Paper Assignment #2 (Inferno / King Lear) Both Shakespeare’s King Lear and Dante’s Inferno explore the reasons for and results of human suffering. Both works postulate that human suffering comes as a result of choices that are made. That statement is not only applicable to the characters in each of the works, but also to the readers. The Inferno and King Lear speak universal truths about the human condition: that suffering is inevitable and unavoidable. While both King Lear and the Inferno concentrate on the admonitions and lamentations of human suffering, there is one key difference between the works: the Inferno has an aspect of hope that is not present in King Lear. The unavoidable aspect of human suffering is depicted brilliantly …show more content…
Both Lear and Capaneus show excessive pride and stubbornness throughout their respective works, and fail to see their own faults. They were forewarned about their punishments, yet they continued down the path that would bring them the most suffering. Even though suffering is an inevitable part of living and there is no path in life that does not include some sort of suffering, these two men chose the ones that would bring them the most pain. 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. King Lear shows an extreme of human suffering. While there is some foreshadowing to the tragic end of the play and
Inferno is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy. There is no doubt that inferno is talking about the world of hell, which looks like Virgil’s Aeneid. In people’s mind, the under-earth world always seems dark and terrified. They also believe that most evil souls who do horrible and immoral things will go to hell after they die. Hell is the place that no people want to go to talk about. However, in Dante’s poem, hell is his first journey. He cannot avoid it to approach haven. Dante shows many vivid images of hell to readers and lead the readers to go through the journey with him. His inferno contains general facts of hell, which are evil people, horrible punishment, and eternal surfing, but it also involves an unexpected element that is love.
In “King Lear” Shakespeare highlights that human suffering is unavoidable, the choices he made throughout the play led to a series of events that eventually changed his life for the worse due to stubbornness and not accepting knowledge from the wise. The choices that are made on our behalf not only affects the way life unfolds but also the people surrounding us. Both the Inferno and King Lear have aspects of desperation, but the tone of the works display their differences. In today's generation not often do we take time to completely think through on our decisions, but rather act off of impulse and have to deal with the severity of the consequences of our selfish decisions later. Even though suffering is apart of living and there is no path that does not include some sort of suffering, these two men chose
Throughout the fast-paced lives of people, they are constantly making choices that shape who they are, as well as the world around them; however, they do not often think about the consequences of the little decisions they make every day, such as the result of eternal suffering. From those who were neither good nor bad all the way to Satan himself, Dante takes the reader on his calculated and detailed journey through hell in his attempt to reach salvation in Inferno, the beginning of the Divine Comedy: a trilogy of poetry by Dante Alighieri.
Dante’s Inferno uses a man’s journey through hell, to give an eye-opening description of hell’s stark reality. Throughout his book, Dante uses the various levels to compare sins severities and their deserving punishments. Written in a time of political turmoil in Florence, Dante uses numerous historical figures to give examples of what he believed real immoralities would merit in hell. Comparing this book to the political differences of Dante’s time, a stark correlation can be made between Dante’s political and religious viewpoints.
Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear is a detailed description of the consequences of one man's deci-sions. This fictitious man is Lear, King of England, whose decisions greatly change his life and the lives of those around him. As Lear takes on the rank of King he is, as one expects, a man of great power but he surrenders all of this power to his daughters as a reward for their display of love towards him. This sud-den surrender of his throne results in a chain reaction of events that send him through a journey of hell. King Lear is a typical description of one man's journey through hell in order to compensate for his sin. As the play begins you can almost immediately see
Dante’s Inferno (Hell) is the first book from The Divine Comedy. The literary work is an allegory telling about Dante’s journey through Hell. The inscription on the gates of Hell read, “ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER” (line 9). The chief punishment of all the inhabitants of the Inferno is no hope. They have no have no hope of salvation, no hope of release, no hope of any improvement, or escape from their punishments. Each inhabitant is punished in a fashion befitting their crime. For centuries, the meaning of justice is a controversial question. The punishments in Dante’s Hell are justified in proportion to their sin.
When we suffer as humans, we are given the opportunity to learn from those unfortunate experiences – in this way, suffering serves as a form of admonition. When we reject that opportunity, we become prisoners of our own stubbornness – in this way, suffering resembles lament. The lamentation of suffering can be seen in both the Inferno and King Lear as a way of facilitating grief on those who refuse to learn from their mistakes. In the Inferno, Dante the Pilgrim is forced to traverse through the circles of Hell in order to discover the darkest aspects of humanity. While the sinners in Hell create an atmosphere of abundant torment, few are shown to willingly intensify their
Of the Medieval Texts, Dante’s Inferno, gives readers insight into a poetically described version of Hell that is full of punishment and evil. Dante travels through purgatory speaking with various shades as well as converses with his guide to gain insight on the follies of man. Each Canto describes certain characters and their reasons for being stuck in Hell. Through analysis of the text as well as support from literature written by Sara Sturm, R Bates, and lastly EM Hood, Canto XXVI not only provides insight on Dante’s political beliefs, but also describes the eventual demise of false counselors, as well as those whom are not grateful for their God-Given gifts.
