Dante 's Inferno : The Nine Circles Of Hell

In Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, Canto V introduces the torments of Hell in the Second Circle. Here Minos tells the damned where they will spend eternity by wrapping his tail around himself. The Second Circle of Hell holds the lustful; those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. Hell is not only a geographical place, but also a representation of the potential for sin and evil within every individual human soul. As Dante travels through Hell, he sees sinners in increasingly more hideous and disgusting situations. For Dante, each situation is an image of the quality of any soul that is determined to sin in

Dante and Virgil have just left limbo, the first circle of hell, and are now on their way into the second circle of hell, where hell really begins. It is here that Dante first witnesses the punishment brought upon the sinners. They encounter Minos, the beast-judge who blocks the way into the second circle. He examines each soul as they pass through and determines which circle of hell they must go to by winding his tail around himself. Minos warns Dante of passing through but Virgil silences him. Dante encounters a dark place completely sucked of any light and filled with noises more horrible than a tempest and sees the souls being whirled around in a

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.

Dante’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.

The story of “Dante’s Inferno”, by Dante Alighieri is a dark story which depicts nine circles of Hell. The one circle of Hell that we will be discussing is that of greed which happens to be the fourth circle. In the Fourth Circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil see the souls of people who are punished for greed. They are divided into two groups (The Prodigal and the Miserly), those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent it. They use great weights as a torture mechanism where they are pushing them with their chests. This symbolizes their selfish drive for fortune during their lifetime. As they make their way further down, they come across a swamp filled with naked people with their faces scared by rage. One other form of greed is that of anger, which overcame these terrorized souls. The two groups are guarded by a character called Pluto which also happens to be the God of Wealth from the Underworld. The fourth circle (Greed), is one of the iniquities that most incurs Dante's scornful wrath, thus is of great importance to understanding the text.

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 this section, Dante depicts hell as a downward decent through each ring. The structure portrays that hell gets darker the farther you are from heaven. Another example come from the Vestibule of hell. This passage shows how the coward angels were not treated the same as the rebel angels. The degrees of punishment based on the actions committed is a clear connection to the Great Chain of Beings structure.

I think Dante’s description of Hell is a wonderful work of literature. Dante uses numerous literary techniques to describe his vision of Hell to the reader. In my opinion, one of the most affective techniques used by Dante is symbolism. It would be a very difficult task to compile a brief list of significant symbols from the Cantos that we read in class. Dante utilized many symbols throughout each canto. Some of the symbols that Dante used in Inferno are well defined and easy to interpret, while other symbols are much more difficult to recognize and understand. For this paper, I will be analyzing multiple symbols from Dante’s Inferno. Some of the symbols came from the Canto’s that were included in class

In Dante’s Inferno and his levels of hell there are many things that we have in common as a person today’s society. This essay will discuss the issues in Dante’s Inferno and The Divine Comedy that are still true to this day as they were back when Dante wrote this comedy. Some views Dante considers are not the same to everyone, but some views are still apparent in today’s society. With these views being common it can be said that Dante’s views are common for people in today’s society. Many people do not understand the journey that Dante describes in this comedy. Finally, many of the sins considered by people today, were sins worthy of hell in Dante’s time.

The architectural and emotional literary synopsis of passage 15.1-30 suggests an insight to Dante Alighieri’s natural human characters pilgrimage and life journey through hell. At this moment Dante cannot see anything that resembles comfort or familiarity. The architecture of this circle thus far includes, “protecting banks”, “stoney boarders”, “bulwalk”, and “dikes” protecting it from flooding waters. This circle’s punishment for homosexuals is to walk with madness in the soil and fire raining on their skin. The architecture of the surrounding walls are not built to keep the living out, but to the “repel the sea”. The purpose of surrounding walls are to prevent fresh water from washing these people who walk through fire clean. Dante uses a simile to compare the flock of souls eyes to, “knitted brows like a old tailor’s needle’s eyes”. This gives a deeper perception of warmth, realism, and humanization of these sinner’s emotions and intentions. Dante finds his teacher, Bunetto Latini, running in hell, which he unconditionally honors and loves. This scene in essence illuminates how Dante finds the most sincere and familiar person he knows, in the utter most bowels of hell. Dante’s exchange with his former teacher is the most natural and bravest he has had in the novel. A

The journey through Hell is one many fear and don’t want to experience. It can be thought of as scary or even horrific. A glimpse into this mysterious yet frightening resting place is depicted throughout Dante’s Inferno. The poem describes Dante’s heroic journey into the dark depths of the Inferno and during this journey he meets many different monsters and creatures. These creatures are of large importance on Dante’s spiritual journey since they not only challenge his presence in Inferno, but they also are guards or defenders of Hell. Three of these main creatures, the leopard, the lion, and the she wolf carry large importance with them and represent categories of sin in relation to hell. It is the encounters with these beasts and creatures that create a connecting element from Dante’s Inferno to The Epic of Gilgamesh.

In The Inferno, Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell, encountering increasingly serious sins, most of which are crimes. The levels of Hell can be interpreted as a gradation of crimes, with penalties in proportion to their relative gravity of sin. While crimes are transgressions against human law, Dante’s Christian orthodox ambitions translate the treatment of these seemingly earthly crimes as sins, transgressions against divine law. For the purposes of this paper, the two terms can be used interchangeably because Dante’s perception of crimes on Earth is in parallel to the punishment of those crimes as sins in Hell. For Dante, the most punishable sins are those of betrayal. With a lucid examination of Dante’s political

Dante had his fair share of the real human experience, whilst traveling through hell in Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”. Characters in literature have been popularized since this masterpiece to favor sins as a type of personality trope. The lazy bum, the angry husband, or the prideful peacocks; the list goes on and on. The cause and effect of these traits have served well to teach generations of readers, the ideas and meanings of our actions as humans. Although it is rare, some works leave open ended plots for us to contemplate the meaning of said sin. In conjunction to some of the deadly sins, the main characters from “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Veldt”, and “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”, all display a truth about human nature.

Dante's `Divine Comedy', the account of his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven is one of the worlds great poems, and a prime example of a most splendidly realized integration of life with art. More than being merely great poetry, or a chronicle of contemporary events, which it also is, the `Comedy' is a study of human nature by a man quite experienced with it. The main argument I will make in this essay is that Dante's `Comedy' is chiefly a work of historical significance because in it lies the essence of human life across all boundaries of time and place. I feel that such a reading is justified, nay invited, by Dante himself when he says;

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.