Dante's Inferno Analysis Essay

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The author Dante introduces the readers to the character of Dante, who is the first person narrator of the story, in “medias res”, or in the middle of the story’s action. The author uses this technique to immediately hook the audience, and will weave in bits of the back-story using flashbacks as the poem progresses. The first person narration is used to give the reader insight into the character Dante’s perspective and feelings, as in the quote “So bitter it is that death is hardly worse! But to describe the good discovered there I here will tell the other things I saw” describing the beginning of his journey through the forest. He is intentionally vague about how he arrived here, “I cannot say clearly how I entered there, So drowsy with sleep had I grown at that hour When first I wandered off from the true way.” This vagueness not …show more content…
The author also gains empathy for the narrator with the description “And just as a man, anxious for big winnings, But the time comes instead for him to lose, Cries and grieves the more he thinks about it” after he is pushed back down the steep pass that “no one Ever before had issued from alive.” This narration describes feelings which any reader can easily identify with. And just when he is feeling so defeated, he encounters his mentor Virgil who encourages him to push forward and offers to guide him. Virgil tells of a place “Where you shall listen to the desperate screams And see the spirits of the past in torment” and “you shall also see those who are happy even in flames, since they hope to come, Whenever that may be, among the blessed.” This seems to intrigue the character Dante, and he divulges a bit of his back-story, “For the Emperor, who rules there above, since I lived in rebellion to his law, Will not permit me to enter his city”. The character Dante then follows behind Virgil in hope that he may “come to see Saint Peter's gate and those you say are deeply sorrowful," which hints at his past sins and hopes of
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