The Divine Comedy
“In the middle of the journey of our life I came to my senses in a dark forest, for I had lost the straight path. Ah! How hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and difficult wood was, which in thought renews my fear! (Alighieri, 1)” This passage tells us that Dante is lost in the middle of the woods, and he is in the middle of his life. The reason he gives for being lost is that he had become inattentive and was not paying attention to where he was going. This symbolizes how he has lost his quest for salvation. His laziness, a sin, caused him to stray from the road of salvation. He can’t go back the way he came because that is the way of sin. He is lost. As he realizes this, he knows he needs to go experience the seven sacraments to cleanse himself of his sins. Only then will he join God in Paradise, rather then spend eternity in Inferno.
Most people imagine hell as an evil, dark, and scary place, burning with fire. This is also how Dante depicts it, full of violence, gore, and blood. This horrid description is meant to scare people from sin. The inscription on the gate to hell read...
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