Dante Alighieri

motion, giving us an immediate look into the vivid descriptions of Hell through the eyes of Dante the pilgrim. Not only do we ‘see’ that which is happening through his journey, but we also begin to feel Dante’s emotions as well; his hope in seeing the sunlight over the mountaintop and then his fear of the unknown- the beasts who block his path to hope and salvation. At the beginning of this poem, Dante, in the dark forest, had just awoken, and had wandered away from the right-true path (way)…

right before us on the lustrous green the mighty shades were pointed out to me (my heart felt glory when I looked at them). There was Elektra standing with the group, among whom I saw Hector and Aeneas, and Caesar, Falcon-eyed, and fully armed.” (ALIGHIERI)(Canto IV, Lines 119-123) Here the writer is describing his admiration for these great…

Song of Myself written by Walt Whitman celebrates life and how people can become one with nature. Whitman shows how happy life can be if you take the world and look at its beauty. Whitman’s poem takes readers through many settings, time points and viewpoints. While the setting for the love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock written by T.S Eliot is about a middle-aged man in a big dirty city who views life as though it has nothing to offer but boredom, anxiety, and death. Prufrock shows life can be…

Rachel Gold December 10, 2015 Mrs. Doucette Inferno reflection piece Option 1 Is there a relationship between sin and punishment? I think so. Each sinner of their circle had to match a punishment to their crime. In the first circle (Limbo) are the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans. The first circle are punished by living in a fake form of Heaven. A good example of how the two are connected. In the second circle the lust are punished. They receive a violent wind in this tornado and they are…

The color red (desher) in Ancient Egypt represented the desert known as the Red Lands. It was considered a life-threatening place and because of the distinctive color of the sand Egyptian’s adapted this name. People were often sent to work in desert mines where they often died or were exiled to the desert. Regarded as the entrance to the underworld Egyptian tombs are located on the west side. An example of this is the grouped together mastabas that can be found in the city of the dead. Male…

revolution was taking place during the time in which Dantes was thrown into prison. Dantes had gotten himself thrown into jail because he was thought to be working for the Bonapartist party “with a letter to the Bonapartist party of Paris” (Dumas 23). They people around him were for King Louis XVI and despised the other party. Also this was during the time when food was becoming scarce and riots from lower class citizens begun to break out. If Edmond Dantes had went straight away to Paris rather…

The Wood of the Suicides The Wood of the Suicides are punished in Circle Seven of Dante’s Inferno. Dante classifies suicide as a sin of violence. Although most would have pity on those who mercilessly ended their own life in order to achieve a seemingly better alternative, Virgil rebukes Dante for having such feelings. One would think such an act would be a result of those who possess nothing but contempt and disdain for themselves and the life God has given them. Suicide, an overvaluing of…

different from anything that had been written before it, like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Dante’s cosmology is highly ordered, it is divided into 9 main circles that correspond with the punishments for each sinner who is in that particular level. As Dante descends through hell, he comes upon sinners whose sins become increasingly hateful, spiteful, offensive, murderous, and traitorous. He ends with Satan, eating the three greatest traitors in the world, each in one of his three mouths, at the…

Mary are referred to indirectly, they are never called by their names. I believe that this is the case because biblical names are considered quite powerful, it would be disrespectful to utter such a holy name in hell. I also noticed the emphasis that Dante put on personal choice, many of the people in the lower rings of hell were there based on sins of choice and freewill. In addition, many angels who chose not to align with heaven or hell were stuck in purgatory.…

The fourteenth canto in Dante’s Inferno, is a description of Dante the pilgrim and Virgil the guide, journeying into the third pouch of the seventh circle of Hell. The seventh circle is made up of sinners who are violent in various fashions. Depending on the pouch in which one is placed, the sinner is either convicted of violence towards oneself, other people and nature, or towards God. The third pouch, the primary focus of this canto, is for the punishment of those who possess a bellicose…