Dante Essay

“Dante Essay”

In Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” there are several notable items that we can look at and see patterns, similarities, and explanations in relation to the topics of “redemption” and “moral truth”. First before we make these correlations let us look at some details of the writing of the story that I feel have as much if not more significance to these topics than the actual story being read. Why did Dante write this literature and why was it important at the time? In short Dante lived in the late 1200’s and the early 1300’s in Florence when there was a struggle for power and the controversy of church and state was apparent, Dante was exiled from a particular political power of the time and soon after returning from being exiled he wrote “The Divine Comedy”. The reason I make note of this is because I see possibly a writer that was alone for a long period of time that possibly deeply considered these topics and can only believe that there is the possibility that some of what was written was reflection as well to how Dante felt his life was going. So when we look at segments of the story and see particular sequences that show the parallel, we might consider that Dante himself was looking for “redemption” or “moral truth”.

When we look at “The Divine Comedy” we can see a parallel with redemption being present at the beginning and throughout the story. It initiates with Dante losing his way in the dark forest and being led through hell before being able to reach heaven. Dante is almost always following someone and being led through all the sequences of his journey. We can see the parallel with that in our lives often we do get lost, lose our way, are scared, not sure where to turn, and much like Dante often steered back to the figurative dark forest (when scared back by the three beasts early in the story). Often when we are lost in life we need guidance we need instruction to able to acquire happiness or peace, much like Dante being led through the segments of hell to ensure safe travel to heaven. We can also see sometimes in order to receive the blessings or be saved in the end there is a process of having to trudge through areas of life that might be less than enjoyable, such as Dante having to go through and pass by the segments and parts of hell and purgatory. We see other stories that share these types of examples such as the “Epic of Gilgamesh” where Gilgamesh went on a journey to seek eternal life and throughout the process saw sadness and hardship, but was able to learn from his experience and seek whom he was searching, he also was not alone for parts of journey with Enkidu. Redemption is a principle that in order to attain the good we are sometimes either stuck in the bad, or we have tried to do all we can and seem to still need the extra helping hand to guide us to safety