third circle, which represents those who became involved in gluttony, continuously are punished by being forced to lie in a "vile slush" and being overlooked by a worm-monster named "Cerebus". The fourth circle is the home, so-to-say, to those who were overcome by greed. These people have to continue to push heavy objects with their chests symbolizing their selfish drive. The fifth circle represents anger,
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.
It is with the second circle that the real tortures of Hell begin. There lie the most heavy-hearted criminals in all of Hell, those who died for true love. Here, those who could not control their sexual passion, are buffeted and whirled endlessly through the murky air by a great windstorm. This symbolizes their confusing of their reason by passion and lust. According to Dante, ?SEMIRAMIS is there, and DIDO, CLEOPATRA, HELLEN, ACHILLES, PARIS, and TRISTAN? (Alighieri 57).
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 introduces Satan in the “Inferno” as the worst sinner of all times, and he relates his complexity with the sins that he committed and his punishment. Satan is described as the angel who rebelled against God, and hence he has wings. The wings of Lucifer are not the wings that an angel would have; instead he has bat-like wings, which demonstrates that now he has the wings the dark creatures as bats have. He is firstly in the story presented as an impure monster that is trapped in ice and unable to escape. “No feathers had they, but as of a bat their fashion was, and he was waving them, so that three winds proceeded forth therefrom” (Canto 34, 50).Dante’s depiction of Satan is different from the common known version of Satan, which is
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 different kinds of sins being punished in Dante’s version of Hell. In the seventh level, three different kinds of sins are being punished each in their own separate ring. The usurers, the sodomites, and the focus of Canto XIV, the blasphemers. These sinners committed the act of blasphemy, also known as violence against God. Actions that qualify as blasphemy include burning religious texts, vandalizing churches, worshipping Satan, and other similar transgressions. Sinners who have carried out blasphemous acts were trapped on an unbearably hot, sandy beach. The souls were not only being burned from the bottom where they laid on the beach, but also being burned from “distended flakes of fire [drifting] aloft” in the air, so from
In his first article of The Inferno, Dante Alighieri starts to present a vivid view of Hell by taking a journey through many levels of it with his master Virgil. This voyage constitutes the main plot of the poem. The opening Canto mainly shows that, on halfway through his life, the poet Dante finds himself lost in a dark forest by wandering into a tangled valley. Being totally scared and disoriented, Dante sees the sunshine coming down from a hilltop, so he attempts to climb toward the light. However, he encounters three wild beasts on the way up to the mountain—a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf—which force him to turn back. Then Dante sees a human figure, which is soon revealed to be the great Roman poet Virgil. He shows a different path to reach the hill and volunteers to be Dante’s guide, leading Dante to the journey towards Hell but also the journey seeking for light and virtue.
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 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 Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri shows an interesting idea of basically going through what would happen if we were to die. Dante along with a guide through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise brings along new perspective that we would never have thought of. I always thought of Hell being the place where Satan stays and it was basically full of flames and suffering. While the suffering is true Hell has nine circles each with their own special quality and full of a variety of characters