Examples Of Gluttony In Dantes Inferno

Often, we cannot see the good until we have experienced the bad. Dante Alighieri, a poet who makes himself the main character in his Divine Comedy, finds himself lost in a dark wood at the start of The Inferno. Though he sees a safe path out of the wood towards an alluring light, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. As the ending of the pilgrim Dante’s voyage is bright and hopeful, Alighieri the poet aims to encourage even the most sinful Christians to hope for a successful end. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell in The Inferno to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation; his journey an allegory representing that of the repenting Christian soul.

One of the major themes which Dante inferno raises is the nature of the virtues. Like the spirits of hell, the spirits that are encountered by Dante have all sinned. The spirits out there were punished

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy from 1308-1320. The story narrates Dante’s pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven while guided by Virgil and Beatrice. Throughout this journey Dante conforms himself to virtue, properly orders his passions, and conforms his conscience, “Dante 's psychopoiesis operates through the mimetic deformation, reformation, and transformation of conscience” (Macready, 2). This essay will examine what a true conscience is according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and explore the nature of the conscience in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Additionally, this essay will examine the errors of Dante’s conscience regarding divine justice, love, and courage; and who contributes to this formation.

Dante's Inferno explores the nature of human suffering through a precautionary light. As Dante and Virgil move through the Inferno, Dante sees what has become of people who overindulged in things such as, lust, gluttony, violence, and bribery. Few of the punishments described in the Inferno have a direct correlation to the sin that the souls committed while they were living. Rather, they are a representation of what happens when we commit those crimes against ourselves and others. We create hells for not only ourselves, but those who we have sinned against. These hells are almost impossible to come back from as most of these sins cannot be taken back or undone. Some of the punishments that were clear representations were the punishments of

Dante gives a picture perfect example of their torment. It was said that, “And as they scrubbed and clawed themselves, their nails / drew down the scabs the way a knife scrapes bream / or some other fish with even larger scales” (Alighieri XXIX.82-84). The impression that Dante gives forces the reader into picturing the sinners drag their dirty nails into their prickly, scabbed skin, so rapidly and intense, that he compares it to a knife grating the scales of a fish. Dante also uses visual imagery to describe the lives of the gluttons. Since the gluttons spent their lives consuming massive amounts of food and drink, they represented themselves as garbage. Therefore, they were treated as such in Hell. The reader is able to visualize the punishment of a glutton through Dante’s vivid expression: “Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow / pour from the dismal air to putrefy / the putrid slush that waits for them below” (Alighieri VI.10-12). The reader can obviously picture the clean ground beneath all of the disgusting dirt, mold, mud, and rancid slush. Dante also puts the image of the rotting gluttons that lie under this filthy mess into the reader’s mind. Each realm contains something different, and Dante clearly proves to give the sense of a different image every time.

The story of “Dante’s Inferno”, by Dante Alighieri is a dark story which depicts nine circles of Hell. The one circle of Hell that we will be discussing is that of greed which happens to be the fourth circle. In the Fourth Circle of Hell, Dante and Virgil see the souls of people who are punished for greed. They are divided into two groups (The Prodigal and the Miserly), those who hoarded possessions and those who lavishly spent it. They use great weights as a torture mechanism where they are pushing them with their chests. This symbolizes their selfish drive for fortune during their lifetime. As they make their way further down, they come across a swamp filled with naked people with their faces scared by rage. One other form of greed is that of anger, which overcame these terrorized souls. The two groups are guarded by a character called Pluto which also happens to be the God of Wealth from the Underworld. The fourth circle (Greed), is one of the iniquities that most incurs Dante's scornful wrath, thus is of great importance to understanding the text.

Within lines 31-66, Filippo emerges from the river to ask who is in hell before his time. Dante also asks who he is and Filippo answers that it is he who weeps. Dante does not show Filippo pity and instead talks with filth, “And I to him; ‘In weeping and in misery, accursѐd spirit, may you stay. I know you, for all your filth.’ (Canto VIII, Line

As Dante explores the Second Circle of Hell, he is horrified by the punishments that the sinners must suffer through. When he hears the story of Francesca and Paolo’s lustful actions, Dante relates deeply to their stuggles because he reflects on his own sins and believes he may be cast to a similar fate in the afterlife. Dante reacts to the story when he says, “I fainted, as if I had met my death. / And then I fell as a dead body falls” (5.142-143). Dante faints from compassion for the two sinners’ pitiful story. Dante struggles to grasp the wrongdoing these people have participated in to be placed in Hell because he continues to search for the noble qualities in everyone. On the one hand, Dante believes God’s punishment for the lustful sinners, relentless winds and storms, is unethical. On the other hand, this belief is naive because it is known that all of God’s punishments are just. The lustful are condemned to an eternity in Hell because they did not care about their actions on Earth, so the raging storm that torments them is not concerned with what is in its path. Dante is not only attempting to discover the possible consequences of his own actions, but also learning to trust in God’s judgement.

