Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Fire And Lava Depiction Of Hell Dante - 1,870 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

According to the dictionary hell can be defined as the place of the dead, or of souls after death. It is also described as the place or state of punishment for the wicked after death. Hell is a very abstract idea. We as humans can only ponder the idea of how hell would actually looks. Dantes Inferno, which is part of Dantes Divine Comedy, gives a detailed description of the landscape of hell and the punishments that one could expect to receive if they are banished to the depths of hell. It is very noticeable by simply reading the title, Inferno, that Dante uses the popular belief that hell is a place of extreme heat and fire.

This idea of burning flames and smoldering lava is carried out throughout the work. However, Dante does introduce a new idea, Contrapasso that has influenced a number of writers and works. Contrapasso is the idea that the crimes committed in life will determine the appropriateness and severity of the punishment in hell. The universal belief that all sinners would burn in hell suggests that all sins have a universal punishment. In the Inferno, Dante emphasizes that there are different punishments for different sins. The part of hell in which someone would be banished to is dependent on the severity of the sin.

According to Dante, the structure of hell is that of a slope. This slope begins at Achero with Limbo and proceeds down to the river of Styx. After the river, lower hell, otherwise known as the City of Dis is entered. The slope continues through nine levels and finally ends are the center of earth with those who committed the sin of treachery, the most severe sin.

Thus, depending on the severity of the sin that was committed, a person will receive appropriate placement in hell. While walking through the woods in despair, Dante encounters the great Roman poet, Virgil, who informs him that he will be his guide. They first must pass through the place of eternal damnation, hell, and purgatory before they can reach heaven. The first place they visit is full of cries from suffering and torment.

Virgil explains that these souls are of those who lived without disgrace and without praise. They are in the Ante-Inferno, within hell, but not part of it. They were said to be cowardly and lived without praise. They are punished by being bitten by flies and wasps. There next stop brings them to Limbo, the first level, which contains the souls of those who were virtuous but either lived before Christianity or were never baptized. They live in darkness because they never knew the light of God.

The second level holds the lustful, those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. A three-headed dog named Cerebus guards the third level. This level holds the gluttons, who must lie on the ground as rains of garbage and stench fall on them. The two travelers continue on toward the fourth circle, which housed those who hoarded or squandered their money. There punishment consisted of painfully pushing weights toward the opposing side, basically a never-ending jousting match.

The fifth level contains the wrathful, who inhabit the river Styx. These sinners must lie in the mud of the river and bite and tear at each other. Upon entering the sixth level, the City of Dis, Dante hears cries of torment and suffering. When Dante first enters the City of Dis, his eyes fell upon the field of tombs. tombs cover the even plain such fields I saw here, spread in every direction, except that here the tombs were chest of pain: for, in a ring around each tomb, great fires raised every wall to a red heat (Inferno). This is the level in which heretics are banished to.

Coming into the seventh level, they see a smoldering river of blood in which the sinners who were violent boil continually. These individuals were violent against their neighbor, themselves, or God. A group of Centaurs -- half-man, half-horse -- stand on the bank of the river with bows and arrows. They shoot at any soul that tries to raise him out of the river more than he is allowed according to the gravity of his sin. The eighth circle has a wall running along the outside and a great circular pit in the center with ten evenly spaced ridges running between the wall and the pit.

This creates ten separate pits, or pouches, in which individuals with different varieties of "ordinary fraud" are punished. Virgil leads Dante around the left side of the Circle, where they come upon the first Pouch. Here, they see a pack of souls running constantly from one side of the pouch to the other. On both ridges, demons with great whips scourge the souls as soon as they come into reach, forcing them back to the other side of the pouch. Crossing the ridge to the Second Pouch, a horrible stench and mournful cries attack the nose and ears of the travelers. Dante beholds a ditch full of human excrement into which many sinners have been plunged.

From one of these souls, he learns that this is the pouch of the Flatterers. The third pouch contains the simonist's, those who sold religious power or sacraments for money. He decries the evil of simony before they even view the pouch. Within, they see the sinners stuck headfirst in pits with only their feet protruding. As they flail in the pits, flames torture their feet endlessly.

