The Divine Comedy : Inferno Ira

Before Virgil arrives to guide Dante on his journey, Dante shares that he doesn’t recall how he lost his way. He tells “How I entered [the dark wood] I cannot truly say, I had become so sleepy at the moment when I first strayed, leaving the path of truth” (Inferno I.10-12). Because he strayed from the holy path, Dante finds himself lost and trying to find his way back on the right track. Dante’s ultimate goal is to to free himself from the dark wood of confusion and chaos. Looking up from the wood, Dante sees “the hilltop shawled in morning rays of light sent from the planet that leads men straight ahead on every road” (Inferno I.16-18). Dante begins to move towards the light, but is blocked from passing by three

The poem Inferno is about a man who has “lost the path that does not stray” (Inferno, Canto I, line 3) where “the path” represents the path to Heaven. Dante, having strayed from the path, is in danger of being sent to Hell. When Beatrice, whom Dante loved before her early death, finds out that Dante has strayed she becomes worried that he will not be able to join her in Heaven. Beatrice wants to help Dante find God again, but because she is an angel, she cannot walk through Hell or Purgatory and in her stead she asks the Roman poet Virgil to guide Dante on a cautionary trip. Much the way Dante travels through Hell in the Divine Comedy, Macbeth must endure the consequences of his actions.

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

Dante made it through many different obstacles and layers of hell, but he could not of made it through his journey without Virgil. The character in the book is being alluded to the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro. Maro believed and wrote a legendary piece of literature that stated the mission to civilize the world under divine guidance. He not only wrote about these ways of life but he did his best to

Then he reached out to the boat with both hands; on which the wary Master thrust him off, saying: "Away there with the other dogs!"

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.

When Dante first begins in this story he was lost and clueless physically and mentally.  Dante was located in a forest with his life ruined and not knowing what was in store for him. Dante had given up on his future and had given up on finding the correct path of life for himself. However, when he sees a sunset and a very important mountain that represent Heaven he will soon change. Dante is given an opportunity to change and turn his life around but to do so he must first experience the darkness of Hell with the assistance of Virgil who helps him and guides him through what is right and wrong.

Virgil- Beatrice sends Virgil to Earth to retrieve Dante and act as his guide through Hell and Purgatory.  Since the poet Virgil lived before Christianity, he dwells in Limbo (Ante-Inferno) with other righteous non-Christians.  As author, Dante chooses the character Virgil to act as his guide because he admired Virgil's work above all other poets and because Virgil had written of a similar journey through the underworld.  Thus, Virgil's character knows the way through Hell and can act as Dante's knowledgeable guide while he struggles alongside Dante

In Dante’s Inferno, the relationship between Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil the Guide is an ever-evolving one. By analyzing the transformation of this relationship as the two sojourn through the circles of hell, one is able to learn more about the mindset of Dante the Poet.  At the outset, Dante is clearly subservient to Virgil, whom he holds in high esteem for his literary genius. However, as the work progresses, Virgil facilitates Dante’s spiritual enlightenment, so that by the end, Dante has ascended to Virgil’s spiritual level and has in many respects surpassed him. In Dante’s journey with respect to Virgil, one can see

   In The Inferno, Dante explores the ideas of Good and Evil. He expands on the possibilities of life and death, and he makes clear that consequences follow actions. Like a small generator moving a small wheel, Dante uses a single character to move through the entire of Hell's eternity. Yet, like a clock, that small wheel is pivotal in turning many, many others. This single character, Dante himself, reveals the most important abstract meaning in himself: A message to man; a warning about mankind's destiny. Through his adventures, Dante is able to reveal many global concepts of good and evil in humanity.

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.

The two men first encounter when Dante is lost in the woods and runs into a lion, leopard, and she-wolf. From there Virgil guides him through the gates of hell and their journey begins. The two encounter many people they know and see the punishments for each sin committed. Hell is divided into nine circles, which they must go through in order to get back to where they came from. “The path to paradise begins in hell.”

As Dante makes his ascent through hell and purgatory, he is guided by two figures. The first is Virgil, who saves him from peril and accompanies him, as a friend, through the layers of both afterlifes. The second is Beatrice, who inspired Dante’s journey of salvation in the first place, and who he longs to be reunited with. Yet although these guides are leading him towards God, Dante mistakes their guiding as the end itself. He makes a God of Beatrice, sees her as the ultimate good towards which one strives, and makes a Jesus of Virgil, the man through whom this ultimate good is reached. In this way, Dante creates his own trinity, much to the detriment of his ascent to the True God.

Dante’s Inferno begins in a dark forest, a place of confusion, because he lost his way on the “true path”. Seeking an escape, Dante finds a hill where the sun glares down on him. This light seen in Dante’s Inferno symbolizes clarity as the sun represents God. After encountering three beasts and turning back to the murky forest, Dante crosses paths with the great Roman Poet, Virgil. Virgil is an aid and guide to Dante to Heaven, the ultimate Paradise. He warns Dante he must pass through Hell and Purgatory in order to reach his salvation in heaven. Virgil is depicted as nature or human reason perfected by virtue. It is strongly emphasized that Virgil can only take Dante so far in his journey by guiding him to heaven. Much like St. Thomas Aquinas’ reasoning, nature or human reason can only bring you so far in the journey to God. As Virgil and Dante approach the mouth of Hell, Virgil preaches to Dante about a woman in Heaven who took pity upon Dante when he was lost in hell. The woman Virgil speaks of is Dante’s departed love Beatrice. After Dante hears that Beatrice is heaven he now sheds the fear of traveling through Hell and Purgatorio.

In the beginning of his epic, Inferno, Dante seems to have “abandoned the true path” (1.12). He is lost in a dark forest, which symbolizes not only Dante’s loss of morality, but all of humanity’s sins on Earth. The Dark Wood of Error is a foreshadowing of what the afterlife would be like for Dante without God and without any meaning. Dante appears to be suffering through a mid-life crisis as he flirts with the idea of death, saying, “so bitter–death is hardly more severe” (1.7). Dante has lost his dignity and moral direction following his exile from Florence. Dante must travel through Hell and witness the worst crimes ever committed by humans. By traveling through the depths of Satan’s world, Dante is given an opportunity to reconnect with Christianity. Many people claim that Dante journeys through Hell for revenge, but in fact he is hoping to reset his own moral compass and find God.