Week Thirteen Essay: Dante's Inferno

Dante's Infero. WikiCommons.

This week, I read the unit entitled Dante's Inferno. I chose this unit simply for the reason that I have heard about it many times before and knew the main premise of the story, but had never actually read it before. It was a story that I first heard about in high school and I was always so perplexed that someone could write a story like this. After reading it, I still agree with the fact that this is a story that is hard to imagine and was very interesting.

It is hard to pick out a favorite story because they all run together to make one long story. I do like the continuity of each story building on the one before it and creating one large and overarching theme and story within the unit. That being said, I didn't really have a favorite or least favorite story, as they were all important to the overall story as a whole.

The language used in this story was much more archaic than I had expected. Furthermore, there was much more symbolism used that I had anticipated. There were many times that I was completely lost because I didn't know much about the topic, story, or individual the author was alluding to in his writing. Many times, I would have to stop in the middle of a reading, go research something that the author was talking about and come back to start reading the story again. The background information provided in the unit was so helpful, but I still wanted to know more, so I went and did some background research as well in nearly every story.

This story fit into my goals for the class because it put me outside of my comfort zone while reading. Everything from the topic of this story to the symbolization used are things I am not used to in my reading or writing.