Canti 21-27

1. Given that we have now almost completed the Inferno, do you feel the text is "character driven"? (Meaning, are Dante and Virgil propelling the story along?) If not, then what? Why do you think Dante chooses to write the epic in this manner?

I think that the Inferno was very much a character driven plot due to the numerous references Dante makes through out the poem to politics in his home town of Florence and personal qualms he had with the souls he meets in Hell. As the writer, Dante has complete control over the out turn of the story so he has the ability to place in Hell who ever he chooses. Those real life people who he had had disagreements with (to say the least) before he had been exiled ended up in Hell in his poem. He sent them to deeper and deeper rings of Hell depending on how deeply he disliked them when they were alive. Dante was writing this when he had been exiled from Florence, the city he loved and so was particularly embittered and took it out on the people responsible through the story.
This in a way makes the poem even more strong because as he encounters these souls which he recognizes (though he does not hate all of them) they give him personal accounts of the horrors which they must endure in Hell. Dante could have done this with completely fictional characters but the fact that they were once real historical people gives it more credibility.
All this being said, most writers incorporate aspects of their personal lives into their work, though usually not as blatantly as Dante did in his Inferno. Characters generally have different names or different backgrounds than the people they represent in real life, but often in their overall nature their are the same.

from Canto 23 when virgil is protecting dante from the Fiends:
"Seizing me instantly in his arms, my Guide-
like a mother wakened by a midnight noise
to find a wall of flame at her bedside
(who takes her child and runs, and more concerned
for him than for herself, does not pause even
to throw a wrap about her) raised me, turned,
and down the rugged bank from the high summit
flung himself down supine onto the slope
which walls the upper side of the next pit.

I think this passage accurately portrays Virgil and Dante's relationship. We have been speculating in class about both Virgil and Dante's possible homosexuality but I think this depiction of Virgil as a caretaker or a defensive mother is more accurate. Because he is already dead and has been condemned to Hell, he has little to fear for himself but because Dante is alive and he can be harmed by the obstacles they encounter, he goes to extra lengths to protect him. I think there is some meaning behind the fact that Dante describes him as a mother considering he is a man but I'm not entirely sure what that means. Unless it is just to further stress the tenderness and love he shows Dante.