Free Term Papers and Essays on Dante's Inferno
In The Inferno, by
Dante, the main character
operates on several levels.
Dante serves as a
Christian hero because he undergoes trials and
tribulations in his search to find the souls true path
in life. Dante
also portrays himself as everyman. He
does this by showing that he also
suffers from sin.
In The Inferno, hell is in a spiral shape, and is
divided up by the seriousness of the sin committed.
The sinners are
stuck in their location in hell where
there punishment fit the crime that
they committed.
At the top of hell is where what Dante considered the
least sinful people belonged. This is the home of the
people who
suffered from lust, and gluttony. The sins
got worse going down until the
very bottom was reached.
In the very bottom of hell were the traitors, and
people who cheated other people. According to Dante,
these were the very
worst people in hell. It seems
that every sinner in hell tries to
misrepresent the
truth to rationalize away their sin.
In The Inferno,
Dante comes across several people
that are known public figures, and/or
people that Dante
knew on earth. Among these is Brunetto Latini who
Dante admires and is shocked to find him there.
Another person that
Dante comes across in The Inferno
is Francesca da Rimini, who Dante realizes
he would
have had the same fate. Dante also runs into Ulysses
of which
who led people to death, and has a flaming
tongue. Vanni Fucci is another
person that Dante runs
into in hell. Vanni Fucci is there for robbing a
church, and now the serpents have attacked him.
Dante’s goal in his
writing is that he wants to
write the defining work for the culture that he
lives
in. He writes, “our lives journey,” so the rest of
humanity can
link his experiences to his own.