Exam 1

Dante's Inferno: Cantos IX The Gate of the City of Dis and their denial into the city.

- Being denied into the City of Dis goes against the divine plan because Virgil and Dante's passage through Hell has been ordained by the Heavens. - Virgil voices his concerns that it might be possible for them to lose, which not only puts them as members of the city of wrongness because it goes against the divine plan but also makes them question the power of good and divine justice, which once again brings to light the imperfections of the system and with God.

Dante's Inferno: Overall theme

- Challenging the system and showing the fallaicies in the Catholic religion system (how does this system control us- aspect of eternal life is not having one so scary) - Man and the natural world: man going against nature or God himself because God embodies all natural things - Lies and deceit - Justice: divine justice and theodicy (questioning this divine justice) -Ex. God on Trial Documentary - Language and Communication: consequences of the social system that says we are losing these skills and what are the consequences on our relationships - Wisdom and knowledge - Compassion and forgiveness and love: human traits that make us further or closer to God? Dante makes this seem like a bad thing as if going LEFT away from God - Time: torment for sins for all eternity but the question of eternal life in heaven (is it worth it?) - Faith and its consequences: can you question faith but still believe (Dante does) - Respect and reputation - Sin: sin is going against God, trying to be like God, defiling nature and God, and trying to write our own stories (suicides) - Self-identity and its consequences

Dante's Inferno: Cantos XXXIV Ninth circle of Hell and the encounter with Lucifer

- Levels of dis: the city, the area of Dis (wrongness), and Lucifer himself. - Lucifer is buried waist deep in the ice, which symbolizes the depth of his crime and shows that he is evil to the core and must be held to that point to be contained because he was once the most powerful angel and now is the most powerful evil. - As Dante and Virgil climb up Lucifer, they have to turn around as head back in the same direction which shows that Lucifer is acting as the center of gravity and therefore they must counteract gravity. This symbolizes that Dante must embrace the evil and Lucifer to reach the good and heaven.

Dante' Inferno: Cantos IV Limbo- First Circle of Hell

- Limbo is the place for those who lived before the advent of Christianity or were never baptized. They are punished by never knowing God or his truth and forever longing for it.

Notes from Underground: Chapter II "...Petersburg, the most abstract and intentional city on the entire globe." "Though- what am I saying?- everyone does it; it's their sickness that everyone takes pride in, and I, perhaps, more than anyone... But all the same I am strongly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness." "The more conscious I was of the good and of all this 'beautiful and lofty,' the deeper I kept sinking into my mire, and the more capable I was of getting completely stuck in it"

- Petersburg is the most intentional and abstract city because it is essentially a copy of western and eastern culture, more specifically western culture.,. This makes this city a design of a design of fundamental human nature and culture. - Petersburg also serves as a connection to the multiple paths in the garden of forking paths because the man is aware that he could change the imminent future by leaving Petersburg because it is bad for his health. Yet the man still chooses to stay our of wickedness (a human trait). - The man connects pride with sickness, to which he describes pride as a sickness of the mind. He also says that any consciousness at all is a sickness because of the consequences it imposes on the conscious person (dicussed later by the man). - Beautiful and lofty symbolizes the higher things in life and is the epitome of the good in our reality. The man correlates this idea of good as the human pursuit of knowledge and the ultimate truth, which is a beautiful and lofty way of thinking philosophically. Human good is seeking goodness in truth and reality. - The man says that he is sinking into his mire through his acknowledgment and recognition of the 'beautiful and lofty' and his mire symbolizes his sickness or consciousness to the world around him. This is the concesquences of this idea of the good, being sick and getting sicker and sicker and by sinking deeper and deeper into the mire is becomes increasingly harder to find the beautiful and lofty He begins to question whether or not the truth of what we really want is the beautiful and lofty because it really isn't our but what we truly want is our mire becuase it truly is ours.. -Him sinking into his mire shows the mans acknowledgment of his smallness as compared to the world around him. Through this, the man shows that these moments are the ultimate truth of what we really want for ourselves and who we really are.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos XXXI The Giants: Nimrod and Antaeus

- The story of Nimrod shows how the diversification of humanity happened, which allowed us to become unique creatures and also shows that there was something broken in language because it gave us the power to attempt to reach God. This break in language (sentax, word, sentence structure) is the source of many altercations through misinterpretations and human error. - The story of Antaeus shows that giants embody human characteristics yet can cause so much destruction. This suggests that humans have the potential to cause great harm (which we have both to ourselves and the world around us). -The talk between Virgil and Antaeus shows that all humans (and giants alike) want is to be remembered and language gives us the power to be remembered.

