He compares the agony that he hears to a song. Dante continues this metaphor as he talks about the sounds of weeping upset him. This imagery makes the reader hear the agony coming from the sinners and affects them emotionally. In stanza 9, Dante also uses the literary device of repetition. He starts off line 25 with “And now the notes of anguish…” then in like 26 he also says “and now I find myself…” Dante also rhymes the word sound and pound in line 27.
Dante describes the dark wood: “Its very memory gives a shape to fear” (Alighieri, 194). Dante, like many others today, was forced to face his fears. Dante had to go through each level of hell in order to leave the dark wood safely. However, as relevant as Dante’s experience to facing horror is to society today, he had the help of Virgil to be his guide throughout. Many would find it irrelevant, as it is not easy to have a reliable companion such a Virgil through such a difficult and turbulent experience.
I honestly don’t know why this is so low in Hell. Suicide is obviously a crime against yourself, but is where personalization comes in. Feeling such immense shame as the tree Dante was talking to could have had some credence to it. Granted he should have been stronger on his morals, but suicide is treated as a one way crime in Dante’s Hell, and I believe circumstances should be taken into
Their decision to turn away from God-despite living in paradise because of him- created the first evil and gave rise to original sin, something all humans are born with (According to Catholicism.) The misuse of free will in turning away from God leads to obsession to worldly objects such as money. It is important to note that Augustine does not believe money is evil, he believes obsession with money, and any other secular object for that matter, draws away from God and leads the soul to sin. With obsession, as is human nature, comes addiction. Augustine believed that addiction was excessively evil, and as well as being a sin, conflicted with the process of free will.
This is a metaphor to vividly depict the overall weakness and meagerness of humans. This is literally saying that if you think that you can escape hell all by yourself, then you have as little chance as a spider’s web could stop a falling rock. This evokes fear into a person’s heart and makes them want to embrace god and be reborn again because they know it’s unlikely for a web to stop a rock. Edwards also says “The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood (Edwards 47)”. This is another metaphor of God’s wrath, here God is used as a figure to be terrified of and be happy that he is merciful because he’s the only
The gods believed that they were so intolerable that they express that, “sleep is no longer possible by reason of babel” (“Gilgamesh, The Flood Story” 23). The gods believed them to be loud and pesky, and found no solution fitting other than termination through inundation. The Bible’s account of the reasoning for the flood is much more in-depth and has a more deeply rooted meaning. God saw that there was evil in man’s heart, and He knew that to fix this problem meant to abolish man. While the Sumerian gods believed that people were pests, the Christian God believed people were becoming naturally evil.
He explained that Dante’s Inferno is the first part of Dante Alighieri’s poem from the fourteenth-century called Divine Comedy. It is about the journey of Dante through hell, or the medieval version of hell, guided by the Roman poet Virgil. In the poem, Hell is shown as nine circles of suffering located within the earth. Through symbolism, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the soul towards God, with the Inferno (Italian for Hell) describing the recognition and the rejection of sin. Overall I thought that whole presentation was extremely boring and hard to follow.
He expresses his grief at losing close friends, as well as, resentment for an overly vengeful God, who would punish men not only their crimes, but also the crimes of their fathers. One of Francesco?s peers, Giovanni Boccaccio observed the human behavior in response to The Plague. He concluded that their behavior fell into three categories: Isolation- No one can get me sick if I break contact with everyone. Denial- If I indulge myself, enjoy life, and surround myself with merriment, how could I possibly die? Moderation- If I refrain from overindulgence and gluttony, and walk a righteous path, then I will be spared from this evil.
I loved to see them come into the woods, for they were company to a body; hurting nothing; being, as it was, as harmless as a garter snake. But now it gives me sore thoughts when I hear the frighty things whizzing through the air.” Natty Bumppo explains in this passage that for him the murder of the pigeons (the destruction of nature) is unfair because they did not do anything to deserve it. They were just flying, and they lived peacefully with men. For him, their massacre is totally unjustified. He also “confess” that he has remorse.
Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Influence of “The Aeneid” and “Confessions” in Dante's Poem Dante in his poem “"The Inferno" talks of his journey to hell and back. He narrates it in the form of an autobiography. The poem does, however, indicate a strong influence from Maro's "The Aeneid" and Augustine's the "Confessions." The influence from the two in the “Inferno” range from the themes, concepts, literature devices and the language styles used. Maro Virgil, the author of the poem “The Aeneid” was a controversial figure in most Christian texts at the time.