What causes trouble in this world simply comes down to human nature, really, who’s on top. In this eternal fight to the pinnacle of the societal pyramid, there are bound to be those that suffer more than others. Dante Divine Comedy brings into question: “Which life should I care about more, the one on Earth or the one in the afterlife?” For those who may not believe in Heaven or Hell (an ever increasing number today) the choice is quite easy. In effect, Dante condemns anyone that he feels violates this “divine” order of sanctity (those that prefer the Earth life) by putting them in different circles of Hell. The different sins in Inferno are divided into those of pleasure/ambition, and those of intention to harm. Both are evident in the corruption of society with the former focusing on “improving” oneself at the expense of the individual and the latter “improving” oneself at the expense of others. Take the gluttons for example. People such as Ciacco indulged too much in lively pleasures such as

Dante is truly a great poet. When he describes a place, he goes truly deeply than what’s on the surface. In Purgatory, when Dante and Virgil are walking through the gateway, Dante describes each step when walking in. “Once there, Dante and Virgil have to climb three steps to ascend to the gate (Purg. IX, 76-77; Sayers 1955b) which is guarded by an angel. These three steps signify the confession of sin, contrition for sin and satisfaction for sin”. He first describes the first step by saying, “We came to the first step: white marble gleaming/ so polished and so smooth that in its mirror/ I saw my true reflection past all seeming” (IX 94-96). In these first stanzas to the entrance of Purgatory demonstrates the color white as hope and desire of improvement. This is very

“I came to a place stripped bare of every light and roaring on naked dark like seas wracked by a war of winds” (Canto 5 inferno), this when Dante goes into the second circle of hell and watches as the lustful are swirl around in this never-ending storm of lust. Dante is using this point of view to try and give a realistic vibe to the readers. He talks to Francesca and Paolo two lovers who were murdered after found having affair against Francesca husband Giovanni Malatesta. After talking to them Dante is starting to get a sense of how real his journey is, he is feeling overwhelmed Dante falls to the ground and pass is out. “And while one spirit Francesca said these words to me, the other Paolo wept, so that, because of pity, I fainted, as if I had met my death. And then I fell as a dead body falls.”(139-142)

Often when we set out to journey in ourselves, we come to places that surprise us with their strangeness. Expecting to see what is straightforward and acceptable, we suddenly run across the exceptions. Just as we as self‹examiners might encounter our inner demons, so does Dante the writer as he sets out to walk through his Inferno. Dante explains his universe - in terms physical, political, and spiritual - in the Divine Comedy. He also gives his readers a glimpse into his own perception of what constitutes sin. By portraying characters in specific ways, Dante the writer can shape what Dante the pilgrim feels about each sinner. Also, the reader can look deeper in the text and examine the

In such discussion I only met with further obfuscation and confusion. Rather this initial difficulty can be overcome with some ease by consulting a letter Dante retrospectively wrote to his patron, Can Grande, where he offers the following guide in reading the whole `Comedy': ."..The subject then of the whole work, taken in the literal sense only, is the state of souls after death pure and simple. If however the work be regarded from the allegorical point of view the subject is man according as by his merits or demerits in the existence of his freewill he is deserving of reward or punishment by justice" . Dante is stating that the description of spirits which he meets in the other world carries implications about the moral significance of the type of behaviour which they exemplify. This is an important point and if we lose sight of it we lose sight of the poem and of what makes it historically significant. Indeed, I will argue that it is this underlying moral significance which makes the `Comedy' a work of the middle ages but a work for all time. Judging contemporary characters, through lyrical poetry, in consultation with the classics on a question that transcends his own time and place I feel qualifies the comedy as a work of great historical significance. However let us not digress untimely, rather I will now examine the contemporary experience which Dante's

Around 1314, Dante Alighieri completed the Inferno, the first section of what would make up The Divine Comedy, a collection of three poems reflecting Dante’s imaginative journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. In these poems, Dante the poet describes the pilgrimage that Dante the pilgrim must complete to attain salvation. With the Roman poet Virgil as his guide, Dante the pilgrim must purge himself of his own sinful nature, which can only be achieved by observing and learning from those that have landed themselves in either Hell, Purgatory, or Heaven. Described in Inferno, his excursion begins in Hell where Dante learns about the stories and the sufferings of many sinners. As Dante the pilgrim progresses through Hell it is clear that he assumes different personas. In some instances, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as an empathetic man who pities the sinners while on other occasions, Dante the pilgrim is portrayed as a callous and indignant being in regard to the sinners. While Dante the pilgrim is depicted in these two completely different ways, it is the insensitive portrayal that more precisely depicts Dante the pilgrim, as that is his true identity when he leaves Hell. His journey affected him so greatly that by the end of his pilgrimage, Dante the pilgrim has transformed from a compassionate man into an impervious and even cruel individual.