You Do The Crime, You Do The Time: Dante's "Inferno" Essay
You Do The Crime, You Do The Time: Dante's "Inferno"
A detailed description of the punishments in hell from Dante's novel "Inferno".
# 154077
| 2,788 words
| 0 sources
| 2014
| 
Published
on Dec 01, 2014
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History
(Greek and Roman)
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From the Paper:
"Inferno, written by Dante Alighieri in the early fourteenth century, focuses on an imaginative afterlife based on how one lived on Earth and how their punishment is reflected in hell. A few of these people choke on mud, others are eternally engulfed in flames, some are even forced to inflict eternal self-harm . What's interesting is how every punishment is directly connected to the sins that each individual commits. Hell only exists to punish sin, and everyone sins. What makes Dante's hell so unique is how it's constructed, nine different eternal levels of damnation, each one more gruesome than the one before it. In our modern society, many of these tortures seem very harsh, like; homosexuals must endure an eternity of walking on hot sand. What we don't understand is how Dante's Inferno is an expanded view of Christian hell in 1308, with a little Greek mythology thrown in. To those people this novel was modern, and being different back that was shunned upon, now we strive to be different. They need balance back then, order, and publishing this epic poem was to do just that. Every wrong must be corrected or you face equally wrong treatment in the afterlife, not sinning and praying were the best form of control. There is never ending symbolism in every punishment dished out, this is what makes the connections between right and wrong so powerful. All in all, Dante forever changed the meaning of hell, and from then on it would never be the same."The first level of hell is Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment, this created the first circle of Dante's mythological hell. A place of sorrow without torment is a place where the residents must spend eternity in a really sad place, there is no physical torture or anything, just an unescapable sad feeling in their soul. Which some may consider torture, but in comparison to the eight levels below, it's not really that bad. Besides, after being damned to hell for the rest of their existence, they have it pretty well off. Speaking of residents, those who occupy this space are; the unbaptized, and anyone who did not accept Christ in any form. These people just didn't believe, or hope, for anything greater than their minds could come up with. An interesting characteristic of Limbo includes a seven wall castle. People don't realize how creative and symbolic this castle is, it represents the basic seven virtues. This is the place where the wisest men in existence come to dwell on their pasts. This includes Virgil, Dante's tour guide, along with the poets, Horace, Lucan, Homer and Ovid. The philosophers; Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Averroes, and the Amazon queen Penthesilea. Then there are the less famous; Euclid, the mathematician; PedaniusDioscorides, the scientist; Cicero, the statesman; Hippocrates the first doctor; Lucretia, Lucius Junius Brutus, and Julius Caesar, the historical figures; Hector, Electra, Camilla, Latinus, and Orpheus the mythological characters; and many more. Now, having accumulated the knowledge of each of these characters being placed in hell, one could interoperate it as troubling or humorous, but this varies to each new readers opinion."
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You Do The Crime, You Do The Time: Dante's "Inferno" (2014, December 01)
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"You Do The Crime, You Do The Time: Dante's "Inferno"" 01 December 2014.
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