Inferno 7

Study Guide Questions for Canto Seven

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Virtues/Vices/Great Ideas: (Find them in the Text)

Greed, Fate vs. Fortune, Needing a Guide

Grammar Questions: (The Information of the Text)

1. What did Virgil tell Plutus when he tried to bar their way?

2. What futile activity were the people in the fourth circle of hell engaged in?

3. What vocation belonged to the people that Dante saw there?

4. According to Virgil, why should Dante not give any thought to recognizing people there?

5. What did Virgil describe as “a short jest?”

6. What was each “sphere” in the heavens given?

7. Why, according to Virgil, can man’s wisdom “not duel” that of fortune’s?

8. As they passed into the fifth circle, what was the environment like there?

9. What were the two kinds of people who could be seen in the fifth circle of hell?

10. What was the punishment assigned to the sins of those in the fifth circle?

Logic Questions: (Interpreting, Comparing/Contrasting, Reasoning)

1. What might have been Dante’s purpose in writing a nonsense statement from Plutus into the story?

2. What does Plutus have in common with Cerberus, Minos, and Charon?

3. What is the “arrogant revolt” referred to in the text?

4. How does the activity of the souls in the fourth circle correspond to the sins they are guilty of committing?

5. How do the opposing vices (sins) of the fourth circle also have a point of commonality so as to be placed together in the same form of punishment?

6. What might we infer about Dante from the fact that he includes some members of the clergy (ministers in the church) among the number of those who are in Hell?

7. What did Virgin mean when he said, “He whose transcendent wisdom passes all fashioned the heavens and gave each sphere a Guide?”

8. What was the purpose of Virgil’s discourse on “Fortune?” What did Dante mean to communicate to his reader about fortune?

9. Why are some of the souls in the fifth circle striking and biting each other?

10. Why are some of the other souls in the fifth circle sunken in the mire of Styx?

Rhetoric Questions: (The Analysis of Ideas in the Text)

1. What is “fortune?” Is it the same or different from the concept of “fate?” What guides or directs someone’s good or bad fortune? How does fortune relate to human effort and ingenuity? 

Theological Analysis: (Sola Scriptura)

1. Read Revelation 12:7-12 and explain what the angel Michael has to do with matters related to Satan and Hell.

2. Read Romans 12:13. Why are those guilty of either of the sins in the fourth circle not capable of obeying this commandment?

3. Read Ephesians 4:26-27 and James 1:19-20. How might we relate these passages to our current reading? How should they affect our own course of action?