Death in What Dreams May Come and Dantes Inferno Essay

Death in What Dreams May Come and Dantes Inferno Death and what comes after has always been a subject of great interest and uncertainty. Many have tried to depict their own vision of the afterlife, be it heaven or hell, paradiso or inferno. Here, I will discuss the similarities and differences in the hell represented in the movie What Dreams May Come and the Inferno of Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy. What Dreams May Come is a movie about two soul mates, Chris (Robin Williams) and Annie (Anabella Sciorra). After Chris death in a car accident coupled with the death of her two children four years earlier, Annie commits suicide. While Chris has gone to heaven and discovered that his heaven is living in a world of Annies paintings,†¦show more content†¦For Williams character, Chris, his paradise was living in one of his wife Annies paintings. But the same theory holds true for Annie in hell. Annie is not in her place in hell because she has been deemed by Minos to be a suicide and assigned her level; she exists there because she has made a hell of her own. Her hell is living in a world without her husband and children, which she tried to escape through committing suicide but lives on in due to her own self-loathing and guilt. One central difference between these two works is the nature of Chris and Dantes travel into the inferno. While Chris has already died and gone to heaven, Dante is still living. Chris leaves heaven and descends into hell for his own purpose of bringing his soul mate, Annie, back. Chris had a choice as to if he wanted to go down to hell but Dante did not. His trip was divinely ordained and orchestrated. His reason in going is because he has been wandering from the True Way and has been sent to be taught an important and valuable lesson. In both works, there is the common relationship of student to teacher. In What Dreams May Come, Chris locates a tracker to assist him in his journey to hell to find Annie. This tracker is Albert, a man who Chris studied under as a medical student and has a great deal of loveShow MoreRelatedAn Interpretation of Dantes Inferno through Neil Gaimans Sandman1705 Words   |  7 Pages Dante Alighieris Inferno is one of the classic works of Western Literature. Like all great works, it is a corner stone for that which follows. One such work is Neil Gaimans Sandman, which takes Dantes concept of Hell and contorts and plays with it to an almost absurd degree. At first glance the product appears to be extremely different. In actuality it is a hidden portal to a new meaning of Dantes Inferno. Dante the pilgrim wakes up in the Dark Wood of Error without knowing how he got thereRead MoreAnalysis Of Dante s The Inferno 1689 Words   |  7 Pagesthe path less traveled and some people take the easy way out. 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