Virgil is a man with many good and noble virtues. He is a guide and protective to Dante’s journey in different levels of hell. Dante is a poet who does a great job on literature works and poems, because of his sympathetic and spiritual minds. Even though he is seen to be a genius as a poet and to be holding a high esteem for Virgil, his spiritual minds are getting into a high level from the guidance of Virgil. Indeed, the relationship between Dante and Virgil is gradually developing as they move through various circles in Hell. For instance, he explains many details, structures, and functions of the hell as patiently as he can in order to familiarize him with his journey. Also, he reminds Dante not to be sympathetic to the dammed souls, because these souls are here for punishment by God. These examples show how important Virgil is to Dante in his journey. In the end, their relationship evolves stronger and stronger and establishes mutual respects. Dante not only regards Virgil as his friends but as the person who he trusts deeply in his life.

Even though both stories have the happy endings and the evildoers died, the degree of evilness in regardless of the evildoers are slightly different. In Odyssey, the main evildoer is suitors, who not only overturned Odyssey’s land, but continuously court to his wife. There are different suitors with different characteristics. In similarities, they are brutal and arrogant, so they get killed by Odysseus. In this case, they are really evil. However, they are different in some ways. For example, Antinous is the most arrogant suitors without any sympathy. He even let Telemachus, the son of Odyssey, kill Odyssey. In contrast, Amphinomus is very decent suitor among others, who sometimes speaks up for Odyssey.  In Ramayana, there is only one evildoer, Ravana. In my opinion, Ravana is not as evil as suitors depicted in Odyssey. He is somewhat brave enough to fight with Rama in person, even though he was defeated by Rama. And from Vibhisana’s words:” This Ravana used to give a lot in charity to ascetics; he enjoyed life; he maintained his servants well; he shared his wealth with his friends, and he destroyed his enemies…” (VALMIKI 112,113), we can easily see that Ravana is a generous and respectful leader. No matter what he did to Sita (abducted her), he still deserved to get a funeral and to be a good man in people’s belief.

In Qur’an, garden is depicted as a beautiful heaven, which filled with greenery and flowing water, with adorable flowers and trees, with mild winds and peaceful grasses. This place, garden, is the ideal place for every Allah believers. In the garden, they can get the rewards. They can receive pleasure and mercy. Most important thing is they can found the peaceful life in this garden. In a word, the garden in Qur’an can be served as a heaven as that in Christian’s minds. The feast depicted in the Qur’an is included plenty of food and drink. Good and clean things are made of something lawful. The word “lawful”  is that the things they have learned from or catch from by themselves with their knowledge. In this case, feast is about the law which restricts believers what food they should eat or not.

Q:  Describe how Plato, Sappho, and/or Catullus conceive of love (and/or friendship). You can choose to only discuss one of the three works or compare two or three of them. You can also choose to compare their views on love with The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, or Lysistrata. You can also choose to focus more specifically on either the lover or the beloved if you like.

Through the beginning conversation about love among Phaedrus and Pausiania, we can see Plato’s basic views on love. He pursues more on spiritual love than sexual love. These two people help him establish his main ideas of love. First person to give the speech is Phaedrus. He points out that love is most ancient god which is most powerful to help man gain the virtue. The young man beloved and the old lover could get greatest benefits from each other. They will feel shameful with each other in acting something bad. And they will even be brave to die in front of their loved partners. From my perspective, love is mutual thing among lover and beloved. The way to establish their mutual feelings is to know how to share their joys and sorrows: Feel shameful when somebody do something shameful or feel happy when somebody do something honorable. And the base for keeping this sharing feeling is their spirits. Then Pausianias emphasizes the points that the spirits  is to guide lovers and beloved to learn something valuable from each other. He sorts love into two kinds: heavenly love and common love. In his minds, common love is more about body and sexual acts. However, heavenly love is concerning more about intelligence and minds. Someone were to do something in order to gain influence for favor rather than for money is supposed be achieved the heavenly loves. It’s true that love is not only about substances like the money or the women’s body. It’s just for a moment pleasure or to satisfied current needs. More people need to know about love is to use their spirits and their intelligence to cover the desire for the substances.

Q: Analyze a literary device–most likely an image or metaphor–or series of devices you find in Plato, Sappho, or Catullus. 

   Sappho uses many metaphor and image in her poem,which helps her convey her emotions and feelings in more imaginary way. For example, "...And fine birds brought you, quick sparrows over the black earth whipping their wings down the sky through midair-they arrived. But you, O blessed one, smiled in your deathless face."(Poem 1 P637) In this sentence, she gives readers the scenes by using birds which whipping its wing down the sky to express her lonely feelings with sad moods. Another example, "Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. but I say it is what you love." (Poem 16 P638) In this sentence, she uses army of horse, army on foot, and army of ships to describe and emphasize the characteristics of the men. In addition, in most of her poems, she uses many natural scenery to describe her feelings and her thoughts. Sometimes it contains painful and sorrow feelings like the moon which is setting down. Sometimes it contains the happy and sweet feelings like green grass. She naturally describes natural subjects to express her mix of the feelings in her lyric poem.