Dante Alighieri's L Inferno

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

"Its shoulders glowed already with the sweet rays of that planet/ whose virtue leads men straight on every road,. (I 16-18) The Inferno is one-third of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. This fictional poem is a narrative. In the poem Alighieri made his own character symbolic to the Human soul and his idol, Virgil, symbolic to human reason. Together they journey through the Nine Circles of hell. Dante is able to complete his journey through hell because Virgil helps him through.

In the poem, The Divine Comedy, Dante (the author) demonstrates the basic stages of the Monomyth while making his way through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. His writing mirrors each stage which includes the departure or separation, The initiation or challenge, and the return. In stage one, the hero finds himself in an unusual world of adventure (not the “real world”). His journey involves assistance from many which helps him cross the threshold into the imaginative world. Stage two continues with the hero successfully meeting and defeating several challenges and roadblocks in his way. The last Monomyth stage contributes to the hero completing his journey successfully and finding his way back to the mundane world. This paper will demonstrate and define Dante’s journey to adventure, crisis, and victory using the three stages of the Monomyth in the poem.

In Dante Alighieri's The Inferno, the themes of justice and eternity are interwoven throughout Dante's journey. As he wrestles with questions of pity, grace, and forgiveness, readers do the same. With each encounter with sinners, views of justice and God's mercy are questioned. Dante's Hell judged people in terms of their actions, not their hearts. Just because they had affairs or were hypocritical, they were sent to Hell.

"Abandon all hope ye who enter here./", the words etched into stone above the gate of hell, affirming arrival at eternal suffering and damnation (III 9). In Dante Alighieri's famous and extremely influential piece of literature, the Divine Comedy, Alighieri took real life people and boldly judged their sins. Alighieri then determined their doom based on the extent of their transgressions and damned them to one of the nine circles of hell accordingly. Each circle is home to a specific crime along with a corresponding and symbolic punishment. In the poem, Dante is being guided through hell by the poet he aspired to be like in life and author of The Aeneid, Virgil.

Dante is described as someone who is trying to find God in his life, even journeying through Hell to do so. However, along the way Dante begins to see things that bring out the worst in him. Dante sees two of his old political rivals, at two separate times with two separate punishments, and he stopped to enjoy their pain and even laugh at them. Obviously this is not something he would do in his normal life, so it is safe to assume that spending time in Hell is taking a toll on his judgement.

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.

C. His writing style not only consisted of some literature firsts, but also his ability to make the reader feel present in the story

The theme of equilibrium between reason and faith is one of the core messages of Inferno and it is essential in conveying the main idea of the Divine Comedy and of the pilgrim’s journey that the exploitation of intellect and the misuse of will is the cause of sin, and that through faith, those who are morally lost find their salvation in God. In Inferno Dante makes it clear that he greatly values knowledge and reason in a way that is more characteristic to the Renaissance rather than of his own Medieval time. However, throughout this first book, the author reminds the audience of the Christian nature of his poem as he uses the stories of the sinners he encounters to stress the idea that without faith, the intellect is not sufficient to achieve divine salvation and that the misuse of reason can often lead to terrible sins.

In The Inferno of Dante, Dante allows the reader to experience his every move. His mastery of language, his sensitivity to the sights and sounds of nature, and his endless store of knowledge allows him to capture and draw the reader into the realm of the terrestrial hell. In Canto 6, the Gluttons; Canto 13, the Violent against Themselves; and Canto 23, the Hypocrites; Dante excels in his detailed description of the supernatural world of hell.

At the same time, however, the religious function of Dante’s poem must not be neglected. In the opening lines of The Inferno, Dante embarks on a journey and finds himself “in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost” (Inferno, I, 2-3). Dante’s description of the dark wood indicates the lack of God’s light, and thus informs readers of the life he lived in the condition of sin. These opening lines establish the religious context for the poem, as Dante has deviated from “the straight way”, the way to God. Furthermore, Lee H. Yearley contributes to this religious perspective by

When you think of Hell, what do you see, perhaps a burning pit full of criminals and crazed souls? Or maybe you’re like Dante and have a well organized system of levels in correspondence with each person’s sins. In Dante Alighieri’s epic The Inferno, Dante and his real life hero, Virgil, go on an adventure through a rather elaborate version of Hell. In this version of Hell numerous thoughts and ideals are brought to the attention of the readers. Through Dante’s use of both imaginative and artistic concepts one can receive a great visual impression of how Dante truly views Hell, and by analyzing his religious and philosophical concepts the reader can connect with the work to better understand how rewarding this work was for the time period.

Around 1314, Dante Alighieri completed the Inferno, the first section of what would make up The Divine Comedy, a collection of three poems reflecting Dante’s imaginative journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In these poems, Dante the poet describes the pilgrimage that Dante the pilgrim must complete to attain salvation. With the Roman poet Virgil as his guide, Dante the pilgrim must purge himself of his own sinful nature, which can only be achieved by observing and learning from those that have landed themselves in either Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. Described in Inferno, his excursion begins in Hell where Dante learns about the stories and the sufferings of many sinners. As Dante the pilgrim progresses through Hell it is clear that he assumes different personas. In some instances, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as an empathetic man who pities the sinners while on other occasions, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as a callous and indignant being in regard to the sinners. While Dante the pilgrim is depicted in these two completely different ways, it is the insensitive portrayal that more precisely depicts Dante the pilgrim, as that is his true identity when he leaves Hell. His journey affected him so greatly that by the end of his pilgrimage, Dante the pilgrim has transformed from a compassionate man into an impervious and even cruel individual.

In Dante’s Inferno, we followed Dante as he narrates his decent and observations of hell. A wonderful part of that depiction is his descriptions of the creative yet cruel punishments that each of the different sinners receive. This story is an integral part of literary history, and even if I were to have the imagination and ability of Dante Alighieri, I don’t believe I would change this tried and true version known universally.

     Judging by the character in the story Dante is a god fearing man who has moral issues in his life. He seem to be in a constant fight with himself about the right way he should live his life. By the end of the story Dante gives the impression that he a is strong believer in the theory of “you reap what you sow”. By the end of the story Dante gives you the impression that he does not feel pity for sinners being punished because he looks at it as a form of divine intervention.