Francesca da Rimini

The Bond of Communion: An Analysis of the Communal bonds throughout Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno Human beings are odd creatures, possessing abilities no other living species have. These abilities being Intelligence, Reason, and Free Will. These attributes allow human beings to value and destroy whatever they deem necessary to them. One of the most valuable things to a human being is the communal bond. This bond comes in many shapes and forms and is ultimately a form of love, and is usually a connection

earth. He describes with a simile how "as cranes go over sounding their harsh cry, / leaving the long streak of their flight in air, / so come spirits, wailing as they fly" (v 46-48). Finally, he makes use of another simile to iterate how after Francesca tells of her tale of love, Dante faints and falls, "as a corpse might fall, to the dead floor of hell" (v 140). IMAGERY This canto begins to delve into the more sublime, dark, and mysterious. Words like, "moaning," "screeching," and "lamenting"

To merely say that Dante was interested in the world of hell would be an understatement. His needs to explore and write about the nine different realms could best be described as an obsession. It’s an adventure, a tale, a dream (or nightmare) of different historical, biblical, and Greek gods and creatures living their lives in the afterlife of the underground world. Each level has its own form of punishment fitting the crime one has committed. Level one, Limbo: for those who have not

watching children and observing my cousins, I see this feeling of power every day. Dante shows us a consequence of searching for power through desire when we meet Francesca and Paulo, and he says “oh, how much desiring brought these two down into this agony” (30). Sometimes the worldly desires we wish for do not end with what we expect. Francesca did not think about what would happen to her or Paulo for following their passion. She never expected to be thrown into Hell and be haunted by her desire for

Both Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice and Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers are stories of unhappy lots attempting to escape their squalid fates by fleeing their current circumstances for the greener grass on the other side. Francesca and Walter, the runaway city thieves of Bitter Rice, look for safety amidst the grueling annual rice harvest provided by the mighty river Po, while the poor Parondi family of Rocco and His Brothers seek a new life amidst the unfamiliar urban chaos of Milan. While

has to do with why they are in hell. Furthermore, the irony is portrayed in the stories that the sinners tell Dante about how they wound up in hell. One example from the poem that shows this irony come from canto V where Dante and Virgil talk to Francesca and Paolo who tell them their story about how they wound up in hell. Dante recounts their story, “On a day for dalliance we read the rhyme of Lancelot, how love had mastered him. We were alone with innocence and dim time. Pause after pause that high

different sinners. Through the stories of Francesca and Paolo, Brunetto Latini, Ulysses and Guido da Montefeltro, we are able to understand that people are self-interested in the way they act and present themselves to others and that those in Hell are there because they have sinned and failed to repent their sins and moral failings. The story of Brunetto Latini teacher us to use the gifts we

of Inferno, Francesca and Paolo will be discussed. They both appear in Canto V, in the Second Circle of Hell which is saved for the lustful. This sin stood out because it can be more related to most people—then and now. According to the Bible, God states in 1 Peter 2: 11-12, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul… they speak against you as evildoers… glorify God in the day of visitation.” Whether Francesca and Paolo’s sin

starving of one’s lustful appetite is connected to the ritualistic fasting, Lent, that Christians undertake in order to absolve themselves of sin and thus seek a closer intimacy with God. There is heavy symbolism in Dante’s portrayal of Paolo and Francesca which reveals the dichotomy between sin and purity that exists in Canto V. Imagery plays a crucial role when it comes to seeing the duality of the second circle. The laws of contrapasso creates a parallel of crimes one committed in life to match

The Divine Comedy acknowledged as Dante’s Inferno was written in the 14th century and is an epic poem with allegorical value. Dante the Pilgrim is 35 years old and he was “midway along the journey of our life”(TEXTBOOK). Dante the pilgrim is lost in the dark wood, where he meets his guide named Virgil and he escorts Dante through the nine circles of hell. Virgil symbolizes human reason and wisdom. In the beginning, Dante was sympathetic for all of the people he saw suffering in hell, but as time