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Wheel Of Fortune Quotes

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Wheel of Fortune: Not Just a TV Show When Dante encounters Circle Four, avarice and prodigality, he sees a circular torture device that is used to crush sinners: the Wheel of Fortune. The use of Fortune was an imperative element of Dante’s Inferno, using the Roman goddess of luck, Fortuna, as the personification of luck and spontaneity in human events. Virgil explains that the Wheel of Fortune is the cause of all affairs on earth, negative or positive. Fortuna controls the wheel, and “has the goods of the world so in its clutches” (7.69). People perched atop of the wheel will fall, as the height of luck can only cause people to move down. Inversely, humans at the bottom of the wheel can only possibly move up in their fortune. This cyclical nature of luck in Florentine culture at the time of Inferno was the reason civilians condemned and feared Fortuna. In Florence, she was notorious for her capricious nature which resulted in her bad reputation. On the contrary, Dante indicates that Fortuna is a minister of God. In Canto 7, Virgil explains, “for / worldly splendors he [God] ordained a general minister and leader / who would transfer from time to time the empty goods from one people to another” (7.75-79). Dante combines the polytheistic nature of Roman Gods with …show more content…

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