The Classic Inferno By Dante Alighieri

Imagine a place where tyrants stand up to their ears in boiling blood, the gluttonous experience monsoons of human filth, and those who commit sins of the flesh are blown about like pieces of paper in a never-ending wind storm. Welcome to Dante 's Inferno, his perspective on the appropriate punishments for those who are destined to hell for all eternity. Dante attempts to make the punishments fit the crimes, but because it is Dante dealing out the tortures and not God, the punishments will never be perfect because by nature, man is an imperfect creature. Only God is capable of being above reproach and of metering out a just punishment. While Dante 's treatment towards the tyrants is fitting, his views on the

“Automatically Vera pressed the trigger.....Lombards leaping body stayed poised in mid-spring, then crashed heavily to the ground.” This passage enlightens the fact that Lombards old-fashioned attitude and courtesy toward women, and not believing that women are capable of murder enables Vera to steal Lombards gun and kill him (240).

Giovanni and Lusanna is a micro-history of high born Giovani being taken to court by lower born Lusanna as she claimed that he married her in secret. She believed that her future security and honor was at risk as Giovanni married a younger high born woman after his father and brother died. This micro-history shows that social standing, honor, and marriage during Renaissance Florence.

Josie's grandfather, Francesco had a unique situation with his wife - Josie's "Nonna". Being from Italy (the old country), it was customary for arranged marriages to be set up by ones parents. This is the situation that "nonna" found herself in. However, she committed adultery, and had a child that was not fathered by Francesco. This child was Josie's mother, and Francesco always resented her. While Josie never met him, she was aware of the coolness between her mother and him, and of the unusual situation between him and her grandmother.

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.

          Florence- Florence is one of Atonio’s friends. Although he does not believe in God, he attends catechism lessons with his friends. Florence’s mother died when he was three. Afterwards, his father slowly killed himself with alcohol. His sisters are now prostitutes at Rosie’s house. He asks Antonio insightful questions that point out the gaps in the Catholic Religion. When Antonio becomes

Pietro was a labor that worked off and on. When they could not save enough money to build their own home he became more violent and started pressuring Angelina into prostitution for money. On April 16, 1911 he threatened her again and as he put it “be a bad woman” if she did

Despite the devastating blow of Geremio’s death, his wife Annunziata does not lose faith, though she is doubtful about how the family will manage to survive without him. She initially counts on help from her brother Luigi, but the subsequent maiming of his legs in another Job accident leaves Annunziata and her eight children destitute. It is now the responsibility of Paul, at twelve years old the eldest male of the family, to seek provision for all of

The narrator is the protagonist's brother, Biagio, who is telling the story from his perspective and from what he has heard from his brother. The protagonist, Cosimo, and Biagio are the sons of the Baron, the Duke of Ombrosa. Their mother, the Generalessa, is the daughter of a famous general. Their sister, Battista, likes cooking gruesome food with varieties of animals inside and feeding it to the family. Therefore, to protest, Cosimo and Biagio releases the snails that Battista was planning to use. Their father punishes them and locks them up for 3 days. After they are let out, Battista prepares them a meal with snail, which the father threatens them to eat. Cosimo refuses and climbs up a tree, where he proclaims that he will ”never come down again” (13). As the family ignores Cosimo, believing that he will eventually come back down, Cosimo climbs into his neighbor's villa and befriends the daughter, Viola. Later, Cosimo makes

Dante’s descent into Hell in Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy, tells of the author’s experiences in Hades as he is guided through the abyss by the Roman author, Virgil. The text is broken into cantos that coincide with the different circles and sub-circles of Hell that Dante and Virgil witness and experience. Inferno is heavily influenced by classic Greek and Roman texts and Dante makes references to a myriad of characters, myths, and legends that take place in Virgil’s Aeneid, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Some of the most important references, however, are the most obvious ones that are easily overlooked simply because of the fact that they are so blatant. Dante is being escorted through Hell by the

The story is about two sisters Katherine and Bianca. Bianca has a suitor who would like to marry her, Lucentio, but the only way that he will be able to marry her is if her older sister is married first. When Petruccio arrives to Padua he agrees to court and marry Katherine because she will provide a lovely dowry. Rumor has it that Katherine is a cynical, unruly, and

Perhaps the most foolish characters readers could come across in The Decameron were Friar Alberto and Monna Lisetta. Boccaccio masterfully parodied the Church by introducing Friar Alberto as a former con man who moved to Venice and became a priest: already, Boccaccio has criticized the vetting process for potential religious officials. Monna Lisetta, the next character introduced, is a vain, airheaded devotee of the angel Gabriel. By having these silly characters meet in a religious setting, Boccaccio mocked the Catholics of his day, especially once Friar Alberto used his credibility as a “man of God” to trick the gullible Monna Lisetta into having sex with “Gabriel,” who would be possessing the friar’s own body. Boccaccio could hardly be more derisive toward the Church than with this “tragic” story.

Hawthorne frequently uses words like "imagine", "seemed", or "appeared to " to cast a doubt upon the validity of what Giovanni thinks he sees. Even Giovanni himself rationalizes the situation and convinces himself that what he thought he saw did not happen. This is because in Giovanni's mind, it is impossible to separate the physical from the spiritual. For him, if Beatrice's body is poisonous, then so is her spirit. Giovanni is unable to see the possibilities for good and bad to be simultaneously within someone. This problem is at the heart of this story and is what ultimately causes Beatrice's death. Since Giovanni allows himself to disbelieve what he had seen earlier in the garden, he is able to fall for Beatrice. Giovanni is drawn to Beatrice not because of the "glamor" of science, but an interest in the unknown. He knows that all is not right in Rappaccini's garden and he is fascinated with the mystery. As Giovanni and Beatrice get to know each other, they develop a strong bond. However, for Giovanni this is not true love. Hawthorne provides the reader with clues that question the integrity of Giovanni. For example, Hawthorne writes, "Guasconti had not a deep heart or at all events, its depths are not sounded now-but he had a quick fancy, and an ardent southern temperament, which rose every instant to higher fever-pitch" (Hawthorne 614). Not only is Giovanni passionate in his lust for Beatrice, but he also

At the beginning of the story, Hawthorne establishes a dark mood when describing the ancestors who were occupying the mansion “pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno” (Hawthorne). This allusion refers to the “Divine Comedy” and the Inferno, which tells Dante’s journey through hell. This story also alludes to the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, in which the prominent figures disobey God and they end up being cast out of Eden, the paradise. One of the parts in the story of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” that alludes the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is when Giovanni thinks “was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world?” about Rappaccini’s botanical garden (Hawthorne). In addition, Beatrice can be associated with Eve because, despite the fact that her body is corrupted by her father and becomes poisonous, her soul always remains pure and clean. With her beauty, Beatrice enamors Giovanni and poisons him slowly unintentionally with her breath and essence of the violet flower. Beatrice does not know that she can poison Giovanni because she is imprisoned in the garden, as Beatrice says to Giovanni, “the effect of my father’s fatal love of science, which estranged me from all society of my kind” (Hawthorne). Giovanni is not really in love with Beatrice because he convinces her to drink the

Francesca, then, is an extremely `mobile' sinner. Although pausing to speak to Dante (the significance of which will be later discussed), she is compelled to move - indeed, it is an integral part of her punishment. This compulsion is significant. Through rejecting a life of constancy on earth, whether willingly or otherwise, Francesca has sacrificed the free will she was allowed to exert on her body. Having lost control of herself in life she is plunged into the chaos of the `bufera'. Her punishment then, is not merely an