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Beowulf And Dante's Inferno Essay

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There are many opinions on where people either ascend, or descend to, once their soul leaves their body. In modern times, people hold beliefs that one will end up in one of three places: Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. The fate of a person is quite simple; their actions in their lifetime dictate where they will spend their afterlife. Those living in the 21st century do not give much thought to the afterlife. As stated before, fate is quite simple. Once departing the Earth, one is thought to live in agony or comfort, or somewhere in between. However, in the 1400’s, the Italian poet Dante thought about each layer of the afterlife with detail. According to Dante, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso –also known as Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven- were each …show more content…

Beowulf is known for defeating three monsters that were threatening the safety of the Danes. The slaying of these monsters gave Beowulf power in society that he eventually used to become King of the Geats. Although Beowulf was not alive during this time, one can assume that Dante would have assigned him into the eighth layer of hell in the second pit, along with the other flatterers. The values of the characters and writers in Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, differ based on their theological systems, and the religious context surrounding them. In the eighth layer of hell, Dante placed the fraudulent- those who used lie and deception for personal gain. Within this division, there are ten pits that further subdivide the sins of the fraudulent. Beowulf would be placed in the second pit of the Fraudulent with the flatterers. Beowulf would be a good fit for this section because of his warrior-like actions. He was extremely interested in defeating Grendel because of the harm the creature was causing on society. Beowulf travels to the Danes Kingdom to help defeat the so-far, untamable monster, Grendel. Beowulf successfully kills Grendel, along with his mother, and is honored in several ways by Hrothgar. Although Beowulf tries to portray

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