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Suffering In Dante's Inferno

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Throughout the fast-paced lives of people, they are constantly making choices that shape who they are, as well as the world around them; however, they do not often think about the consequences of the little decisions they make every day, such as the result of eternal suffering. From those who were neither good nor bad all the way to Satan himself, Dante takes the reader on his calculated and detailed journey through hell in his attempt to reach salvation in Inferno, the beginning of the Divine Comedy: a trilogy of poetry by Dante Alighieri.
The tale begins where Dante finds himself alone in the Dark Wood of Error, or Limbo, having strayed from the “True Way” (Alighieri 4). He attempts to climb the Mount of Joy but is faced with three beasts, …show more content…

The sins in these Bolgias include Seducers and Panderers, Flatterers, Simoniacs, Fortune Tellers and Diviners, Grafters, Hypocrites, Thieves, Evil Counselors, Sowers and Discord, and, in the last Bolgia, Counterfeiters and Alchemists. The Panderers and Seducers are driven at an endless fast walk by horned demons due to their making others do their will, the Flatterers sink in excrement, the equivalent to their false flatteries on Earth, and the Simoniacs are stuck upside down with their soles ablaze to a heat dependent on their guilt. The Fortune Tellers and Diviners have their heads turned backwards so they can never see the future like they tried to on Earth, the Grafters are sunk in boiling pitch to symbolize their sticky fingers, while demons guard them so they don’t leave, and the Hypocrites are weighted down by leaden robes that mimic the weight of their deceit in life. The Thieves are in a pit full of monstrous reptiles who bind the hands with which they did their crimes and are constantly stealing bodies from each other, switching between human and reptile with nothing of their own. The Evil Counselors are stolen from sight within flames like they stole from God’s virtue and the Sowers of Discord are hacked and torn apart by a Great Demon with a bloody sword just as they torn things apart that were meant to be

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