Dante's Inferno Research Paper

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Pages: 3

If one abandons reason one abandons hope. In The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, Dante strays off of the right path and is blocked from going back by beasts, and they trap him in the dark wood.The Dark Wood represents the path of sin which Dante has found himself on. The three monsters represent parts of the path of sin.Unable to overcome these beasts alone Virgil is sent to aid Dante. Virgil then appears to guide Dante to salvation. Virgil is the symbol for human reason, which can help lead someone off the wrong path. Dante is first trapped in a dark wood which represents the path of sin. He describes the wood, and likewise; sin, by saying “How shall I say/ what wood that was! I never saw so drear, /so rank, so arduous a wilderness!”(Alighieri 4). The wood represents the path of sin Dante has gone down. He is describing sin as a treacherous and painstaking path on which he has found himself upon. Upon discovering he is on this path he begins to try to escape the forest, but the way out has its obstacles. The dark wood is also home to 3 great beasts one must bypass to reach salvation. …show more content…
Each monster symbolizes its own sin. The three monsters are described when Dante says: I faced a spotted Leopard, all tremor and flow/ and gaudy pelt. And it would not pass, but stood so blocking my every turn that time and again
I was on the verge of turning back to the wood./ This fell at the first widening of the dawn As the sun was climbing Aries with those stars
That rode with him to light the new