Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy

Inferno is the beginning section of Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy. The story starts in the year of 1300, at Covenant Thursday or Holy Thursday, the day before Good Friday. This long narrative and epic poem along with other two stories in The Devine Comedy, have known to be composed between 1308 and 1320. Dante’s Inferno is about the journey of Dante through the nine circles of Hell with the guidance from Virgil who was an ancient Roman poet. Dante began his journey at night before Good Friday and then came out from Hell early in the morning of Easter on Sunday, so this journey took only two full days long. There are some major ideas I can find in Dante’s Inferno. The main and obvious theme is to educate humans not to do bad things or

The whole book explains about the journey of Dante through Hell to find his Beatrice. The story initiates when Dante appears out of nowhere and finds himself in the dark scary forest. He is somehow lost his way and trying to escape by climbing up the hill but then he happens to encounter with three savage wild animals, such as a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf blocking his way so he run down back to the bottom of the hill. The leopard represents sins of lack of self-control. The lion represents violent sins and the she-wolf represents sins of fraud. (why he meet these beasts) When Dante is frightened of these beasts, Virgil appears and asks Dante to come with him. Virgil is sent to guide Dante by Beatrice who is now in Heaven. By the time they go back to the top of the hill, the she-wolf is still there but Virgil can get rid of it and they continue their journey ahead together. Here they have arrived the gate of Hell with the words, “Abandon all hope you enter here” and the they pass through this gate. At this gate, they meet Charon who helps carry them across the river Acheron to get into Hell. There are nine circles of Hell, which deepen to the bottom at the center of the earth. In addition, each level is meant to punish different sins and these punishments reflect the sin people have committed in their mortal lives. As the circles get deeper, the stronger punishments are. Now they get into the first level of

To be honest, I have never heard of this book or the nine circles of Hell before so this book does really help me to gain more understanding in Christianity and some other historical events related with both religion and politics. However, the original book is very difficult to read and understand because it contains many old traditional words. If talking about the story, it is brilliant. On the other hand, if talking about the book, it is too hard to read and it took me hours to finish because I have to go check dictionary back and forth. Even after finish reading the book, I still do not understand what it is about. I can only understand after reading the short notebook version of this book. In my opinion, this is actually a good book but it would be better if it was written in dialogues or paragraphs. I think I would definitely recommend this book to my friends because through this book, we do not only receive more knowledge in Christianity, but also gain more understanding and get to know many famous ancient people and the bad things they commit when they are alive. Whether it is important or not, it is still better to know more than knowing less. At least, when people talk about Inferno, we happen to know what it is and have already read it. However, I would recommend them to read the summary of the book rather than the original so that they will understand the story easier and faster. After reading and