End of the Cantos and Hell

            Last week was the second week of Canto presentations, and in my opinion, it went just as well as the first week of presentations. Presentations were held on Monday, Thursday, and Friday, and each day went as smoothly with the presentations as I thought it would with our class. My presentation and project was due Friday, and I was lucky to have it at the end of the week instead of at the beginning. TCAPs were from Tuesday-Thursday, and it's not the fact that they are too hard of stressful, but that they tire me out. Out of anything, TCAPs helped me and my personal school work schedule, because I had no homework basically the whole week. Unfortunately, being in Rent really booked my time the past two weeks, so I really had just started the Dante project last Monday (besides paraphrasing) four days from my project due date for this class. So every day I worked for hours on end to make the writing excellent, visual creative, and presentation the best it could be. In the end, at midnight Friday morning, I finished, and I feel good about what I was able to do for this whole project, from effort to quality. I also feel that I did well on the presentation, but with presentations or performances of any sort, I always criticize myself on things I could've done better. Luckily all the work and stress for this project is behind me, and now that I'm done and have been learning and reading Dante forever it seems, I'm ready for the next unit.

            Not only did I learn about Dante's Inferno from working on my own Dante project, but I also learned a lot from classmates on Dante's Inferno and its entirety from each Canto. Canto XXV was my assigned Canto, and I am an expert on it, as I know a lot about it and everything it has to offer in its contrapasso and all of its metaphorical, literal, and symbolic literary elements. I have not become an expert on every Canto, but I do have some knowledge about each one, in depth or not, and can grasp Dante's entire journey through hell; each circle, each level, the sinners and punishments, and basically every description. With that said, there were certain Cantos that stood out to me, including mine of course. Canto XXV included thieves as the sinners, and their punishment was of serpents torturing them. One punishment is being strangled by snakes only to die, spawn again and be strangled. The other punishment is to be squeezed so hard by serpents, that one start melting forms into the snake, becoming one form and two natures, which is based off the big allusion of incarnational parody. There were many icons, including the former thief Vanni Fucci, and a former thieving Centaur, Cacus. I could go on and on about Canto XXV, but these are some of the main parts and elements. A Canto that caught my attention was Canto XX, because of the sin it holds and the sinners it contains. Teiresias and Manto were especially significant as diviners/sorcerers. Diviners, astrologers, and sorcerers are the sinners in this Canto, and it interested me because I believe they would not deserve to be in hell at all, yet they are in one of the deeper levels. Their punishment is that they get their heads twisted backwards, and are forced to walk backwards on a long circular path for eternity, representing the following of truth and having to live with their 'lies' and trickery. Another Canto I got a lot from was Canto XXII, which included barraters. Barraters are people of fraud, who are negligent against people and/or are corrupt politicians, such as Ciampolo. Their punishment is being thrown into a boiling lake of tar, which is guarded by demon spawns called Malebranche, which are flying demons weapons like tridents, hooks, etc. Suffering in the black tar represents all the dark corruption the sinners put forth that they now have to deal with in the burning blackness. The third Canto that I was interested most was Canto XXIII. This Canto, also in the eighth circle of hell, contains the sin of hypocrisy, including hypocrites as Caiaphas. The punishment for the hypocrites is probably the most interesting, and the least eternally painful compared to the rest in circles eight and nine of hell. Their punishment is unique, and is truly the most painful to hypocrites only. Their punishment is basically wearing monk-like cloaks that are gold and beautiful looking on the outside, while the part they feel in the inside is full of heavy lead. This is symbolic to hypocrisy because the outside of the cloak represents how things seem from what hypocrites say and do, the truth and greatness, while in the inside of the cloak they suffer from the dark, heavy load their hypocritical ways have created, defying real truth, and coming back to torture them in the form of lead in their dark cloaks for eternity. These were the four Cantos, including mine, that stood out to me the most and what I got more information out of than some others because of my interest towards them. I did learn about each and every Canto throughout these presentations and research, learning everything needed to end this unit of hell in a good way, and I feel mine and everyone else's projects were a success.