Stairway to Heaven

In many places in his Inferno, the reason for Dante the poet’s placement of certain souls is murky at best. Nowhere is this problem so compounded as in Canto IV, where Dante the pilgrim meets the souls in Limbo. Dante the poet’s choice of whom to include among the “virtuous pagans” seems inconsistent and his removal of the pre-Christian monotheists from Limbo leaves questions about what it means, in his mind, to believe in God and to live a righteous life by His laws and the rules of the church,…

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…

Lay 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…

Alexander Pope once said, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” (PhraseFinder). An adage many are familiar with, Alexander Pope’s thoughts on forgiveness reveal that everyone makes mistakes. We all sin. And eventually, we seek redemption to find peace. Khaled Hosseini delves deeper into this aspect of human nature in his novel The Kite Runner. A story about two inseparable friends, Amir and Hassan, growing up in pre-revolutionary Kabul, and experiencing a harrowing journey in the midst of…

Like every human being as well as having a different conception in the different themes of life, they also have it in a subject as controversial as the existence of a heaven and hell. Many people consider hell as a place where all the people who commit their sins in life and for those who are not forgiven go; while other people experience it as a hell that is experienced while in tangible…

story that can be related to “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ”. The Resurrection of Jesus is Christian belief that after he died he rose again from the dead to wash our sins away. Most of the time, we question ourselves, If I die today, will I got to Heaven or Hell? That answer remains unknown because we do not necessarily know. People does not understand that we are on this earth for a main reason. That reason is to live up to God Ten Commandments. In the bible, it was mentioned in Romans…

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…

back and forth between what existed before this creation. The very first verse states “God created the heavens and the earth” then the story moves to state “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness”. This was an interesting comparison because it seems God has created the heavens and earth, but then creates mankind in “our” image. Who existed with God before the earth was created. Was heaven created, and then earth created in the image of God and the angels? These two verses encourage…

As the first part of the epic poem Divine Comedy, the Inferno was written in the beginning of the fourteenth century by Dante Alighieri. Inferno describes the journey of its author through nine circles of Hell. For the whole duration of his journey, Dante is led by a poet Virgil, the representation of Human Reason who is familiar with many of the sinners in the underworld. Each circle in the epic poem illustrates a different type of sin with contrasting consequences, fluctuating according to the…

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…