Dante's Inferno

So, this Thursday we started working on Dante's Inferno, and the basics of how it works. We haven't started reading or anything, but we made up our own personal version of hell, which is in an earlier post. We had a four day weekend last week, and I have looked up Dante's Inferno a little to see what we are doing. I learned that the whole thing is a poem, and is written in vernacular language (common speech of the people of this time). I also found this picture and some like which are rather intriguing. 

I find it kind of confusing why "Treachery" and "Fraud" are at the bottom of everything, while killing people is only 3rd to last. I find murder rather terrible myself, quite worse that lying or stealing. I find it kind of scary being Atheist for one reason: if there is a hell, I sure am going straight there! I obviously don't believe in hell, I mean, if it only exists if I believe in it, then why believe in it? Why not only have a Heaven where I will go when I die? Then I don't have to always be depressed if I make a mistake, I can still be happy that Heaven is for me after-death. Luckily neither of those do exist in my mind, so I'm all good! Dante will probably have something on heaven or whatever, so I am excited to start reading.

My Hell

Hell is a place for people who have committed crimes against humanity. It is for sucky people who have done terrible things to other people. There are 6 layers; 1 being the least terrible punishment, 6 being inescapable and only for people who deserve worse.

1) To get into my hell, you have to do anything terribly cruel like murder, stealing from the needy, being a jerk constantly, etc. All around, if you are a bad person, and completely mean to, you are going to hell.

2) Like in Dante's Inferno, there are different layers in my hell, depending on how bad your crime was. The very worst crimes (mass murder) go to an incredibly hot environment with terrifying animals everywhere, but you can't protect yourself. They will bite you and rip you apart until you die, but you get re-birthed/healed every day at sunset. The people who did minor offences [arrogance to a whole class of people (sexism/racism)] go to a bloody body of water with no land. They will have to swim and stay afloat or they will drown over and over again until they get the strength to swim again.


3) My hell looks different at every layer. One layer for overly rich people who do nothing good for society is a table full of their favorite foods, but they are paralyzed with never ending hunger.


4) Anyone in layers 1-4 can get out whenever they have learned their lesson. Those in the last layer of hell can never get out no matter how hard they try. The 5th layer is where it takes hundreds of years to get out, but is still doable. In the 5th layer, the offender has to go through a trial with the person they have done wrong to. If that person sees them fit to leave hell, then they will be released to purgatory.

5) A symbol to represent my entire hell would be this female and male symbol. This is because everyone starts out as a baby. We are all born innocent and pure, but we choose to be good or bad. No matter the gender or race, we are all born the same way and anything could happen from there. People who choose the harder, selfless way of life will have a better after-life and those who are selfish and evil their entire life will spend some time in hell.


6) People in my hell: anyone who tries to force their religion upon me, saying that every other religion is completely wrong. These people make me so angry and I honestly just want them all to just go to hell. Also, anyone who commits a murder, rapes, pillages the poor, is greedy their whole life, is going to my hell to swelter away in the most terrible ways.

Presentation Day

So, today was the day my group had to present out movie poster on the tragic hero journey.

We did our poster on this amazing movie called Se7en. It brought every emotion mankind has from the viewer. The poster creation was awesome in the end with all the symbolism and creative little things we added (fingerprints and oh so much blood). When we were actually creating the poster, I kept thinking back to the scene in this movie where the still-alive-decaying-man was laying in his bead with all the air fresheners. It gives me the shivers every time I imagine it; it really was an ingeniously done movie. Everything to get the viewer crawling in their chair was thrown into this movie, and the amazing hubris and pride the main character has is overwhelming! The shear amount of cocky mistakes made in this video could kill a person (or 6 people; pun completely intended).

I also had to write an essay on Cause and Effect/Unity of Action. This essay was hard, time consuming, and when you read this Mrs. Cawlfield, I hope you're happy you caused so much blood and tears to be expelled. In the end I am happy we did this poster project because it let us have some relaxing time to talk and joke with our groups, while at the same time having made an extravagant, knowledge filled thing to hang on the wall. I honestly do feel that I understand the material of what makes a tragic hero's journey after these last few days of poster making and talking about the movie in depth with my groupies. I also learned what the 7 deadly sins of Christianity are, which is pretty interesting in of itself. All in all, this last week of work has been great fun and I learned a ton about film and basically just story's in general.