Answer five of the following questions in a paragraph each. State your answer to each question and support your answer in a well-organized paragraph. Discuss details of the poem that support your answer.

Pace yourselves. Spend about eight minutes per answer.

1. To Farinata's words about scattering the Guelphs "twice over," Dante responds: "If they were driven out, they still returned, both times, from every quarter...." What do these words reflect about the pilgrim's preoccupations at this point of the poem? How does the poet imply his later judgment of those preoccupations?

2. How do Beatrice's words about Love to Virgil differ from Francesca's words about Love to Dante the pilgrim? What is the significance of this contrast?

3. What does the portrait of Cerberus, particularly as Dante's monster differs from Virgil's in The Aeneid, contribute to the drama of The Inferno as the pilgrim enters the circle where the gluttinous reside?

4. What does Dante's encounter with the suicide Pier della Vigna show about his departure(s) from his guide, Virgil? Discuss Virgil's account of Aeneas' encounter with Polydorus.

5. How does the appearance and conduct of Geryon contribute to the drama of Dante's descent, both as pilgrim and as poet, into the realm of fraud?

6. So far in the poem, what is the most memorable simile that you have read? What does that simile show about Dante's aims and techniques as a poet?

7. Virgil describes the inscription upon the Gates of Hell as "scritta morta," or "dead writing." What does that phrase mean--that is, what kind of writing is "dead" in the poem?