Divine Comedy: Paradiso Essay Questions

What is the importance of Dante's addresses to his reader? Support your argument with textual evidence.

When we think about Dante's theme of "guidance," we may begin to consider that Dante addresses his reader as if he has become their guide. Take, for example, his instruction to his readers that they keep "to the furrow" that his "ship" has made. Two things are worth considering: first, when he suggests that we follow his "furrow," Dante makes the reader the one who is following him, just as he followed Virgil or Beatrice. Second, the "furrow," as an image, evokes the act of writing; in classical texts, making furrows in water or earth is often a metaphor for writing, and as such, Dante may be pushing readers to consider his writing a sort of "guiding furrow" to their lives.

Find a symbol in the Paradiso that seems ambiguous. Either explore why that ambiguity is important or show why the symbol is not as ambiguous as it seems. Support your argument with evidence.

If we look at the symbol of the lightning bolt, we find that it has very different meanings at different points. Beatrice at one point suggests her smile would destroy him as if it were a bolt of Zeus's lightning, and yet, at the end of the Paradiso, it is a bolt of lightning that allows Dante to fully attain an understanding of the Divine. Thus, although the lightning bolt is connecting to Divine Beauty in both instances, it suggests at one point its destructive power and another its generative power. Dante's ambiguous lightning, then, brings out the dual nature of the Christian's God power.

Pick a single canto in the Paradiso and explain why the events of that canto are important to the poem as a whole.

In canto seventeen, Dante speaks with Cacciaguida about his future. Not only does this mirror the canto before, which talks about the history of Dante's life, but this conversation is significant in that it tells readers much about the position Dante himself was in while writing: he is in exile, under political and economic pressure, and yet is still committed to telling the truth about his contemporaries.

Choose one of the quatrains (four-line stanzas) that ends a canto. Explain why it is significant, and why Dante chose to end the canto at that point.

Dante writes this quatrain at the end of canto twenty-four: "thus, blessing me as he sang,/the apostolic light, at whose command I spoke,/encircled me three times once I was silent,/because my words had brought him such delight." These lines, which bring together the motifs of light, circles, and singing, work to emphasize the ever-present joy that the souls of paradise feel about Dante. This ends the canto on a note of joy, suggests Dante has passed Peter's examination, and launches readers forward into the next canto with a sense of levity.

Compare the first canto of the Paradiso to the Inferno and Purgatorio. How does Dante mark a shift in tone?

In the Paradiso, a shift in tone is apparent as early as the very first word: Dante begins with the words "The glory," immediately evoking an atmosphere of success and religious joy. Both the Inferno and the Purgatorio, in their first lines, focus on Dante's own journey rather than divine glory; these cantos are focused more on his own spiritual tribulations, whereas the Paradiso is focused on his success in becoming closer to God, setting a much lighter tone (aptly, often through the use of light as imagery).