Notes from Underground: Chapter III "For them a wall possesses something soothing, morally resolving and final, perhaps even something mystical.... I regard as the real, normal man, the way his tender mother- nature- herself wished to see him when she so kindly conceived him on earth. I envy such a man to the point of extreme bile. He is stupid, I won't argue with you about that, but perhaps a normal man ought to be stupid, how do you know?" "The wretched mouse, in addition to the one original nastiness, has already managed to fence itself about with so many other nastinesses in the form of questions and doubts; it has padded out the one question with so many unresolved questions that, Willy-nilly, some fatal slops have accumulated around it, some stinking filth consisting of its divine ties, anxieties, and, finally, of the spit raining on it from the indegionuous figures who stand solemnly around it like judges and dictators, guffawing at it from all their healthy gullets. Of course, nothing remains for it but to wave the whole thing aside with its little paw and, with a smile of feigned contempt, in which it does not believe itself, slip back shamefacedly into its crack. There, in its loathsome, stinking underground, our offended, beaten-down, and derived mouse at once immersed itself in cold, venomous, and, above all, everlasting spite. For forty years on end it will recall its offense to the last, most shameful details, each time adding even more shameful details of its own, spitefully taunting and chafing itself with its fantasies. It will be ashamed of its fantasies, but all the same it will recall everything, go over everything, heap all sorts of figments on itself, under the pretext that they, too, could have happened, and forgive nothing." "I calmly continue about people with strong nerves, who do not understand a certain refinement of pleasure. In the face of some mishaps, for example, these gentlemen may bellow at the top of their lungs like bulls, and let's suppose this brings them the greatest honor, but still, as I've already said, they instantly resign themselves before impossibility. impossibility-meaning a stone wall? What stone wall? Well, of course, the laws of nature, the conclusions of natural science, mathematics. Once it's proved to you, for example, that you descended from an ape, there's no use making a wry face, just take it for what it is. Once it's proved to you that, essentially speaking, one little drop of your own fat should be dearer to you than a hundred thousands of your fellow men, and that in this result all so-called virtues and obligations and other ravings and prejudices will finally be resolved, go ahead and accept it, there's nothing to be done, because two times two is- mathematics. Try objecting to that..... For pity's sake, they'll shout at you, you can't rebel: it's two times two is four! Nature doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well. And so a wall is indeed a wall... etc., etc. My god, but what do I care about the laws of nature and arithmetic if for some reason these laws of two times two is four are not to my liking? to be sure, I won't break through such a wall with my forehead if I really have not got strength enough to do it, but neither will I be reconciled with it simply because I have a stone wall here and have not got strength enough.... As if such a stone wall were truly soothing and truly contained in itself at least some word on the world, solely by being two times two is four. Oh, absurdity of absurdities! Quite another thing is to understand all, to be conscious of all, all impossibilities and stone walls; not to be reconciled with a single one of the impossibilities and stone walls if you are loath to be reconciled; to reach, by way of the most inevitable logical combinations, the most revolting conclusion on the eternal theme that you yourself seem somehow to blame even for the stone wall, though once again it is obviously clear that you are in no way to blame; and in consequence of that, silently and impotently gnashing your teeth to come to a voluptous standstill in inertia, fancying that, as it turns out, there isn't even anyone to be angry with; that there is no object to be found, and maybe never will be; that it's all a sleight-of-hand, a stacked deck, a cheat, that it's all just slops- nobody knows what and nobdy knows who, but inspite of all the uncertainties and stacked decks, it still hurts, and the more uncertain you are, the more it hurts!"

