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Dante s Hell How is Dante s Hell relevant to today s society? For starters, though Dante s visions seem drastic, cruel and even inhuman, I feel that a lot of his thoughts are very relevant to society today. Perhaps in a different way, punishment being applied differently, but society in mind still would, and can relate to Dante s vision of hell. The sins that these people have committed are still taking place every day. This is probably one of the foremost reasons for Dante s success among our people.
He uses light and dark imagery, which is repetitive and abundant throughout the cantos. The light representing reason, truth, righteousness, and goodness as displayed with the fact that the hill to Divine Light is cloaked in rays of the sun. The dark he depicts as times of torment, blindness, and evil. This imagery is seen in the fact that the path through Hell that Dante must take is dark and the sun does not shine there. Dantes Inferno describes the descent through Hell from the upper level of the opportunists to the most evil, the treacherous, on the lowest level. His allegorical poem is a detailed description of sin and its relationship to degrees of punishment.
Dante, once a spiritual and holy man, now feeling less than holy, wants to remain in his spirits with God. To do this, Dante must recognize the true nature of his sins, renounce them, and pay penance for them by traveling through the nine levels of hell. He arranges the sinners in a hierarchy and distinguishes a few specific characters within each group. While Virgil acts as Dantes mentor and guide, Dante himself, acts as a mentor for some of the souls in Hell. He informs them as to what is happening in the land of the living. The sinners also function as mentors by telling Dante about themselves, their sins and about Hell.
Dante is a loyal Christian therefore all throughout one can specifically notice him criticizing believers of Judaism and Islam. An example of his contempt towards Islam is when Dante meets Mohammed and gruesomely describes him: Between his legs all of his red guts hung with the heart, the lungs, the liver, the gall bladder, and the shriveled sac that passes shit to the bung. Each sin had its own logical punishment, and each group of sinners received the same punishment, with only a few exceptions. For example he describes the fate of the fortunetellers, for the face was reversed on the neck, and they came on backwards, staring backwards at their loins for to look before them was forbidden. In life the fortunetellers foresaw the future, while in death they are doomed to exist with their heads on backwards and their eyes overflowing with tears.
This punishment was so that not only could they not see what was happening in front of them, it blocked their vision due to their incredible amounts of tears. Throughout the poem, Virgil uses logic and reason to convince the monsters to allow him to gain passage to the various circles of Hell. The use of characters and mentors is distinct in each piece. Dante and Virgil then descend into a second circle.
It is in this level, where all that sin in lust, or those who make reason slave to appetite, is condemned. A few examples of this type of sin are Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, who loved men s lusting, Achilles, who lost his life to love in combat, Paris, whose abduction of Helen ignited the Trojan War, and Dristan, a central figure of many medieval romances. Their punishment is an infernal storm that lashes at them with rage and punishment. The sinners in the fourth circle are those that could not judge with moderation when it came to spending. Here Dante points out specific people in this level, but first generalizing by finding priests, and popes and cardinals, in whom avarice is most likely to prevail. he finds the shades punishment to be a joint punishment, where on one side must shove their material wealth against the other.
The river Styx, serving as the Fifth Circle, holds the souls of those that anger overcame. Here punishment is to lie in a sluggish black muck and create a gurgling sound instead of being able to speak or sing while an eternal rage against them to attack and bite their own bodies is created. In other stages Dante describes punishments such as where sinners lay upside down in a hole where only there feet stick out. Their feet are then engulfed by flames. Hereby displaying another symbol; instead of being baptized in water, the sinners are immersed in oil and fire perverting their type of baptism.
In the third division the punishment is more severe due to the fact that the sinners, while being frozen in the lake, also have their heads facing up with their eyes frozen from their tears. It is explained to Dante that here, the bodies remain living in the living world but are possessed with demons. Ser Branch D origin, who murdered his father-in-law, is a prime example of this. Finally to exit Hell, the duo must climb down the body of Lucifer, which is covered in shaggy hair. While climbing down, Dante marks how he becomes confused because he soon feels as if he is climbing up again.
This marks how they are crossing the center of the earth, or the point to which all weight from every part is drawn. They then make their way up to the exit of Hell and the entrance to Purgatory. The travelers finally make their way to the surface, where they came out to see once more the stars. Many people in today s society judge and look down upon other people. It is in this way that society can relate to the different circles of Dante s Hell. We categorize people by the way they act, live, and dress.
Regardless of what others think this will always be the case. Just as Dante placed people in their circles according to their sins, society ranks people by their material possessions and accomplishments. In my opinion Hell should not consist of so many circles. Sinners belong in Hell together so that they can all be disgusted by each other. Many will argue that they do not deserve to be on a level equivalent to the others, but they are the same because each disobeyed God. I believe that equal punishment should be placed on each individual because each had free will to choose his or her paths in life.
Dante s hell, how it is best described, goes in depth, and length about details so horrific often only envisioned as impossible. However in each person lies a different meaning, vision, or description of hell, its events and ways of getting there. Within our society a circle of hell could be joining a gang, prostitution, murder, the list goes on, and no matter which route / circle they choose, they will still end up the same, unless they realize that the path they re on is leading down. into yet the next circle, and eventually hell.
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