Explication Of Canto V Of Dante

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The epic of Dante teaches a lesson of how a person should live his or her life. Through The Inferno, Dante shows the consequences of specific sins a person can suffer. Dante uses imagery, metaphors, and other literary devices to emphasize how horrible the punishments can be. Canto V is full of details of the punishment in a way that one can feel their selves there. A theme that is conveyed throughout The Inferno is justice. Dante shows numerous times that he feels that justice should be served for the sins that are committed on earth. In line 25, Dante starts off with a metaphor of the screams that he hears of the people in pain. He says “And now the notes of anguish start to play upon my ears” (V.ll.25-26). 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 moves on to describe the pain and rage to a storm. At first the storm is not described in a violent or destructive way, but as Date goes on in line 30, the storm gets stronger and it is described as “The infernal storm, eternal with rage,”(V.1.30). The word eternal implies that the sinner’s punishment will be never ending. The storm descends on people in hell and deals their punishment. These devices assist the message of The Inferno in the fact that the metaphors make the punishment seem more real, and a reader can almost feel and hear what is happening. He says that the people are “swept back past their place of judgment, then come the shrieks, laments, and anguished cries; there they

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