The Inferno*

Foreword:
In the early 1300's a poet by the name of Dante Alighieri wrote the epic canticle and poem The Divine Comedy. I have read the whole comedy from start to finish and have also read Inferno many times by now. Personally, i think that Inferno is the best out of the three due to its amazing symbolism and overall quality of content. Because it is my favorite of the three and my favorite piece of literature i have ever read I think that writing an informal blog about it would not due it justice so I am going to write it in essay form so that the point of how great this poem is can be expressly seen. I am writing it this way out of respect for Inferno and for Dante. So without further adieu, my examination of two punishments in Hell.

In The Divine Comedy: Inferno by Dante Alighieri, Dante sees many different punishments for the damned souls of Hell on his journey through the underworld. Above all, two of them stood out for their uniqueness and contrast of each other. The first of these two punishments that stood out manifests itself in the Ninth Circle of Hell, in the innermost sub-section known as Judecca, named for Judas Iscariot. This circle contains those who are treacherous to their masters. Of the minor damned, whom of which remain unnamed, they are condemned to an eternity of being frozen in ice in various distorted positions. Dante, in recounting the sight of the contorted bodies, says, “Some lie stretched out; others are fixed in place upright, some on their heads, some on their soles; another, like a bow, bends foot to face.” Besides these minor sinners of the circle, there are the major sinners. In this circle lies Satan, or Lucifer by any other name, who is trapped in the ice with his wings batting helplessly trying to escape. This batting of the wings creates the cold gusts of wind that Dante notes upon arriving in the Ninth Circle. Inside Lucifer’s mouths however are the three chief sinners. These sinners are Judas, betrayer of Jesus; Brutus, betrayer of Caesar and Cassius, co-conspirator to Caesars assassination. Their torment is to be forever ripped apart and chewed by the teeth of Lucifer’s three heads.

The second punishment stands out for its characteristic of being almost completely opposite of the Ninth Circle. This plain of torment occurs in the Seventh Circle of Hell which contains, at the end of it, a plain of burning sand and a rain of eternal fire housing the violent against God, Nature and Art. In this plain of burning sand there are three classes that are defined by Dante. The first class is the Blasphemers who are those violent against God. The Blasphemers are condemned for speaking of God in an irreverent, impious manner. The second are the Sodomites who are known as being violent against Nature. These are the people who are guilty of sodomy. The last are those known as the Usurers, the violent against Art, which Virgil explains to Dante, is deemed as the grandchild of God. The Usurers crime was that they lent money at an exorbitantly high rate of interest.

Afterword:

Dante and his Inferno is my favorite piece of literature that i have ever read. At the sake of writing too much for a blog post i will leave it at just an examination of two punishments but know that each punishment has its own unique characteristic and has its own surface and deeper meaning.

A True Anti-Hero

For a while now i have been a huge fan of the now ended Showtime show Dexter. I am still only on the second season but I only recently realized that the show is based off the books by Jeff Lindsay. So after hearing about this and doing some research i found that the first book follows the show very closely. So, since i finished the first season i skipped the first book and read a synopsis of the differences, there was only one and i will not talk about it for the sake of spoilers. So i started the second novel in the Dexter series called Darkly Dreaming Dexter. For those of you who don't know who Dexter is then here is a little background: Dexter is a blood spatter expert working with Miami PD. What the police don't know is that Dexter is also a serial killer who kills those who slip through the system to satisfy an inner urge he calls the Dark Passenger. I say that Dexter is a true anti-hero because of the fact that he senselessly murders people on a daily basis but does it according to a code. This code that Dexter was taught by his foster father is how Dexter chooses his victim and how he does not get caught while he continues his 'hobby'. Dexter throughout the book speaks about this urge that he has, this need, to kill. He refers to it sometimes as an itch like any average person would get but his just keeps coming back and the only way for him to satisfy it temporarily is by killing. In the book he does not kill as many people as he likes because he is being watched closely, but he does kill one person in particular that shows his anti-hero status. Dexter finds out about a child molester living in Miami. He promptly tracks this man down and silences him forever. Because of Dexter's 'noble' choosing of a victim i believe he is the perfect image of an anti-hero.

Scarecrow

I am a longtime fan of every book that Matthew Reilly has written. He is an Australian action-thriller writer that writes some independent novels and a couple series including the Scarecrow series. For a little background, Scarecrow is the call sign of Captain Shane Schofield, leader of an elite Marine Force Recon regiment. The most recent novel follows Scarecrow, on field assignment in the arctic, as he tries to stop a syndicate that calls themselves The Army of Thieves and has taken control of a Cold War Russian weapons facility known as Dragon Island; all the while trying to evade a French assassination team trying to claim the price put on his head. I currently am within fifty pages from the end and the book is by far one of the best thrillers I have read. The book is very heavy on action and has many different twists and turns. As the book progresses Scarecrow and his team of two other marines and three civilian scientists make their way through the would-be abandoned Russian facility fighting against an army of highly trained war criminals. In the facility some of the gruesome experiments the Russians did to try and make weapons come to light. One of which is thermobaric technology, usually an explosive, that physically ignites the oxygen around it and causes everything around it to be incinerated immediately. The book itself is rather short compared to some of the other ones that he has put out and because it goes by fast, it leaves me wanting more. The book is written very well and never slows to the point where i feel like i have to drudge through it to get to the next chapter. Overall I am very satisfied with the novel and it is a warm welcome back to the series after a rather long hiatus after its predecessor, Scarecrow.

The Prince, 500 Years Later and He Is Still Right

Okay. So to preface this I want to start out by saying that I by no means care about politics. All i know about it is that our government and politicians can't do their job properly ( I.E. government shutdown). So in a response to this i have started to read a small little novel called The Prince. The Prince was written by Niccolò Machiavelli an Italian philosopher, gentleman, and political genius. It was written as a letter/essay/dissertation to his friends in the prominent Italian family, the Medici, on the current state of Italian politics. The Prince is divided into different chapters that address different topics such as how power is obtained and how government should be built so that it can be sustained. Currently, I am at the fifth chapter titled: In what mode cities or principates must be administered which before they were seized used to live by their own laws. This chapter covers what must happen once a prince conquers a state to be able to control those who were already under the rules and laws of another state. According to Machiavelli, they must either be colonized by the invaders, let the natives create their own puppet regime that they believe has control, or they must be extinguished because they will hold on to the old way. This seems rather drastic but it is rather true. Machiavelli makes a lot of points in The Prince that are archaic and sometimes rather sadistic but to this day they are still accurate. Personally, i think that politicians would be better and maybe be able to do something for once if they were all required to read The Prince before taking office. Of course this is just my opinion, and who cares about a seventeen year old's opinion about a broken government?