Inferno 29
Study Guide Questions for Canto Twenty-Nine
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Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)
Vengeance, Being a Guide
Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)
What did Virgil tell Dante as he stood there weeping for what he saw?
What did Virgil tell Dante concerning his lingering thoughts about the soul whom he called “a spirit of [his] own blood?”
What made Dante feel even “more pity” for the fate of Geri del Bello?
What sin was being punished in this last ditch of the eighth circle?
How did Dante describe the disgusting scene in the tenth ditch?
What did Dante offer the souls there in exchange for information about themselves?
What got the soul from Arezzo burnt at the stake?
What did Dante claim about the Sienese people?
What did Capocchio do which placed him in the tenth ditch?
Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)
Virgil gently chides Dante for weeping so long over the souls in the ninth ditch saying, “you did not do so at the other moats.” Why might Dante have been more moved by what he saw there than in other places?
What did Dante mean when he wrote, “I was so stung with arrows of unusual laments, they seemed to steel the tips in sympathy?”
Why did this area of hell “stink” more than others? What was causing it?
Dante said, “Tell us if an Italian in this ditch is to be found.” What was Dante specifically looking for Italians?
What did the soul mean by saying “why I’m damned here isn’t why I died?”
What does Capocchio mean by saying “you should recall how fine an ape of Nature’s works I was?” Also, what does the wording “you should recall” imply?
Why is the punishment which these sinners are enduring appropriate to their particular sin?
Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)
Virgil said to Dante, “there is no need…to break your thoughts upon him anymore. Attend to something else, and let him stay where he must stay.” Do you think this is good advice concerning things we cannot change? What profit, if any, is there in applying our thoughts to circumstances outside of our control? If there is no purpose in thinking about what we cannot change, then why did Dante write about people whose fate was sealed? If there is a purpose in thinking about what cannot be changed, what is it?
Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)
Read Revelation 20:11 through the end of chapter 21. How is it that the judgment of sinners and their final punishment of being delivered to hell (the lake of fire) can stand side by side with the joy of the redemption of Christ’s church and the coming of the New Heavens and the New Earth? In other words, how does this passage address the fact that we can have perfect peace and joy while knowing that others are consigned to unending torment?