Joe, a loyal disciple

1. Using ample evidence from the text explain how Dante’s inferno can be read in three different ways.

The three different ways Dante Inferno can be read is as an Epic, a Satire of the times, and a Biography.

The Biography is the simplest form to understand. The writer of the story, Dante, wrote about a man, Dante, in the story, Dante’s Inferno, travelling through the underworld seeing people of his past and present times, which is an analogy of him being in the world he is in today.

Reading the story as an epic makes the most sense. An epic is when it the story is SO MASSIVE and SO AWESOME that hardly anything from it is considered “boring.” Dante’s Inferno is exactly this, it’s so well written, every bit of the story is descriptive and direct and doesn’t keep you guessing, it’s all right there for you to follow alongside with. The other part of this that makes it an epic is the fact that it involves a journey, much like the Odyssey and the Iliad; Dante’s Inferno is about a man’s travels through hell and back.

The final view of Dante’s inferno is seeing it as a Satire of the times, this one makes no sense. Sure the story is obviously written about himself, and that he wishes he could have traveled around the world like Odysseus and had a Woman to come home to, but the fact is Dante was a nobody and had to create his own world, which he stole from Virgil, who stole it from Homer, who probably saw hell, he did fight in Marathon after all… Anyway, Dante was a nobody, he had no reason to live, and was cranky at the world because this girl that he liked apparently died, didn’t talk to him, or he saw once in a magazine and decided she was the love of his life, either way Dante created a world that he could be awesome in and made everyone else suck just to make himself look better, rather than Trimalchio or Jesus, who were thrown IN stories because of how awesome they actually were.

In summary, Dante’s Inferno is an incredible story if you view it as a Biography of him wishing he was cool or even better as an epic, but reading the story as a satire of the times is like listening to a homeless man ramble about Wall Street Billionaires, he just wishes he was one, but can’t be, so he’ll hate them forever instead.