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False Shephers In Dante's Inferno

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Literal: Poems are notoriously impossible to take literally as most of the meaning lies deeper within the words, however, as Dante says, one first needs to understand the literal if one is to understand the allegorical. Therefore, what is my poem trying to say literally? First of all we have “they”, who seems to be a shepherd who tend to sheep, “They say to their sheep, a simple front. Lead them down the surely green path.” They seem to take good care of their flock, however, something seems wrong, especially if they are leading their sheep into oblivion. Suddenly we are in a land of everlasting dawn, a seeming paradise, but we soon learn that these shepherds are being tormented by fallen angels and will be tormented forever. Of course the …show more content…

The poem seems to follow the traditional “retribution principle” argument, that if you do evil then evil will be done unto you. However, as the Book of Job explains, this notion is not correct, that there will be, and has been, false shepherds who abuse their flock without retribution. On the contrary though, this is also a poem and does include the author’s feelings and emotions and can simply be their outlook and message that one should not be false shepherds in the first place. Nevertheless, at this level we can separate the amateur writing from the great writing. If the moral messages of the writing are strong then that means all the metaphors, symbols and imagery in the writing works in tandem with each other to paint the larger picture. However, if the morals messages writing are weak then that means the literary devices of the writing are also confusing and bewildering, leading to an unmoving and ineffective piece of writing. This poem is not at the moral level yet, because the moral of the poem is not very strong, as it is mostly

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