A Survey Of The Monsters In Dante's Inferno
Tristan Barefoot
Mrs. Pugh
CRW B5
9 May 2023
A Survey of the Monsters in Dante’s Inferno and Their Resemblance to Other Monsters in Various Depictions
In Dante Ahligheri’s Inferno, there are a varied and horrific plethora of monsters, demons, and folk characters depicted in the depths of Hell. From your average flying monkey-esque demons with bat wings and horns atop their head to more niche mythic characters like the beautifully scaled yet monstrous Geryon and Cerberus the three-headed dog, there are many monsters taken from the other literary works of and before the 14th century period of Dante Ahligheri. As a staple representation of Hell in literature, Dante’s Inferno has been a jumping off point for much of the works in the following centuries
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This means, simply, that Satan is gigantic. Almost too big to comprehend, as Dante struggles to compare it to anything else he had seen before. Satan is also described with three heads, each of a different color and chewing a different sinner. He has two large bat wings which blow a cold air that freezes his tears and entraps him in ice, in which he is frozen to his waist. Satan is often described as a pointy tailed devil with horns and of an average to slightly larger-than-human size. While there are definitely descriptions similar to this rendition in terms of size and with large wings, they generally don’t describe satan as being frozen in ice either. Satan is often seen as the “King of Hell,” and this is likely due to the often opposing nature of Hell and Heaven in most modern literature, as opposed to the structure of Hell being ordained by God in Inferno. Even in the Bible Satan is portrayed as a trickster always trying to steer the righteous off their holy path and corrupt the good, doing so outside of Hell and in the realm of the living. This conflicts with Dante’s portrayal of Satan being trapped at the bottom of Hell, in a constant state of torment and …show more content…
The Centaurs were most often seen as a representation of the wild and barbaric urges of man, or the midway between mankind and nature. The job of the Centaurs to shoot and attack any damned soul climbing out of the boiling-blood Phlegethon river mimics this brutal and violent nature of the Centaurs. Another character borrowed from other literature is Cerberus. The three headed demon is a common sight in most depictions of hell as its “guard dog”, most notably in the series Percy Jackson or Disney’s
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1005 Words | 5 PagesUrbanski also writes, “His feet resemble the devil's cloven hooves: ‘one of his boots was at a strange angle, as if his foot wasn't in it’” (Urbanski 1). Here , he is described as having physical similarities to the Devil. So, not only does he act like the Devil, he appears similarly to how the devil does.
Theme Of Contrapasso In Dante's Inferno
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1114 Words | 5 PagesArtistic renderings of Satan have also shown him as a goat. William D. Moor explains one of the common depictions of the Devil in “Riding the Goat Secrecy, Masculinity and Fraternal High Jinks in the United States,” he says, “To the common mind, the Devil was represented by a he-goats [sic], and his best known marks were the horn, the bear and the cloven hoofs” (3). Friend is noted as stumbling around and losing his balance when he does walk around, and Connie even notices that something might be stuffed into Friend’s shoes that is helping making him look taller. Although Friend’s boots are never removed, Connie is able to tell that the shape of his legs are odd. In “The Stranger Within: Two Stories by Oates and Hawthorne, Joan D. Winslow writes: “The knowing reader can easily identify him as the devil, although it is uncertain whether Connie does; for example, his awkwardness in walking suggest to her that his boots are stuffed with something so that he will seem taller, but our imaginations penetrate further and recognize the cloven foot of the devil” (4).
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Dante's Inferno Quotes
608 Words | 3 PagesIn Dante’s inferno, Satan is shown and described as a three headed monster with long hair. Normally a person or a reader would assume that Satan has only one head, a red skin toned body and long horns, but the one in Dante’s inferno, as mentioned in the book, Satan has 3 heads, red,black and yellow skinned toned and is surrounded by ice. Lucifer has three horrific faces, in where one is looking straight ahead and the others two are looking back over his shoulders and tears running down their faces. “The one in the front, and that vermilion was; Two were the others, that were joined with this above the middle part of either shoulder, and they were were joined together at the crest” (Inferno 47). This quote explain when Dante first saw Satan.
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682 Words | 3 PagesThe Devil can be beautiful, after all, he was God’s favorite. Looks can be immensely deceiving, even the Bible has many verses about how not everything is really what it seems to be, such as, 1 John 4:1, Matthew 24:4, 2 Corinthians 11:14, and the ever so famous, Genesis 3:4. A warning that can be seen in both, “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates, is that not everything that is charming is impeachable. “No wonder, for even Satan masquerades himself as an angel of light,” 2 Corinthians 11: 14.
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How Is Satan Portrayed In Dante's Inferno
667 Words | 3 PagesDante’s portrayal of Satan is paradoxically empty and monstrous; it captures Satan in his true form and speaks of who he truly is. One of Dante’s portrayals of Satan is his monstrousness throughout the Inferno with him blowing over the cocytus. Dante’ first impression of Satan is “I saw his head towering above me! for it had three faces” (266). The image of the three heads is a symbolic mocking of the most holy Trinity.
Satan In Dante's Inferno By Dante Alighieri
618 Words | 3 PagesIn Dante’s Inferno, Dante Alighieri's depiction of Satan at the bottom of hell reveals the theme that in Hell the punishment is always befitting of the due to the fact that the lower you go, the farther that person is from god. The picture of Satan satisfies the reader because he shows that he is the opposite of god and that he is full of evil. Lucifer is the demon in the circles of hell which he has three faces, and bat like wings in which he creates the cold wind where the sinners suffer. “The face in the middle was red, the color of anger. The face on the right was white blended with yellow, the color of impotence.
Christian Religious Beliefs In Dante's Inferno
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Common Monsters In Dante's Inferno
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