Literary analysis of a significant passage in a work of literature

The Inferno: Cantos IV

The epic poem The Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, tells the story of the author on Good Friday in the 14th century. Lost in the forest, he encounters the spirit of the poet Virgil, who promises to reunite him with his beloved. In order to do so, they must take a path through hell. The Inferno is Dante’s tale of the underworld and subtle commentary on sin. There is much that is revealing regarding all the separate parts of this epic poem. This paper will discuss the many themes of the fifth Cantos. This Cantos shows us Dante’s panache for mixing history and myth as a means of confusing the reader, making the backdrop of hell appear more hellish. Also the relative innocuousness of the sins of the sinners of this level of hell also gives the entire presentation of hell the guise of being a fully merciless place.

The fifth cantos in the Inferno takes the reader with Dante and Virgil to the second circle of hell, which is overseen by the creature Minos. We soon learn that this level of hell is the place where the damned are sent to their particular modes of suffering. Minos has the power to determine which circle of hell each sinner must descend to. The fifth Cantos is so significant in this regard as it has the Minos character, which is at once a character from history, but also can be found within mythology. Minos’s very description and presence forces the reader to wonder about this personage and representation. For those familiar with world history, Minos was the official king of Crete. However, his overlap onto mythology finds him to be one of the judges within the underworld. Minos reappears within the genre of classical mythology, as one of the sons of Zeus, who is as oppressive and fiery as his father. However, Minos can be viewed as having been a real person, as there is textual evidence throughout history that refers to him. Yet Minos has this odd overlap within mythology and then later here, in Dane’s Inferno, as the judge of the sinners who are forced to the underworld, known as Hades. His very presence within the Inferno asks the reader to make sense of him being there. His location is very telling: He is at the technical entrance to hell, as Cantos Five describes the second circle of hell.
While the reader cannot be certain how Dante intends for Minos to look, it is likely that he intends for him to appear beastly and monstrous. Consider the following: “There standeth Minos horribly, and snarls;/ Examines the transgressions at the entrance;/ Judges, and sends according as he girds him/ I say, that when the spirit evil-born/ Cometh before him, wholly it confesses;/ And this discriminator of transgressions/ Seeth what place in Hell is meet for it; Girds himself with his tail as many times/ As grades he wishes it should be thrust down” (27, 4-12). In this case, the reader has to decide if Minos is a demon, a serpentine creature, a monster or some other horror. By describing Minos in this manner, Dante successfully paints a more poignant and damning picture of hell: the vagueness of Minos’s appearance in some ways makes him seem even more ghastly, as the reader can’t be completely certain how he looks. Finally, the fact that Dante doesn’t give Minos any supernatural abilities such as telepathy or clairvoyance is significant: the sinners actually have to engage in the act of sharing their sins, of repeating what they did and taking responsibility. The fact that there’s the awful visual representation of how the damned are cast into their particular level of hell: the serpentine description gives a truly disturbed and bestial representation to the nether-world that these souls have been cast into. Scholars who have looked at the Divine Comedy very closely will see the archetype of Minos as part of a larger pattern that Dante engages in throughout his work. Dante constantly takes personages of classical mythology and transforms them into monstrous entities, as viewed by Western Christianity.

Another remarkable aspect of this Cantos is that we find that both the lustful and the imprudent in matters of the heart also end up in this second circle of hell. It’s interesting to note that in this circle of hell one can find both mythological and historical figures. For example, Helen of Troy is there, as is Cleopatra. “Then Cleopatra the voluptuous.”/ Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless/Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles,/ What at the last hour combated with Love” (29, 63-66). In this part of the Cantos, its understandable why we see Dante have such great pity for these souls, as there’s a strong sense conveyed that none of these people genuinely wanted to hurt others. There was just a marked lack of imprudence. Dante continues to mix mythologies into his tale, as one soul—Francesca—damned to his circle of hell, tells of how she committed adultery. During her story she explains how her lover and her sit reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, feeling that particular myth encapsulated their own surreal yet illicit love. Essentially, this Cantos makes commentary on human weakness and infallibility, and how the short-sighted and perhaps somewhat self-centered actions of humans can cause immense pain to others, and their own damnation.

In conclusion, Cantos Five discusses the second level of hell, the level that may readers today would consider containing the most harmless souls. By mixing mythology and history in this section, Dante creates a sub-reality and sense of profound uncertainty, a quality that makes the hell seems more treacherous. By making these “lustful” souls suffer in agony as they do, its sets a strong sense of foreboding for the subsequent levels of hell to come.

Works Cited

Dante, Alighieri, and Frederick Crombie. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. George Routledge & Sons, The Broadway , Ludgate ; New York, 1867.