Essay Analysis

by | Feb 28, 2022 | Essays

  1. Write an essay that argues for a thesis relevant to the study of ethics. Your thesis should be succinct; a single sentence will usually suffice. Pick a thesis you can support through textual exegesis and argument. For example: “There are three major weaknesses in Socrates’s claim that ‘…no one in any position of rule, to the extent that he is a ruler, considers or enjoins what is advantageous for himself, but what is advantageous for his subject….’ (342e).” In short papers such as these, the thesis will usually appear in the opening paragraph.
  2. Tie your argument to one or more of the primary sources we’ve used as course texts. (Please ask me if you don’t know the difference between primary and secondary sources.) You might agree with the text or take issue with it; either way the text should figure prominently and explicitly in your argument. Remember to cite and/or quote specific passages rather than offer undocumented generalities. Of course you may also appeal to works we haven’t read for class, but a primary course text must figure prominently in your paper.
  3. Write lean prose in which every paragraph on every page, every sentence of every paragraph, and every word in every sentence serve to support your thesis. Avoid fluff of the “Since the dawn of time man has wondered about the nature of good and evil” variety. One way to avoid fluff is to force yourself to document all your claims of empirical fact as well as all quotations. Could you document the claim in quotation marks above? If you can’t, don’t assert it. Similarly, if you find a statement attributed to Nietzsche on an internet-based collection of quotations or in the birthday card, your Uncle Theophrastus sent you, track down the quotation’s original source or don’t use it.
  4. Include a documentation statement in your paper. MLA or Chicago format. 2000 word count excluding boilerplate such as heading, bibliography, and documentation statement. A single source—whatever primary course text you choose to anchor your argument—suffices. Tie your argument to one or more of the primary sources we’ve used as course texts. The text should figure prominently and explicitly in your argument. Remember to cite and/or quote specific passages rather than offer undocumented generalities. Most of the paper should be spent offering your own argument for your thesis, and correspondingly little of the paper should be spent on summarizing a text or movie.

Sample solution

Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell. 

In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.


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God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.

Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.

To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.

 

References

Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.

Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.

Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.

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