In the fourth pouch, Dante sees a line of sinners trudging slowly along. Seeing no apparent punishment other than walking, he looks closer and is amazed to see that each sinner's head is facing the wrong way -- their necks have been twisted so that their tears of pain now fall on their buttocks. There are six more pouches, as aforementioned, that have similar punishments. The last level of hell consists of a frozen lake. In the ice, souls are frozen up to their heads, leaving their teeth to chatter. This idea of a multi-layered, and segregated hell is a very different idea that is brought to us by Dante.

Since the Inferno is one of the most respected depictions of hell, we are using it as the background. This paper will use Dantes landscape of hell and his idea of contrapasso and compare and contrast them to modern movies. Hell is portrayed many different ways in Hollywood movies. One problem with these movies is that they are usually not filmed with a high quality of acting or effects. In fact, many of the movies that show a depiction of Hell are comedies that give it a humorous touch. There are three very different interpretations that we looked at and will dissect to show just how different the depictions are.

For our purposes we will look at Spawn, Little Nicky, and South Park: The Movie. Spawn is a movie adaptation from a very successful comic book that tells the story of a man who escapes from Hell to fight injustice on Earth. In this movie, our hero is an assassin who is killed and sent to Hell. Once there he makes a deal with the Devil that will allow him to return to Earth to seek revenge just so long as he later leads the Devils army upon their invasion of Earth.

The image of Hell in this movie has interesting aspects as well as ridiculous ones. First we see that the journey to Hell takes place in what appears to be a giant fire slide. Once there, the landscape is Fire and lava as far as the eye can see with the occasional floating rock where the humans are located. All of this was acceptable, but the image of the Devil is laughable. The Lord of Darkness is portrayed as a giant talking dog. The only problem with this movies idea of Hell was that there was not much shown about other souls.

We are given pictures of the army the Devil plans to use to invade, but no other souls that are paying for their sins on Earth unless the army portrays these souls. We are never really told. Little Nicky is a comedy that actually shows Hell about one-third of the movie. The only problem with this is that it is a comedy and Hell is given a lighter touch. Upon entering Hell in Little Nicky a person must talk with the gatekeeper and he decides where a person goes. People in this movie are dealt the punishments that they handed out while on Earth.

The landscape of Hell is like Spawn for the fact that there is lots of fire and lava with a rocky terrain in the middle. The castle where the Devil resides is in the center of Hell and is surrounded by a giant moat of lava and it is here that the Devil sits on his throne to decide the punishment of those who reside in his kingdom. Even though this movie is a ridiculously made comedy, its portrayal of Hell is very interesting. The fact that the Devil sits on a dark throne and deal out punishments in a land of fire and lava makes it a believable depiction. There are many people in our world that believe Hell is exactly like this. The last movie, South Park: The Movie, is by far the most off the wall portrayal we looked at, but it does give a good idea of just how different the depiction of Hell can be.

In this movie, one of the characters is killed and is sent to Hell, but this is no surprise because so does almost everybody else. The population of Hell consists of about 99 percent of the people that once lived on Earth including such noble figures such as Mahatma Gandhi. Once in Hell, Satan, who appears as a large, red Minotaur, confronts our character. He tells him there is no escape and he then shows how he tortures people by putting them on the rack. There is also lava in this landscape, but it has the appearance more a landscape that really is in the center of the earth.

It looks like a giant cavern with many different rooms that people are being tortured in. Once the viewer looks beyond the gross out humor of South Park, there is a very good depiction of Hell. There are still other beliefs about Hell that we do not have the time or length to get into. In a recent episode of The Sopranos, the idea of Hell is discussed. They explain it as a place where your death is relived over and over again.

If a person were killed on a mob hit, then Hell would consist of that persons assassination being relived for eternity. The fact is that we could have used a number of different movies that portray Hell in one way or the other but we felt that these three, although similar in some ways, depicted Hell and the Devil in differing fashions. [/b]


Free research essays on topics related to: souls, south park, devil, pouch, dante

Research essay sample on Fire And Lava Depiction Of Hell Dante

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com