The Conversations of Francesca, Pier, and Ulysses Stephanie Garrison

The journey of introspection can lead to unbound places and uninhibited realizations. In the course of his travels throughout the Inferno, Dante Alighieri encounters the damned souls of the underworld and experiences their prodigious punishments. Undoubtedly one of the most exalted and enigmatic poems to have ever been written, an unassuming reader can be virtually overwhelmed by all of the multifaceted allegory that distinguishes the Inferno from all other works. Unrequited love that burns its desire in misery, desolate despair that becomes disfigured in perpetual gloom, and falsified deceivers who bluster their shame evermore all become personified in each sinner that Dante approaches. The Inferno invents a complex, elaborate system of hell with each sinner's own hell appropriately suiting the crime committed; as Professor Braden of the University of Virginia states, "the sinner eventually and often grotesquely becomes what they made of themselves." In particular three sinners, (Francesca da' Rimini, Pier della Vigna, and Ulysses) though each committed distinctively different wrongdoings, all entertain a significant conversation with Dante, who desperately seeks the attention of all three individuals. Each...