The souls of The Inferno are compellingly human in that, since they have no hope of salvation, they are obsessed with the state of the living world. Write an essay discussing the dead's attitude toward the living. Why are souls constantly begging Dante to listen to their stories? What power does he have as an emissary from the living? How is the perception of the dead stilted regarding the present? Why must they rely on Dante to learn of the present state of things?

Essay Topic 2

The subject of The Inferno is clearly a dire one, but the poem is not without its humorous components. Write an essay discussing the use of humor in Alighieri's work. What characters and situations in the poem provide comedy in the face of damnation? What is the nature of this humor? Is it morbid? Slapstick? Wordplay? What is the tonal function of these comedic passages? How do they relate to the more somber portions?

Essay Topic 3

Because the realm of Hell in The Inferno is a bureaucratic location where souls are assessed and assigned punishments, sin takes on a quantifiable form. Write an essay about sin as object in the poem. How does sin become the only quantifiable commodity when a soul dies? How is the soul completely assessed based on the quantity of this sin on it? Cite examples from the text to illustrate how souls in Hell are entirely defined by their sins.

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