http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6556485n



In this video, you see the van der Sloot case begin to unfold. His case made many headlines and is finally behind bars for his actions.

Moral Outrage

In today's society, crime is taken very seriously, just as sinning was in Dante's time. Majority of people who commit a crime and are convicted, end up spending lots of time in prison. In The Inferno, anyone who was a sinner in their life, went to a different leve of hell depening on their sin. This is just like in prisons where your sentence depends on the severity of your crime. A very well-known murder today is the Joran van der Sloot murders. He murdered two young girls and is now behind bars for it. In Dante's time, a famous person who is violent against their neighbor would be Alexander the Great. He was a king who shed lots of blood so in his after life he is stuck in this circle immersed in boiling blood forever depending on their specific murder.  
On May 30th, 2005, Natalee Holloway went missing in Aruba when on a vacation with her school. During the time of her trip, she had met a local named Joran van der Sloot at a bar and on the night of the 30th, Natalee left a nightclub with Joran and was never seen again. Joran was arrested June 3rd along with his two brothers. After finding a lack of evidence, the boys were released. This happened a few more times until things took a major turn in the case. On May 30th, 2010, exactly one year after Natalee went missing, Stephany Tatiana Flores Ramírez went missing in Peru. Coincidently, the young lady had been hanging out with a man with a dark past that she did not know about. Later that evening, Ramirez left a hotel in Peru with van der Sloot. She was found dead the next morning.These two events were no coincedence. Both girls were murdered by a man who got away with it all the first time but know is finallly about to be behind bars.
In my opinon, there is no excuse for murdering someone. Even if it was for your country or your family, taking someone elses life is unexcusable. No matter what someone did to you or you did to them, you do not kill them. That is just wrong. So you could say I agree with what Dante says in circle 7. If I were creating my version of hell, anyone who killed someone would have to do somethinf very similar to what actually happens to them in life. 

Fate, as always. In every book...

In the passage regarding the Dame Fortune, Dante says that no one can effect the process of the decisions of people's fate. In the example, the dame of Fortune is the decider of other’s fate and fortune. Dante seems to say that no human will see where and how she decides the fate and fortune of others. No mortal could convince her to change her mind about her decisions and she will rule her kingdom just as well as the other gods, and do it day by day, taking it one step at a time. In this metaphor, the Dame Fortune herslef represents God and how God makes decisions about our fate. Dante is a strong believer in God deciding everyone's fate, and his opinion and beliefs are present in ths passage. In this work, Dante seems to refer only to fate and very little to free will where as Sophocles seems to say in the Oedipus cycle that people can change their fate with free will but fate is still present in people's lives.

How would you say it today?

No mortal power may stay her spinning wheel. --> No human can see the decision of everyone's fate and fortune.
The nations rise and fall by her decree. --> The kingdoms better themselves or fall because of fate.
None may foresee where she will set her heel: --> No one can see where fate and fortune are decided.
she passes, and things pass. Man's mortal reason --> Dame Fortune passes people and they pass her, human reasoning,
cannot encompass her. She rules her sphere --> can't effect the decisions. Fate rules a kingdom
as the other gods rule theirs. Season by season... --> just like all the other powers. As time goes on.

Circle 3

In the third circle of upper hell, the Gluttons reside. When Dante wakes up from his fainting spell, he sees that he is in a new palce. There is "a great storm of putrification,"(44), that was "a mixture of stinking snow and freezing rain," (44). In life, the gluttons eat and eat until they get a warm, satisfactory feeling inside. Their punishment in return for those actions is that they have to live in the cold, ice and not have those warm feelings again. The gluttons eat and drink in excess and that is what makes them satisfied. Their punishment in hellis that they are being eaten by Cerberus, the three-headed dog. He rips them apart while they lie the waste and garbabge.
The Gluttons make lots of garbage and waste while they eat and drink. They are "producers of nothing but garbage and offal," (44). While lying in hell, in the cold and being eaten, they live in the garbage and have to be surrounded by it. The law of contrapasso makes it so that everything they enjoyed in life, they have to suffer the oppodites.

The Gates of Hell

"i am the way into the city of hope.
i am the way to a forsaken people.
i am the way into eternal sorrow.

sacred justice moved my architect.
i was raised here by divine omnipotence,
primordial love and ultimante intellect.

only those elements time cannot wear
were made before me, and beyond time i stand.
abandon all hope ye who enter here."