Sunday, October 25, 2015
The Murderers
So all this time while reading Dante I've wondered how violence is not punished to a greater extent. We've talked about the question many times-- "what do you think is the worst sin?" I've always thought it to be violence, more specifically murder, and have thought that it's wrong to punishe the fraudulent more than the murderers. However, I have just begun reading Canto 32 and the opening paragraph says, "In the outer region of the ice-lake are those who betrayed their kin in murder." I think it's right for these people to be im circle 9, but the way Dante makes it out to sound suggests that only the people who murdered their immediate kin are down here. So what happens to the people who kill randoms?? Do they go to circle 7 or circle 9?
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3 comments:
Well since "randoms" are not kin, benfactors, or friends, I think those people go in circle 7 with the wrathful. These people are mass murderers, like Atilla the Hun. They could also be crazy people that see someone and want to murder them (like in scary movies). I agree with you on the fact that Dante should definitely put more emphasis on punishing those who commit murder. Violence, at least in a contemporary point of view, is waaay worse than fraudulence!! However, betrayal, like in Judas' case, leads to murder sometimes. Judas was literally the whole reason Christ was put to death on the cross. If he hadnt betrayed him he wouldn't have been hung, so by default Judas indirectly murdered Jesus. Those pesky murderers are the worst, am I right?
I agree madison with your point, why is murdering a human being not much lower on the "hell scale?" I would reason that if someone tried to murder a creation of God, who was also created in his likeness, would not be punished more severely by God. But this epic poem is not written by a priest, Jesus, or God, it is written by Dante, a political man. Most of the people encountered in hell are political figures in Florence at the time this was written and during the stiff between the Blacks and Whites. Dante incorporates a lot of political undertones into his epic poem, so this is why I believe he has set Fraudulence at the bottom levels of hell and with in fraudulence there is Treachery to your country at the second lowest point (of course treachery toward your benefactor must be lowest since this is hell after all) because he finds that people are being treacherous to his home Florence.
I agree with Anastasia. I think that Dante's focus was more geared towards politics, which is why fraudulence would be considered the lowest level of hell. I also think that the betrayal of someone you share trust with would be worse than violence on certain occasions. Normally violence is an act committed out of rage, and normally those who are violent don't spend enough time thinking their actions through before committing them. It is just a quick burst of anger. Committing fraudulence against someone who you shared trust with takes more time and effort, and you would have to put more thought into such a thing. Fraudulence can also build on top of itself. Once you are fraudulent against one person, you may have to commit fraud against another to keep your deceit going, and it will spiral from there. I also think in some cases emotional pain can be greater than physical pain, and this kind of emotional pain can come from a broken trust or betrayal, so I can see why Dante created Circle 9 for the fraudulent.
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