The Inferno By Dante Alighieri

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

One of the major themes which Dante inferno raises is the nature of the virtues. Like the spirits of hell, the spirits that are encountered by Dante have all sinned. The spirits out there were punished

In the beginning of his journey through hell Dante is sympathetic and compassionate. Virgil names every soul that inhabits the Carnal to Dante. "I stood there while my Teacher one by one/ named the great knights and ladies of dim time/ and I was swept by pity and confusion" (V 70-72). Dante feels such pity and sympathy for the souls in the Carnal and their eternal suffering. He goes further to explain that you cannot control what you love, and questions how you could find fault with them. Dante then calls

Dante, the character, changes over the course of this journey. Dante begins his journey lost, and ignorant but then goes through a development when he travels through the inferno, purgatorio, and Paradiso. Experiencing the depths of Hell and light of Heaven, Dante’s life is then transformed.  The influencers and assistants that Dante comes across will change Dante and make him closer and more united with God in the end.

Furthermore, those he converses with had impacted Dante in some way during his lifetime. The combination of religion and nationality begin to form the prominent factors of Dante's identity as he commences his journey through Hell in order to reestablish himself as a committed Catholic.

Dante is a poet who wrote an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. This epic poem is about Dante’s journey as he goes through 3 levels, which he calls Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. In the Inferno, he meets Virgil, his guide throughout his voyage. They both pass through the nine circles of Hell, where they witness many different punishments for those who have done awful things in their past. Good versus evil is a major theme that occurred throughout Hell. In the Inferno, there are times where Dante sees good and evil and also represents it himself.

In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet.  At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see

Joseph Miller English 231 4-27-15 Justice and Pity in Dante’s Inferno Dante was obviously very interested in the underworld, and afterlife. His work regarding hell included references to many historical figures, political leaders, and Greek gods. I found the most interesting aspect of this story to be the relationship between crime and punishment, or simply put, justice. In Inferno, Dante tells us that god had created Hell for justice.

It is commonly believed that the way someone acts is a reflection of their surroundings, whether immediate or long term. If you are surrounded by things that scare you, you will likely act panicked and frantic. If you grow up in an area infested with criminals, you will likely act less dramatically when you see minor crimes committed. The same theory goes for many protagonists in stories and poems. It is no different for Inferno, a poem by Dante Alighieri, where the protagonist is immediately affected by his surroundings.

Dante’s descent into Hell in Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, tells of the author’s experiences in Hades as he is guided through the abyss by the Roman author, Virgil. The text is broken into cantos that coincide with the different circles and sub-circles of Hell that Dante and Virgil witness and experience. Inferno is heavily influenced by classic Greek and Roman texts and Dante makes references to a myriad of characters, myths, and legends that take place in Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Some of the most important references, however, are the most obvious ones that are easily overlooked simply because of the fact that they are so blatant. Dante is being escorted through Hell by the

Journeys can be taken many ways. Some people take the path less traveled and some people take the easy way out. Dante happens to be on journey that is less traveled, by exploring the depths of Hell in the Inferno. The epic poem’s story is about self-realization and transformation. It sees Dante over coming many things to realize he is a completely different person from the start of the Inferno journey. Dante sees many things that help him gain courage in order to prove to himself and the reader that accepting change and gaining courage can help one to grow as a person and realize their full potential. After seeing people going through certain punishment Dante realizes that he must not seek pity on himself and others in order to fully realize his true potential.

This is evident when he is traveling through the rings of hell and breaks down into tears several times due to the nature of what it is that he is seeing. One of Dante’s most notable and admirable traits is his empathy. He is extremely sympathetic towards the souls stuck in Hell, and he acknowledges that these souls seek love too. Virgil, the man who takes Dante on

Abstract Through Schoder’s “Vergil in the Divine Comedy,” Ryan’s “Virgil and Dante: A Study in Contrasts,” Balassaro’s “Dante the Pilgrim: Everyman as Sinner,” Mazotta’s “An Epilogue,” and through my observations of the “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, the two Dantes, Dante the Poet and Dante the Pilgrim, treat characters in “The Divine Comedy” very differently and have different motives. They use each encounter to display their personality traits, while also using each other to relay a message to the reader. For example, both the poet and the pilgrim treat Virgil with high respect and admiration even though he represents a pagan sinner in “The Divine Comedy.” Half the research I have done explains the relationship between Dante and Virgil, Virgil’s personality, and the treatment of the two lovers, Francesca and Paolo, and the two haters, Count Ugolino and Archbishop Ruggieri.

Solely based on moral beliefs Dante's poem is obviously a deeply Christian standpoint. One might be surprised, then, to find that it is filled with allusions to pagan mythology and is populated not just by biblical figures, but also by characters of Greek and Roman myth and history. However taking place in hell on the evening of Good Friday through the morning of Easter Sunday in approximately the year 1300. The Inferno is an evil that is a contradiction to God's will; as most of the punishments of the sinners correspond symbolically to the sins they committed themselves. The walk through a dark and confusing world represents the life journey of men and women. Dante’s extensive literary treatment of death and afterlife aims to both comfort and warn; envisioning rewards for the

The Inferno The role of church during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was extremely important especially the Roman Catholic Church. The role of church determined all facets of life culturally, politically, socially etc. According to spark notes Dante’s personal life and writings were greatly influenced by the politics of late-thirteenth-century Florence.