Purgatory and Paradise

In the year 1300 the narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along life's path". The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood in front of a mountain, assailed by three beasts (a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf) he cannot evade. Unable to find the "straight way" to salvation, he is conscious that he is ruining himself and falling into a "deep place" where the sun is silent.Dante is at last rescued by the Roman poet Virgil, who claims to have been sent by...
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In the year 1300 the narrator, Dante himself, is thirty-five years old, and thus "halfway along life's path". The poet finds himself lost in a dark wood in front of a mountain, assailed by three beasts (a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf) he cannot evade. Unable to find the "straight way" to salvation, he is conscious that he is ruining himself and falling into a "deep place" where the sun is silent.Dante is at last rescued by the Roman poet Virgil, who claims to have been sent by Beatrice. They begin their perilous journey to the underworld. Each sin's punishment in Inferno is a a symbolic instance of poetic justice; for example, fortune-tellers have to walk forward with their heads on backward, unable to see what is ahead, because they tried to see the future through forbidden means. Such a contrapasso "functions not merely as a form of divine revenge, but rather as the fulfillment of a destiny freely chosen by each soul during his or her life." Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription, the ninth (and final) line of which is the famous phrase "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."