Dante Do Your Homework First Text

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In the middle of the journey of his life, dante finds himself lost in a dark wood, and he cannot find the straight path. He cannot remember how he wandered away from his true path that he should be following, but he is in a fearful place, impenetrable and wild. After resting for a moment, he begins to climb the hill towards the light, but he is suddenly confronted by a leopard, which blocks his way and he turns to evade it. Then a hungry lion appears more fearful than the leopard, but a she wolf comes forward and drives dante back down into the darkness of the valley. At first dante is afraid, but then implores it for help, whether it be man or spirit. It is the shade of virgil, who wrote the aeneid , and lived in the times of the lying and false gods.

When virgil hears how dante was driven back by the she wolf, he tells dante that he must go another way because the she wolf snares and kills all things. However, virgil prophesies that someday, a marvelous greyhound, whose food is wisdom, love, and courage, will come from the nation between feltro and feltro, and save italy, chasing the she wolf back to hell. Virgil commands dante to follow him and see the horrible sights of the damned in hell, the hope of those doing penance in purgatory, and if he so desires, the realm of the blessed in paradise. Another guide will take him to this last realm, which dante cannot or may not enter. This is made clear in the closing lines, when virgil tells dante that he can guide him only so far towards paradise, and then another guide will have to take over because virgil, being born before the birth of jesus christ, cannot ever be admitted to the blessed realms. The opening lines suggest first a realistic journey through a strange and eerie place, but after the first tercet three lines , it is apparent that everything will be in terms of an allegory. It begins when dante is halfway through his life 35 years old, half of the biblical three score and ten and he has lost his way.

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When dante speaks of having strayed from the right path, the reader should not assume that dante has committed any specific sin or crime. Throughout the poem, dante is advocating a strict adherence to medieval catholic theology: man must consciously strive for righteousness and morality. In its simplest terms, man can often become so involved with the day to day affairs of simply living that he will gradually relapse into a sort of lethargy in which he strays from the very strict paths of morality. For dante, man must always be aware intellectually of his own need to perform the righteous act. Thus, when dante finds himself in a dark wood, he is speaking allegorically for any man who is not constantly conscious of the right path.

If every waking moment is not consciously devoted to morality, man can find himself in a dark wood. Throughout the poem, the classical poet virgil stands for human reason and human virtue, two admirable characteristics in themselves, but alone they are not enough to gain salvation. Through his poetry, his high ethics and morals, and the mere fact that he, in his aeneid. Had already made a journey through hell in the person of aeneas, virgil is the perfect guide for dante. Furthermore, virgil's hoarseness is dante's subtle way of saying that the high morals and strict ethics of the poet have not been fully appreciated in dante's time that is, he is not read as frequently as he should be.

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Likewise, he has not spoken to a mortal since his death, and thus is unaccustomed to talking. And it is a common belief that a spirit cannot speak to a human until that human first speaks to the spirit a custom used by hamlet in approaching the ghost of his father. The three beasts have been so variously identified and understood as representing so many qualities, it is sufficient, as noted in the introduction, to assume that they are three obstacles to dante's returning to the straight path. Sets the scene for the long journey of which the inferno is the first part. Dante and virgil descend to the second circle, this one smaller than the first. This is the actual beginning of hell where the sinners are punished for their sins. Dante witnesses minos, a great beast, examining each soul as it stands for judgment.

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Minos hears the souls confess their sins, and then wraps his tail around himself to determine the number of the circle where the sinner belongs. Minos cautions dante against entering, but virgil silences him, first by asking him why he too questions dante as charon did , and then by telling him, in the same words he used to tell charon, that it was willed, and what is willed must occur. Dante beholds a place completely dark, in which there is noise worse than that of a storm at sea. Lamenting, moaning, and shrieking, the spirits are whirled and swept by an unceasing storm. He asks the names of some that are blown past, and virgil answers with their names and some knowledge of their stories. Dante then asks particularly to speak to two sinners who are together, and virgil tells him to call them to him in the name of love.

They come, and one thanks dante for his pity and wishes him peace, and she then tells their story. She reveals first that a lower circle of hell waits for the man who murdered them. With bowed head, dante tells virgil he is thinking of the sweet thoughts and desires that brought the lovers to this place.

Calling francesca by name, he asks her to explain how she and her lover were lured into sin. Francesca replies that a book of the romance of lancelot and guinevere caused their downfall. They were alone, reading it aloud, and so many parts of the book seemed to tell of their own love. During her story, the other spirit weeps bitterly, and dante is so moved by pity that he also weeps and faints. This second circle is the true beginning of hell and is also where the true punishments of hell begin, and minos, the mythological king of crete, sits in judgment of the damned souls. The sinners are tossed and whirled by the winds, as in life they felt themselves helpless in the tempests of passion.

This canto also begins descriptions of the circles devoted to the sins of incontinence: the sins of the appetite, the sins of self indulgence, and the sins of passion. Minos, like the other guardians of hell, does not want to admit dante, a living being still capable of redemption, but virgil forces him to do so. Among those whom dante sees in circle ii are people such as cleopatra, dido, and helen.

Therefore, the question immediately arises as to why they are not deeper down in hell in the circle reserved for suicides. Remember that in dante's hell, a person is judged by his own standards, that is, by the standards of the society in which he lived. For example, in classical times, suicide wasn't considered a sin, but adultery was. Therefore, the spirit is judged by the ethics by which he or she lived and is condemned for adultery, not suicide. Dante sees paolo and francesca and calls them to him in the name of love a mild conjuration at virgil's insistence. Francesca da rimini was the wife of gianciotto, the deformed older brother of paolo, who was a beautiful youth. Theirs was a marriage of alliance, and it continued for some ten years before paolo and francesca were caught in the compromising situation described in the poem.

Gianciotto promptly murdered them both, for which he is confined in the lowest circle of hell. For modern readers, understanding why dante considered adultery, or lustfulness, to be the least hateful of the sins of incontinence is sometimes difficult. As the intellectual basis of hell, dante thought of hell as a place where the sinner deliberately chose his or her sin and failed to repent. In the example of francesca and paolo, however, francesca did not deliberately choose adultery hers was a gentle lapsing into love for paolo, a matter of incontinence, and a weakness of will. Only the fact that her husband killed her in the moment of adultery allowed her no opportunity to repent, and for this reason, she is condemned to hell. Francesca is passionate, certainly capable of sin, and certainly guilty of sin, but she represents the woman whose only concern is for the man she loves, not her immortal soul.

In hell, sinners retain all those qualities for which they were damned, and they remain the same throughout eternity that is, the soul is depicted in hell with the exact characteristics that condemned it to hell in the first place. Consequently, as francesca loved paolo in the human world, throughout eternity she will love him in hell. But, the lovers are damned because they will not change, and because they will never cease to love, they can never be redeemed. Dante represents this fact metaphorically by placing paolo close to francesca and by having the two of them being buffeted about together through this circle of hell for eternity. By reading the story of francesca, one can perhaps understand better the intellectual basis by which dante depicts the other sins in hell.

He chooses a character that represents a sin he then expresses poetically the person who committed the sin. Francesca is not perhaps truly representative of the sin of this circle, and carnal lust seems a harsh term for her feelings, but dante chose her story to make his point: the sin in circle ii is a sin of incontinence, weakness of will, and falling from grace through inaction of conscience. Many times in hell, dante responds sympathetically or with pity to some of these lost souls. This canto clearly illustrates the difference in the two personae: dante the pilgrim and dante the poet.

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