After having read some of Dante’s Inferno, and thinking about our final essay, I’m leaning towards Dante’s Inferno for the most relevant work for our society, compared to Beowulf. Having read up to Canto 24 in Dante’s Inferno I am gathering an overall feel for the text.
In Dante’s Inferno, it is teaching that what we do today, affects our future (this life and the next). We can see this principle within the text. As the people who are in hell, most have committed sins, some more severe than others, and are assigned punishment according to their sins.
In their mortal life they may have gotten away without punishment for their misdeeds, but in the next life they were punished. I think that this can be related to us in society today. It seems that we can get by with a lot of bad deeds and not get caught doing them, but according to the lesson learned in Dante’s Inferno it will catch up to us in the end. Lesson: do good deeds.
In Beowulf an overall lesson that could be applied to society today is the concept that the hero should be regarded not the villain. It seems sometimes in today’s society that the villain is sometimes regarded as the hero, movies of people stealing cars, or money and are regarded as the hero come to mind. In Beowulf, we find the hero as someone who was looking out and bettering the state of others, while conquering over evil.
Looking at these lessons taught in the two works, I imagine that Dante’s Inferno has more relevance in today’s society. I am thinking for my final paper I will have to go through the sources listed in the hand out, and read up on them to help me come to a more definite conclusion. I also might be able to gather more information through finishing Dante’s Inferno as well.
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