Upon reading further Dante Alighieri's Inferno, I truly began to become more used to reading his style, word choice, and composition. Also, having said this, I found it much easier to appreciate how he was able to portray and describe the Circles of hell and the events that happened in his work. Again, I was able to encounter Dante's fantastic and eloquent choice of words in "bringing to life" the characters in each Circle of hell.

In cantos VII to XI, Dante, lead by Virgil and the Poets continue their journey through hell. Here, they were able to arrive and see Circles IV, V, and VI. In these three, Dante was able to encounter several more characters and also new places such as the River Styx (famous in Greek mythology as the river of death in the Underworld) and the city of Dis, the capital of hell. I liked the fact that Dante choice this name for the city not only because this is what they used to call Pluto, the Roman god of the Underworld, but also because its name reminded me of the English prefix ‘dis-‘, which is used to mean negation, removal, or expulsion. While reading these five new cantos, I started to understand better how Dante actually arranged the circles in hell. As it turns out, he arranges this based on how Aristotle wrote his philosophies. It was arranged based on the three evils: incontinence, violence, and fraud (in this particular order). To be honest, I wouldn't actually think of arranging it in that way because I always thought violence to be one of the worse evils even greater than both incontinence and fraud. Nevertheless, after reading Virgil's explanations of how each sin was evaluated, I think I was able to understand where Dante's philosophies were coming from.

As I progressed in reading he Inferno, I can honestly say that this is more than just Dante's interpretation of how hell might have been constructed and more than to warn Christians about the evils of hell if we don't begin to repent and live good Christian lives now. I believe that, through this literary piece, Dante is trying to help his readers understand more deeply the causes of sin and the gravity of each different one—how these could actually cause a downward spiral in people’s lives, leading to a one-way trip into the deep flames of hell when they 'could have had it all' in Heaven with God. Yes, no matter what sin we commit, we must all understand that sin is truly grave and wrong, but I think what Dante is trying to say through his work is that we must understand how human nature can actually fall into these sort if temptations and to what terrible extent it could lead us in our life on earth and even in the afterlife.

Kudos to Dante for five more greatly composed cantos. What a great inspiration religion and spirituality could be to literature after all.