- The wall represents many things: the limits of the system and a whole, it is the source of his sickness and stupidity and shows the separation of knowledge and stupidity. This knowledge represents power but it only has power in you not FOR you. -Stupidity as the man describes, is just going with 'natures plan' and allows you to ignore the bad and good in things. he argues that this knowledge and intelligence is a consequence of the wall and it hurts (it is the cause of his mire because he knows about the beautiful and lofty). He says that the normal person is necessary for the universe because there needs to be some normality in the dark for others to be able to recognize there is lightness in the dark. This goes back to the idea that we percieve we understand through comparisons and negative definitions. - This extert shows a basis or predisposition of human nature where we all just want to be understood by each other. This is based on the human tendancies to create fantasies as expressions of our desires. One of these fantasies we create is our dark retributions we imagine about those who have wronged us. This shows that everyone has some dark part of us, and the man says this is normal and makes us human. - He also says that the more aware we are, then the more compressed we are by this knowledge (that there is good and evil in everything). - The wall is the natural laws of science and mathematics and in this chapter, the man is pointing out the contradiction where people blindly follow these rules but they pursue them further, they don't ask questions they simply except them. - The man acknowledges the wall and its limitations, but he says he will not blindly go with the laws and instead he questions them and will not go with them if he doesn't want to. Here he is exhibiting his free will and his rebellion to the system. He sees a problem with it and he is not afraid to call it out and rebel. This rebellion is the building of heat (potential energy and first law of thermodynamics) and this heat must be released during heat sinks (like wars and holidays). He says that build up and releasing of energy is what causes destructions to the society. Here he is pointing out how society reaches this point of breaking. - 'For pity's sake......' The man is saying he is different from society but in a way he is revealing the discrepancies in the system. He is saying that the system is just as crazy as he is if not more crazy because at least he acknowledges the wall and will not blindly accept it, instead he will 'see it for what it is.' - These last paragraphs show what the masses are really afraid of, the uncertainty and unknown. This is what lies beyond the wall and it terrifies us. He says this by saying 'nobody knows what and nobody knows who' this says that there is no one or nothing for people to blame for the limitations of the wall (natural laws), and this uncertainty is scary. This uncertainty is the ultimate fear of potential or our true possibilities (later in the book the man describes how humans are scared to reach their dreams and goals because then we have nothing to live for because we would have all knowledge and fulfillment- to which he suggests maybe we sabotage ourselves). In this sense, the man is describing the wall as comforting because beyond it is the uncertainty and possibilities.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos V Story of Francesca and Paolo and the sinners of passion or lustful

- This a story of childish lust and giving into bodily desires that goes against God's beliefs. - This sin is considered lower and found lower in Hell because it is a sin of the body which is considered less evil than sins of the mind. This is because God thinks the mind if more powerful than the body and should be punished accordingly. - This begins to question the power and nature of art. Specifically, how art is evil and dangerous (to humanity and the system). This idea goes back to the teachings of Plato who believed that art was dangerous to the system because it takes always our identities by separating the body and mind. It encourages us to use our imagination (frees our mind) and encourages us to take risks we wouldn't normally take. - Art is a way of dealing with the mundane chores of the world, it allows us to take a step back and stop thinking and live 'in the body.'

Dante's Inferno: Cantos XI "What brings Your thoughts to wander so from the proper route?... Back to the place where you said usury Offends celestial Goodness, and solve that knot? He said, For the comprehending, philosophy Serves in more places than one to demonstrate How Nature takes her own course from the design Of the Divine Intelligence, and Its art. Study your Physics well, and you'll be shown In not too many pages that your art's good Is to follow Nature insofar as it can, As a pupil emulates his master; God Has as it were a grandchild in your art, By these two, man should thrive and gain his bread- If you remember Genesis-from the start. But since the usurer takes a different way, He contemns Nature both in her own sort And in her follower as well, while he Chooses to invest his hope another place..."

- This cantos again shows the two options of paths; the right/good and the wrong/evil. Even though Virgil and Dante are physically on the right road to Heaven, Dante mentally is still turning leftward or inwards towards the path of wrong. This shows the natural resistance in human nature. - This passage also mentions the art of usurer and why it is bad. This is because it goes against the greater good set out by God and the natural laws of matter, which is never created nor destroyed but simply changes forms. In addition by attempting to create money out or money (usury) you are attempting to be like God through creation (Catholic religion says only God can create and destroy things), you are creating a false object, and we are defiling the image of God through our false images because these images reflects God since you are a reflection and creation of God. - This begins to question the nature of humanity, which is imperfect so the question begs does this make God imperfect since we are an image of God? - Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? This is posed by this passage. Plato said that humanity was the evil seed in humanity because it inspires the imagination of alternative realities. Virgil tells Dante that art is good when is reflects Nature, but bad otherwise. This is because nature is a reflection of God since he created it and everything he creates is a reflection of him.

