What Is The Theme Of Canto 34

Frozen Wings and Deceit

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

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

When one thinks of God as a synonym of love, it is then easy to understand why Dante chose fraud as the worst of sins; the act of fraud then serves as an antonym of love. The most relevant example of fraud can be found in Lucifer’s betrayal of God. He was Lucifer’s master, and even though Dis was heaven 's most beautiful angel, greed led him to betray his own master. The fact that an angel, a Celestine creature was lured by greed into betraying his omnipresent master, indicates that of all sins, fraud is the most severe of all. Since Lucifer’s betrayal was directly aimed at the creator of every living thing, it then transforms Satan’s disloyalty into a marker that denotes the most precarious side of human nature. In terms of severity, after Lucifer’s actions, Judas Iscariot is the figure best known for betraying a member of the divine trinity, in this case, his master Jesus Christ. Then, the reasoning behind the incorporation of Iscariot into the narrative becomes clear as well as why he was situated as a central figure. By Dante choosing to place Judas directly in Lucifer’s frontal mouth, and having Lucifer chew his skull for eternity, one sees the dire consequences of betraying God. Dante’s decision to include Brutus and Cassius in the narrative is less apparent, yet it can be traced