The Inferno
On Good Friday 1300 AD, in Dante's thirty-fifth year, he goes astray from the straight road into the Dark Wood of Error. Seeing the Sun (Divine Illumination) lighting the Mount of Joy in the Distance, he attempts to climb up the mountainside but is blocked by three beasts of worldliness: the Leopard of Malice and Fraud, the Lion of Violence and Ambition, and the She-Wolf of Incontinence. When his hope is nearly lost, the shade of the Roman poet Virgil (a symbol of Human Reason) appears to him. Virgil has been sent by Beatrice in Heaven to lead Dante from error; he explains that to defeat the beasts it is necessary to take the harder route through Hell (where sin is recognized), Purgatory (where sin is renounced), then to Heaven to revel in the light of God. Dante accepts and sets off with him. The Poets pass through the Gate of Hell (inscribed with the famous line, Abandon all hope ye who enter here) and step into the Vestibule, where they see the torments inflicted on the opportunists and those who took neither side in the Rebellion of the Angels. They are not officially in Hell nor Heaven because their actions in life were not good enough or bad enough to warrant a place in either. They must forever pursue a banner just out
(The punishments in Inferno always fit the crime. Cerberus, a three-headed dog, guards the gluttonous souls and chews at them. Dante and Virgil tarry in Limbo to talk with other great poets of the ancient world. ) The fourth circle is guarded by the monster Plutus but Virgil again manages to talk his and Dante's way past him. The souls of the flatterers are sunk in excrement. (Virgil is somehow able to track the motion of the stars, which cannot be seen in Hell as they are a symbol of God's shining hope and virtue. (The unnatural rain is a fitting punishment for their unnatural actions. They are ferried to Dis, the capital of Hell, which marks the boundary between Upper and Lower Hell. These demons present the only physical danger to Dante during his journey (some have surmised that this is due to the fact that Dante was exiled from Florence on false charges of grafting). The souls of simoniacs (those who corrupted the Church by making a profit from it) are in the third bolgia, jammed upside-down inside tube-like holes in the ground with fire scalding the soles of their feet, and are jammed farther into the holes as new sinners arrive to take their places. The gates of Dis are guarded by Rebellious Angels, whom Virgil is powerless against (Human Reason alone cannot cope with Evil) and sends up a prayer for divine aid. ) The circle is filled with souls of hoarders and wasters, who are eternally at war with one another. In life these people wished to see into the future through forbidden methods, so their heads are placed backward on their shoulders - they can never see in front of themselves and can only walk backwards through eternity. These tombs will be closed forever on Judgement Day and the heretics will be sealed forever in a death within a death. The stench that arises from the seventh circle is so powerful that they seek shelter behind a tomb to accustom themselves to the smell.
Common topics in this essay:
Ulysses Diomede,
Dante Catholic,
Dante Virgil,
Poets Malacoda,
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Upper Hell,
Wood Suicides,
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Rebellion Angels,
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contains souls,
human reason,
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Acceptance Essays
