Dante's Inferno Research Paper

The year is 1302, Dante Alighieri is absent from his role as one of the six supreme magistrates. Prior to that he had an extremely successful political career who had no problem exerting his power. Dante considered himself “a moderate White, he found it necessary during the two-month term to join in banishing his brother-in-law, Corso Donati, and his "first friend," Guido Cavalcanti, as ringleaders respectively of the Blacks and Whites.” Blacks and Whites were faction groups who had ongoing fights in the streets of Florence. This is an extremely admirable trait of a great ruler and/or ruler, the ability to at any moment turn on friends or family in order to uphold the city or government. This is comparable to the pride Greeks had in their respective

Essentially Dante was never settled after his exaltation and wandered endlessly. With his journey into the Inferno, Dante first awakens in a Dark Wood, at first sight he sees a light outlining a mountain in a distance and makes his way towards it. He is encountered by three beasts who stop his passage up the mountain. Before the monsters could have their way with Dante he is saved by the Roman poet Virgil who tells him to reach the mountain top he must first travel through Hell and Purgatory. Virgil was sent by Dante’s lover, Beatrice. Dante being lost in the wood represents his spiritual quest for god and also the years he spent roaming the lands without a singular home, and the beasts blocking his path are the sins he has committed that he must repent for by travelling this path with

All throughout his journey through hell, Dante punished those who were tyrants and abused the power they were given. He see’s that humans must not sin even with the power to do so without immediate consequence. They will be punished by an eternity in Hell if not punished in their mortal life. Comparing this to current times we can see the uprising movement of “Black Lives Matter” to spread awareness of police brutality throughout the United States, the cases of those such as Laquan McDonald shake the nation at what could be next. A dashboard camera captured an officer shooting down a young black man, a video that was not released to the public for over a year. According to the Chicago Police Department also known as the CPD, officer Jason Van Dyke acted in self-defense when he shot Laquan Johnson and stated “McDonald was out of control and menacing him with a knife, so he shot him once, in the chest.”. His autopsy alone showed that McDonald was shot over sixteen times. Increasing national bitterness and hatred grow for the police for taking advantage of not only their position but the weapons that they are trusted with. It’s been shown numerous times that police officers think they are above the law. Even if they get away with murder without consequence, Dante knows that they will be punished in the