The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, 100 Years of Solitude, by Macondo, and Inferno, by Dante Alighieri

Dante’s Inferno follows the allegorical journey of Dante, who loses sight of the true path, representing good faith, and must travel through hell, among other places, to return to the path by trusting God and avoiding sin. Canto I of the story involves Dante, in the middle of his life where he has both human experience and time to improve, lost in the dark wilderness, threatened by beasts and unable to escape. In fact, darkness pervades in the first thirty-four cantos of the Comedy. It is important to note that Dante considers darkness to be the lack of natural light, as Throughout the Inferno, Dante uses the setting of darkness to represent both sin and sin’s deceiving nature. In doing so, Dante argues that to successfully have faith in God, one must discern the truth from among the darkness which permeates both Hell and humanity.

Dante's depiction of Hell is not meant to entertain but to change the behavior of his readers so that they will choose behavior which will lead them to the "city" of Heaven, rather than behavior which will lead to the dark wood and, eventually, damnation: A place is there below, stretching as far from Beelzebub as his tomb extends. . . . My Leader and I entered by that hidden road, to return into the bright world; and . . . we mounted up . . . so far that a round opening I saw some of the beautiful things which Heaven bears, and thence we issued for again to see the stars (Dante 52).

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’s The Inferno is his own interpretation of the circles of hell. The people that Dante places in hell tried to validate their offenses and have never seen the injustice of their crime or crimes. They were each placed in a specific circle in Hell, Dante has nine circles in his hell. Each circle holds those accountable for that specific crime. Each circle has its own unique and fitting punishment for the crime committed. There are three different main types of offenses; they are incontinence, violence, and fraud. These offenses are divided into Dante’s nine rings of Hell. Each of these rings has a progressively worse punishment, starting with crimes of passion and

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is on a journey through hell in which he sees the different versions of sins and what consequences come after the immoralities. The person who commits a sin usually has to suffer in some way that would show revenge for the law of God. Dante threatens the people and tells them that they basically have nothing to look forward to except for having to suffer being separated from the will of God. Since these works were written by Dante, he had the power to judge others and decide how they will be punished for their sins. These visions that he had could very well be all false prophecies and may not be believed by every person. One thing that Dante did was to give enlightenment to sins that people did not know and made people

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 purpose for writing Inferno using the language that he did was to warn others about their actions so they would not fall into Hell. Dante describes Hell in a wicked manner to emphasize that Hell is not fun nor beautiful. Gustav Doré gives us an accurate visual of how Dante describes the journey through the nine circles of Hell. The story states, “I saw myriad flocks of naked souls, / All weeping wretchedly… / Flat on their backs, some spread out on the ground; / Some squatted down, all hunched up in a crouch; / And others walked about interminably. / More numerous were those who roamed around; / Fewer were those stretched out for the torture, / But looser were their tongues to tell their hurt.”

While every person has a different depiction of Hell, Dante provides fascinating imagery of his portrayal, so the reader can truly experience the

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.

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

   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.

Dante’s Inferno is an epic poem that is clearly centered on his hate for Pope Boniface VIII. Dante’s “circles of hell” described so vividly in his poem are the result of Dante’s angst toward Boniface as he was once on top of the world until Boniface exiled him only because of his political opinions. Although, he does not clearly name Boniface in the epic he makes sure to include him in five obscure allusions. The first instance alludes to the incumbent pope before Boniface, Pope Celestine V, as the one “who made the great refusal” in the circle of neutrals; as he allowed Boniface to plant seeds of doubt in the months before he suddenly and unexpectedly resigned, leaving Boniface the Pope. The second allusion would place Boniface perfectly in the eighth circle, sixth pouch as the fraudulent sinner he was to prey on Celestine with his utter gift of fraudulent gab to gain a political position of power. The third, fourth, and fifth instances all point to his questionable practice of selling indulgences or absolution. So, therefore, just because he cannot directly mention Boniface in his epic due to him still being alive during the time of his writing, he still manages to make it a point to let him know there is a place for him in Hell.

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.

Solely based on moral beliefs Dante's poem is obviously a deeply Christian standpoint. One might be surprised, then, to find that it is filled with allusions to pagan mythology and is populated not just by biblical figures, but also by characters of Greek and Roman myth and history. However taking place in hell on the evening of Good Friday through the morning of Easter Sunday in approximately the year 1300. The Inferno is an evil that is a contradiction to God's will; as most of the punishments of the sinners correspond symbolically to the sins they committed themselves. The walk through a dark and confusing world represents the life journey of men and women. Dante’s extensive literary treatment of death and afterlife aims to both comfort and warn; envisioning rewards for the

“The Christian church … conceived of hell as a place where the good were separate from the evil, and the deeds on earth were weighed and judges.”(Bondanella XXXIII) Hell is a place that was created as a punishment for those people who died with mortal sins and did not ask for forgiveness. In this case Dante’s hell in the Inferno is divided into three sections and nine circles. These circles within hell were based off of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Along with the seven deadly sins Dante’s Catholic religion also influenced him in his choices about who to put and where to put people in Hell. According to his beliefs, if you were not a Christian, you automatically went to Hell. (Trotter) As well even though Dante's hell affected all people no matter their religion, the representation of how Hell