Imagery in Dantes Inferno Essay - 689 Words

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, â€Å"Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.† Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an†¦show more content†¦Dante gives a picture perfect example of their torment. It was said that, â€Å"And as they scrubbed and clawed themselves, their nails / drew down the scabs the way a knife scrapes bream / or some other fish with even larger scales† (Alighieri XXIX.82-84). The impression that Dante gives forces the reader into picturing the sinners drag their dirty nails into their prickly, scabbed skin, so rapidly and intense, that he compares it to a knife grating the scales of a fish. Dante also uses visual imagery to describe the lives of the gluttons. Since the gluttons spent their lives consuming massive amounts of food and drink, they represented themselves as garbage. Therefore, they were treated as such in Hell. The reader is able to visualize the punishment of a glutton through Dante’s vivid expression: â€Å"Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow / pour from the dismal air to putrefy / the putrid slush that waits for them below† (Alighieri VI.10-12). The reader can obviously picture the clean ground beneath all of the disgusting dirt, mold, mud, and rancid slush. Dante also puts the image of the rotting gluttons that lie under this filthy mess into the reader’ s mind. Each realm contains something different, and Dante clearly proves to give the sense of a different image every time. While every person has a different depiction of Hell, Dante provides fascinating imagery of his portrayal, so the reader can truly experience theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis of Dante ´s Inferno Essay1606 Words   |  7 PagesDante’s Inferno is a very important piece of literature. There are many things to be learned from it, from the face value knowledge that Hell is a bad place, to a deeper understanding of how God intended us to live; but the most important lesson to be learned here is the power of allegory. 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