This paper was wrote on May 6, 1998 for my Humanities 201 final. We had about an hour and a half to write it. I wrote it in about 45 minutes. The topic for this paper was which book did we enjoy reading the most out of the semester and why. Then relate the book to its time period and to other books we had read.




The Inferno

My favorite work of literature from this semester would have to be The Inferno by Dante Alighieri translated by John Ciardi. I have read this book many times before, but it is still one of the best I have ever read. The book makes a person think, try to understand, and question their own human nature along with questioning if there really is a place called Hell.

The book tells a story of a man who has come to a point in his life where he has to make a decision of which way to go. In the beginning of the book Dante, the main character, comes to his inner most self and realizes that he has strayed from the "True Way" of life and entered the "Dark Wood of Error" otherwise known as worldliness (Dante, 27).

"Midway in our life's journey, I went astray,
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood. How shall I say
what wood that was! I never saw a drear,
so rank, so arduous a wilderness!
Its very memory gives a shape of fear."

The Inferno. P. 30. Lines 1 - 6.

As Dante comes to this point, he comes across his human reason which is represented by the character Virgil. Virgil leads Dante through the Gates of Hell just as far as human reason could lead him because a person's human reason can only get you so far. From that point on Divine Love will lead him onward and through Hell.

I believe that human reason can only get a person so far and that divine love will lead that person through anything. I also believe Dante to be a Christian because he has so many symbols in the book going toward God and all that the Almighty stands for. In the divine love aspect of a Christian a person's belief in God is divine love. As long as an individual believes in himself and does not question the act of God then a person could make it through the Gates of Hell. Human reason is how much a person thinks and questions his own beliefs and not the beliefs of God or whatever religion a person believes in.

This book was typical of its Medieval or late Middle Ages period because in this time the church was very influential but to some extent a person can also see some of the power of the church dwindle. In The Inferno, Dante showed how the church can be an influence in divine love by showing how a persons soul can be lost in the depth of hell, but make its way out and into purgatory.

In relation to other books we have discussed over the semester, The Inferno I think that it can be related to Hamlet by William Shakespeare or Frankenstein by Mary Shelley because both books deal with human struggle and human reason.

In Hamlet, the main character struggles with his thoughts and feelings. He suffers in his human reason with thinking too much and relating it to nowhere. Hamlet is lost in agony of his inner thoughts. Because of this he dies a unhappy man at the end of the book.

In the book Frankenstein, a man struggles with what is right between science, religion, and human reason. He creates a person without thinking of the consequences of his action. He ignores divine love and lets his human reason take over for scientific purposes. In the end he also dies a very unhappy man because his human reason could not lead him, but if he had let the divine love (religion) he could have done the right thing and survived.

As I have said before, The Inferno by Dante is in fact one of my favorite books. It makes a person think about where they might be heading in life. Are they taking the right path of life? Or are they heading to something worse in life? Every individual goes through a struggle between human reason and divine love. Some even spend their how lives in this battle, but as long as an individual stays in balance with their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs life can be a wonderful thing. I think this book makes people think about this aspect in their life and what place in Hell may they end up in, if any at all.


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