Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Inferno symbolism of punishments
Divine comedy inferno symbolism
Example of imagery in the inferno
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Inferno symbolism of punishments
Assignment 2 Personality Quiz
For the Inferno personality Quiz, I got level 1, which is Purgatory. The quiz explains that I have “escaped damnation made it to Purgatory, a place where the dew of repentance washes off the stain of sin and girds the spirit with humility. Through contrition, confession, and satisfaction by works of righteousness, you must make your way up the mountain. As the sins are cleansed from your soul, you will be illuminated by the Sun of Divine Grace, and you will join other souls, smiling and happy, upon the summit of this mountain. Before long you will know the joys of Paradise as you ascend to the ethereal realm of Heaven.”
Canto III, is Purgatory; it opens with an inscription above the gates of Hell. The message states “I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY, I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF, I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN RACE. JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR; DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME, AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS WERE MADE, AND I SHALL LAST ETERNALLY. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER.”
...
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.
When Dante enters Purgatory, he is marked with seven “P’s” on his forehead, when an angel brushed his wing across his head (“Purgatory” Canto XII, line 98). The “P’s” significantly represent the seven deadly sins that Dante must work off in Purgatory, and as Musa notes the angel removes from Dante’s forehead the first “P” standing for pride (Musa pg. 261 nt 98). Additionally, Lewis’s everyman must also learn to reject his sinful ways and embrace God’s will. Just as Dante awakes from his vision at the end of “Paradise”, so does Lewis’s narrator.
In Dante’s Inferno, hell is divided into nine “circles” of hell; the higher the number, the more likely the sin and the pain you will endure. However, I do not completely agree with Dante’s version of hell, perhaps due to the difference in time periods. In this essay, I will be pointing out my concerns with Dante’s description of hell and how I would recreate hell if I were Dante. The first level of hell in the Inferno is for those unbaptized yet virtuous. Although some did not have a sinful life, if they did not accept Christ, they were sent to Limbo.
The first thing you would notice is the overall irony of Hell itself. As mentioned, most people have a view that Hell is very chaotic and in disarray. However, In Canto IV we find out that Hell is actually very organized. The structure of it is in fact “a great funnel-shaped cave… with its bottom point at the Earth’s center. Around this great circular depression runs a series of ledges, each of which Dante calls a CIRCLE.” (Alighieri 25). Most pictures you see of hell show images of very distressed people and demons running around in turmoil. They are usually all over the place and no sense of organization is apparent. There is also a map of hell that Dante has drawn in order to give us a clearer image of what Hell supposedly looks like (Alighieri 26). Through this we find that Dante has applied his use irony into the very structure of Hell. We also see that the people we thought were myths actually exist – in Dante’s eyes. Scattered throughout the book, we see several mythological characters that have indeed descended into Hell. On...
Though there are countless disturbing moments throughout Dante’s Inferno, one can dare to say that Canto 34 is the most unsettling and borderline irreverent Canto in Inferno. In Canto 34, Dante and Virgil meet the sinners who are deemed to be the most evil; those who have betrayed their benefactors (the individuals who extended their kindness towards them.) It is also the canto where Dante meets Satan, the king of hell. Dante opens Canto 34 with a sentence in Latin that reads: “Vexilla, regis prodeunt inferni.” In translator Mandelbaum’s notes, the words are said to mean: “The banners of the king of Hell draw closer.” At first glance, the reader might dismiss the fact that this is the only line in canto 34 that is written
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 work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.
“How stern the power of Almighty God who crushes sinners with such righteous blows(Canto XXIV lines 109-110)!” In Dante’s Inferno, Dante Alighieri describes a trip through Hell, visiting the various sinners and circles of Hell. Dante also uses many experiences and beliefs from his real life to enrich his views of Hell and his idea of Divine Punishment. Dante’s perception of Divine Justice includes sinners whom he places in Hell for committing crimes without regret, they are placed lower in Hell according to the severity of their sins. Dante is not always just in his placement of sinners, his personal grudges and archaic Catholic beliefs get in the way of true Divine Justice.
...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.
The organization of purgatory follows the arrangement of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice and prodigality, gluttony, and lust. Virgil states that the formation is mainly on the pretense of love. As stated by Virgil, “love must be the seedbed where all virtuous deeds must grow, [and] with every act that warrants punishment” (Canto 17 103-05). This means that love is present within everything both sinful and virtuous. Those of insufficient love were being punished as sloths in terrace 4. The prior three terraces (pride, envy, and wrath) expressed the love given to evil objects or goals. The next three terraces (avarice, gluttony, and lust) presented excessive amounts of love to inherently good. This was the reason for the terraces formation, but still it was unclear why they were not the same as hell’s circles. Then looking back it became a little clearer and a sequence showed.
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, 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.
Dante feels hell is a necessary, painful first step in any man’s spiritual journey, and the path to the blessed after-life awaits anyone who seeks to find it, and through a screen of perseverance, one will find the face of God. Nonetheless, Dante aspires to heaven in an optimistic process, to find salvation in God, despite the merciless torture chamber he has to travel through. As Dante attempts to find God in his life, those sentenced to punishment in hell hinder him from the true path, as the city of hell in Inferno represents the negative consequences of sinful actions and desires. Though the punishments invariably fit the crimes of the sinners and retributive justice reigns, the palpable emphasis of fear and pity that Dante imbues on the transgressors illustrates his human tendency to feel sympathy towards one who is suffering. For example, when Dante approaches the gat...
When Juan’s mother was describing Comala, she described the road and how whenever you “are leaving [Comala], it’s uphill; but as you arrive it’s downhill” (Rulfo 4).This is a direct reference to the purgatory between heaven and hell that a soul enters and leaves. The description given by Juan’s mother symbolizes the journey of a soul entering purgatory and ascending from purgatory into heaven. While giving Juan Preciado a ride to Comala, Abundio warns him to “try to take it easy” because “that town sits on the coals of the earth, at the very mouth of hell” (Rulfo 6).
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).
This quarter I read the book Inferno by Dan Brown. In the beginning, Harvard professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence with mild amnesia and doesn't remember anything from the last couple of days. Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him helps him escape the hospital from a female assassin named Vayentha. Sienna and Langdon go to her apartment. He decides to call the U.S. consulate for help. Langdon gives them a location across the street, and they see Vayentha pull up to the location they gave the Consulate. They assume that the U.S. government is trying to kill them. Langdon finds a small medieval bone cylinder fitted with a hi-tech projector that displays a modified version of Botticelli's Map of Hell. At the bottom of the illumination are the words "The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death”(66). Suddenly, soldiers raid Sienna's building. Sienna and Robert narrowly escape. Sienna and Langdon try to go to the old city (Historic Florence) because they know it has something to do with Dante. They see that the police is everywhere and they have to evade them. While they were evading the police, Langdon had a realization that leads them to the Palazzo Vecchio. Vayentha traces them to the palace, but Langdon and Sienna narrowly get away by pushing Vayentha to her death. Robert connects the phrase Paradise 25 that he found at the Palace to the Florence Baptistry. They find Dante Alighieri’s death mask at the Baptistry and discover it was owned by billionaire geneticist Bertrand Zobrist. Zobrist wanted to halt the growth of humanity, due to its population spiraling of control. A man named Jonathan Ferris who claims to be from th...