Life in Hell

THE INFERNO Dante’s divine comedy The Inferno commonly translated to mean hell remains one of the most studied masterpieces by scholars all over the world since its publication. Dante takes the reader through the journey of a sinner through the nine circles of hell. The Inferno depicted life after death and the terror that awaits those who turn into sin in the journey through hell. Scholars have analyzed Dante's work in the reference to other literary works, politics, religion, social norms…

father. On the other hand, Dante’s journey was a metaphor to maturation because, after al the struggles, he was able to understand what is evil and good and made a right decision in his life. Initially, he was exiled from his home due to political struggle because he was immature, but after the challenges he faced in hell, he was able to mature and go back to his people. Even though the protagonist in the story, Odysseus and Dante started their journeys when they were already adults, their…

Dante paints a vivid picture of hell, depicting it as nine circles spiraling down into the center of the Earth. We journey into the inferno alongside Dante, who represents sin, and our guide, Virgil, who represents human reasoning. As we travel deeper into the inferno, the punishments become more severe as the sin becomes more grievous. In the beginning, Dante pities the plight of the sinner, much to Virgil’s dismay, however, as we continue on our journey, Dante slowly recognizes that the…

In The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, Virgil is the dead guide that shows Dante on his way through Inferno and Purgatorio. In life Virgil was a poet who wrote the Aeneid, a story about a Trojan who travelled to Italy. In The Divine Comedy Virgil is a character that is stuck in the Inferno because Virgil died before Christ visited earth, so he could not get farther than the first level of the Inferno. Virgil appears to Dante when Dante is lost in the woods and is sent by Beatrice to…

realm of Heaven and leaves him to rule over nothing more than a wasteland. In John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, such is the case of Satan, a former subject of the Lord fallen from his grace. God banishes the angel to Hell, where Satan, left to ponder the quality of his newfound life, slowly accepts his fate and addresses the presumed advantage of being free from the clutches of God, whose ultimate authority he despises greatly. Satan wonders about his own power, thinking about the things he…

Dante’s Inferno is considered one of the best works of humanity. In Inferno, Dante literally puts all kind of men into hell for their sins; from great kings to slaves, from every type of ethnicity, race, country and anything else a man identifies by. Based on Christian doctrines of his time, Dante has taken revenge over all kind of figures that he knew by. Furthermore, Inferno is filled with allegories and represents a deep literature. In this essay, we will discuss about the uses and…

I have always been a fan of the different interpretations people have of Heaven, Hell, or the in-between, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri is one of my favorite interpretations, taking you on Journeys beyond belief. The divine comedy is separated into 3 Canticle, which means hymn, song or psalm, Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Paradise (Paradiso). The story by many is said to be real and by some non-religious orientated people it is meant to be as basic mythology, of one man’s…

In Dante’s Purgatorio we find that the terraces form opposites from the circles of hell in at least two ways. First, Dante and Virgil are now traveling upwards rather than downwards as they did in hell. Second, in hell the offenses range from least to worst whereas here, in purgatory, the first terrace contains those who have committed the worst of the forgivable sins, pride. It may seem strange that pride is the worst, but as C.S. Lewis stated in Mere Christianity “the essential vice, the…

predestined road, yet they refuse its ideology. The Inferno, an ancient epic poem written by Dante Alighieri, describes a journey through the various circles of Hell, but there is one part of Hell that is very briefly described: The Vestibule. The Vestibule is the false home to those labeled “uncommitted”; the lost souls who travel the boundaries of Hell searching for their meaning. In lines 32-48 of Ciardi's translation of the third canto of the Inferno, Virgil explains to Dante that there are…

church were mostly views of criticism portrayed through the sinners he encounters in his trip through purgatory and hell while Boccaccio explained his views through his characters’ mentioned in his collection of tales. Dante’s attitude towards the church could be argued to be a bit harsher than Boccaccio’s. Dante attacked the church through his creation of the nine circles of Hell. These nine circles…