King Lear is frequently regarded as one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, and its tragic scope touches almost all facets of the human condition: from the familial tensions between parents and children to the immoral desires of power, from the follies of pride to the false projections of glory. However, one theme rings true throughout the play, and that very theme is boundless suffering, accentuated by the gruesome depictions of suffering our protagonists experience . There is no natural (nor “poetic”) justice depicted in this pre-Judeo-Christian world Shakespeare presents, as the relatively virtuous individuals (Kent, Gloucester, and Cordelia) in this
Inferno (c. 1314) serves as the first part of Dante Alighieri’s poem Divine Comedy which is a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. On a broader level, Divine Comedy serves as an allegory for the journey of the soul towards God through the created earth. Inferno and the Divine Comedy serve as a form of scholastic thought, the rational study of religion, as Dante draws on medieval theology to share the modern view on God and the afterlife. This essay explores Dante’s perception of the universe and man’s place in it. Throughout Inferno, Dante provides a unique perspective on his view of sin and justice—these views a direct result of Dante’s own beliefs and the current political situation in Florence. A major theme that Inferno underscores is that God represents justice and love. His justice can be seen in Hell as the magnitude of each sin corresponds to the punishment one will receive in the afterlife. Throughout Divine Comedy, Dante shares a vision of an ordered universe where everyone is where they belong. The structure of the universe, specifically Hell, can be seen as a representation of God’s love for His people. Sin is a violation of divine perfection and without God’s love; everyone would be punished for their sin. As Dante and the reader are taken throughout Inferno, we can see that Hell is just another creation of God’s justice and love as each sinner is punished according to how contradictory their sin is to God’s will.
Dante Alighieri's The Inferno has gained great recognition over the years as one of the most important classic literary works of all time. Well known as the source that has influenced many modern day depictions of Hell, The Inferno also contains many themes and ideas that suggest how people should behave in life by demonstrating the consequences for those who do not follow God's path. In this terrifyingly striking epic poem, Dante the Poet works to make many statements of truth, though one stands out far more than the rest. Throughout The Inferno, Dante develops the idea that one must always remain vigilant and choose the proper way or suffer the consequences of God's Divine Justice regardless of one's social, political, or economic status.
Shakespeare's ultimate Tragedy, King Lear, is indeed a dark and soul-harrowing play. The tragic madness of King Lear, and of the subsequent turmoil that follows from it, is all the more terrible for the king's inability to cope with the loss of his mind, his family, and his pride. This descent into horror culminates at the tragic conclusion, where both the innocent and the guilty die for other's mistakes and lack of judgment.
The book Dante 's Inferno or is commonly known as Dante 's Hell dwells in many issues that are true in today society and is entertaining and thought provocative to the reader. This book shows that Dante’s life, as strange and different as it reads, is no more different than many people’s lives today. The expeditions that Dante takes after he is lost and confused in the gloomy forest and on his way met by Virgil, a Roman poet, who promises to show him the various punishments of hell and afterward purgatory and only then he shall be accompanied into paradise by his true love Beatrice. This literary work leads the reader on somewhat of extraordinary and frightful adventures of life. Dante journeys through what is called the nine circles of Hell, limbo, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud and treachery. Some would say that these circles of Hell are true in today’s society. However, through all the vulnerabilities and rhetoric to describe man and his faults the finality of this book is “sin is sin” regardless of time or participants of it. Sin described in this book by Dante and his life passages is very much the same as the sin (in a different description) as man commits or tormented with today. Only one man was able to take on the worlds sins by himself, Jesus, son of God.
King Lear is set in a brutal and savage prehistoric world, a Britain where violence, torture and physical suffering are all so commonplace as to be unremarkable. All through the play we are conscious of strife, buffeting, strain and bodily suffering to the point of agony. the images involving the human body are particularly grim. We have the repeated image of the body in anguished movement, tugged, wrenched, beaten, tortured, and finally broken on a rack. even death is seen by Kent as a welcome release from torture, which is almost the permanent condition of those who live in the Lear world. As Lear is dying, Kent makes the appeal: "O let him pass! He hates him/That would upon the rack of this tough world/ Stretch him out longer". This image of the world as a torture chamber darkens the closing moments of the play. Lear, while imagining himself in some sort of afterlife, still feels pain: "I am bound/ Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears/ Do scald like molten lead". Elsewhere, he sees himself wrenched and tortured by an engine and him heart is about to break
One loss builds on another, but moreover, his greatest loss, and what distinguishes this tragedy from all others, is his chance of redemption. Unlike other tragedies, there is no salvation for the tragic hero or any sign of optimism in the conclusion. This bleak portrayal of King Lear, through his losses, makes him the ultimate tragic hero, and the play an ultimate tragedy.