Colter's Hell

If someone has done multiple major sins, where would they be positioned in the inferno according to Dante? Dante’s greatest work, The Inferno, tells the story of many individuals who have sinned, and it categorizes them into different levels depending on what they did. Using his guidelines, many stories of people could be placed into the inferno. Sometimes it is quite easy to see where someone would be placed, for instance, if they committed a murder, they would be drowning in a river of blood.…

strange placements and exceptions in Canto IV make the requirements to achieve salvation or to be sent to a certain circle of hell seem unclear at best. As Dante the pilgrim’s guide…

Dante, in the Inferno, gives us a visual imagination of hell while teaching us the meaning of justice. He illustrates how the sin you commit during your lifetime, will prefigure your punishment in hell. We don’t only see this in the story, we also see this now; however, we perceive it as karma. If you do something bad, it will eventually come back at you. Dante goes through this journey to give us an illustration of the different sinners in hell and what their punishment is. Dante is halfway…

“Fire” is the symbol of destruction, used by Eliot instead of time, which is also an agent of change and destruction and “rose” is the symbol of perfection, used by Eliot to signify the Timelessness that in itself is perfection. The union of the two symbols here in the concluding lines is the resolution of all the dualities and contradictions. The two opposites are brought together not on the physical but on the spiritual plane. It is only with the spiritual consciousness that one can see and…

theologian, C.S. Lewis, projects his own conception of Heaven and Hell most prominently in his work, The Great Divorce. Here, he depicts Hell as being a place that is not necessarily eternal, but a place where one chooses to be and has the option to leave. Lewis states, “They lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids… but when you get there it’s just like any other town” (53). Hell is not this fiery furnace that society often depicts, thus…

Coby Koehler Professor Ned Williams English 251 3 October, 2017 Achenbach’s Guide to the Underworld Hermes, the guide of newly dead souls to the underworld, has long been a prominent figure in mythology and a powerful archetype. In Thomas Mann’s book, “Death in Venice”, the author uses the young boy Tadzio as an archetype of Hermes as expressed through his actions and what he means to Gustav von Aschenbach, as well as how Aschenbach sees him. Tadzio effectively leads Gustav from his life at…

question one of these people was Dante Alighieri the work has as its main axis, the search of Dante who is helped by Virgil, to find the inspiration of his poems, traveling 3 places to achieve his goal. The Divine Comedy recounts Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. The poem begins with Virgil's encounter with Dante, who has lost himself in a jungle and encounters wild beasts. Virgil confesses to the poet who has come in the name of Beatrice, a…

The gift of emotion and the curse of making mistakes define the base of human actions. In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne commits adultery with Dimmesdale while married to Chillingworth. Over the course of the story, each character shows his or her faults in different ways. Although all of the characters make mistakes and commit multiple sins, Chillingworth’s actions and unwillingness to forgive eventually make him the greatest sinner. When Chillingworth begins to…

When interviewed about the detonation of the first atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, stated that witnessing the event brought to mind a quote from a Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. Numerous stories throughout history have been centered around the idea of internal human darkness, including the 2004 film Hellboy, directed by Guillermo del Toro with cinematographer Guillermo Navarro and supervising art director Simon Lamont. The film follows its namesake, a demon…

Walker In Society greed and hypocrisy rule over the aspects of the human mind lending to the ultimate misfortune a trip to hell. In the story “The Devil and Tom Walker” folktale by Washington Irving message was about greed and hypocrisy. Tom Walker enticement of easy money in exchange for his soul. The devil collects his souls and this story ends with Tom being take away to hell on the back of a black horse. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but to those practice it produces a harvest.…