In Dante’s Divine Comedy, he uses his own imagination to describe how hell and heaven should be. He combines the ancient Greek and Rome mythology heroes and stories along with the ideas of hell that appears on the bible. Dante’s Commedia plays a big role on wrapping up the ultimate thought/goal in philosophy during the medieval period. Where does a human go afterlife? Are the dead really dead? Dante answers the question by showing the world his journey from inferno to paradiso. It is very outstanding back in that period of time. As a poet in the late dark age Dante provides the pictures for the people and his descendant to think and imagine hell and heaven. Instead of using the church’s orthodox way to tell people believe in God, Dante uses story telling a more human way to influence people to believe we do have afterlife and dead are not really dead.

Compare the Ramayana with The Odyssey in terms of the portrayal of evildoers and their treatment at the story’s conclusion.

For both the Ramayana and The Odyssey, the evildoers are those who seemingly abduct or chase after Hero’s wife. In Ramayana, Ravana the demonic King of Lanka, who abducted Rama’s wife Sita in order to destroy Rama. In the Odyssey, the suitors of Penelope such as Amphinomos and Antinoos. Consider the values and beliefs are so different between ancient India and Greece. The treatments toward these evildoers are very similar, both Ravana and the suitors were killed at the end of the epic. Vengeance is always the main theme for epics. No matter how strong the enemies are, justice shall be raised when these intolerant practices happened.

Why does the Qur’an place such great emphasis on gardens and/or feasts?
As a part of Abrahamic religion, Islam is the second large one in the world. With a similar origin, we can find out some common features among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They are all believe in one almighty god, have a similar setup such as hell and heaven. And the whole reason why the Qur’an place such an effort on describing gardens and feasts is to draw the picture for its believers to follow the belief. The Qur’an has successfully depict the beautiful of how heaven should look like through the phrases and words. In the Feast chapter, it states” they will have Gardens graced with flowing streams…” It is like a reminder for the reader to fully oblige them into Islam because the obey one will enjoy the feast and the disobey one will have nothing but punishment.

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

In Sappho poems, we can find out she was a lesbian through the metaphor and subtext. She likes to use first person point of view to describe what she was doing in the poem, in order to interpreted her passion and love with men and women. For example, “For many crowns of violets and roses at my side you put on”(poem 94 p641). She uses crowns of violets and roses as a metaphor to express her homo-sensual romantic relationship between she and her women lovers. Since the crowns of violets and roses are represented the women sexual organs. The lesbian love(according to oxford dictionary the word lesbian is derived from Greek Lesbios, from Lesbos, home of Sappho.) is also expressed through the poems. Sappho shows us her desire on other beautiful women. In fragment 112, she states “… you have the bride for whom you prayed gracious your form and your eyes as honey: desire is poured upon your lovely face…” She is so jealous on that groom who is going to marry a beautiful bride. The word between the lines shows us her love and lust are way beyond sexuality.