Notes from Underground: Chapter I "I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. However I don't know about my sickness, and am not sure what it is that hurts me. I am not being treated and never have been, though I respect medicine and doctors. What's more, I am also superstitious in the extreme; well, at least enough to respect medicine. (I'm sufficiently educated not be superstitious, but I am.) No, sir I refuse to be treated out of wickedness." *Both the author of the notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as the writer of such notes not only may but even exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed. "And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness.... I was never able to become wicked. I was conscious every moment of so very many elements in myself most opposite to that. I felt them simply swarming in me, those opposite elements. I knew they had been swarming in me all my life, asking to be let go out of me, but I would not let them, I would not, purposely would not let them out...... that I am now repenting of something before you, that I am asking your forgiveness for something?... I.m sure you think so.... However, I assure you that is all the same to me even if you do..." "But anyhow: what can a decent man speak about with the most pleasure? Answer: about himself. So then I, too, will speak about myself."

- This establishes the connection between this passage and the natural laws, sciences, and mathematics and introduces the man as a contradictory, indecisive, and masochistic. This connects the sciences through the mentioning of modern medicine, which saves people's lives (the original job of God) and this makes od redundant and shows that the man believes the world needs/i going through a reform in the modern age of science. - *This explains that this type of man and the underground is necessary for the survival of the society and scientific knowledge. This is validation in a deterministic worldview. - Boredom is a modern term and feeling because in the olden times people couldn't afford to be bored or else they would die. This symbolizes the new age of thinking that allows for the freedom of thought (about new worldviews and new ways to do or see things). - The man doesn't want the audiences' approval or validation because he doesn't want to spend his energy on it. This corresponds to the idea of potential energy where any action spends energy. This spending of potential energy is important because of the first law of thermodynamics, which states energy cannot be created nor destroyed. This symbolizes the connection between this passage and the natural laws of science. - Through this question, the man is saying he is a wick and a decent man (which is contrary to everything else he has been saying). This also shows that there must be good and evil in a person and in everything because we define things through the negative (or what they are not) and through correlations to opposite and similar things.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos III "THROUGH ME YOU ENTER INTO THE CITY OF WOES, THROUGH ME YOU ENTER INTO ETERNAL PAIN, THROUGH ME YOU ENTER THE POPULATION OF LOSS. JUSTICE MOVED MY HIGHMAKER, IN POWER DIVINE, WISDOM SUPREME, LOVE PRIMAL. NO THINGS WERE BEFORE ME NOT ETERNAL; ETERNAL I REMAIN. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE...'

- This inscription on the gate perfectly symbolizes the catholic religion in a blasphemous way by depicting how Dante must travel through the bowels of Hell to get the Heaven, which suggests that there must be evil and wrongness in order for there to be goodness and God. - This also suggests that the City is a city of disorder and chaos (like the woods) and also begins to set the stage for the idea of natural consequences of the Catholic system that the city of chaos is a consequence of the city of angles. This also questions our perception of reality and its own bounding by its system. - This connects justice in love (in God's love), this is justification that harsh justice or divine justice is the consequence of God's love and his attempt to correct the wrongs in the system. This is blasphemous because this suggests that God isn't perfect as seen by his creation.

Notes from Underground: Overall Theme

- This is an attempt to understand human nature (as a system) and an attempt to disprove this system. - This is an attempt to explain why this man is 'underground.' - This is a search for the ultimate and divine truth. To find and prove the truth one must go to the depths (underground) to the core to ascend to the truth (correlation to Dante's passage through hell to reach heaven) - Human wants and their consequences - the garden of the human mind and human creation (through word, which can create and destroy) - The expression that humans have both good and evil traits

Dante's Inferno: Cantos I "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell About those woods is hard-so tangled and rough And savage that thinking of it now, I feel The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter. And yet, to treat the good I found there as well I'll tell what I saw, through how I came to enter I cannot well say, being so full of sleep Whatever moment it was I began to blunder..."

- This sets the scene of contradictions between what is considered the righteous path and the devilish path, which challenges the Catholic system. Dantes starts his journey in the 'dark woods' which symbolizes a place of chaos and shadows or evil. This also symbolizes the sinful life on earth and the 'right road lost' symbolizes the path to God. This time in the woods symbolizes a time before any system (which is considered blasphemous in Catholic religion), Dante finds himself in a place without order (is Dante trying to get back to this place of disorder). In Catholic religion this is wrong because Dante's journey starts with a place of wrongness. - 'To tell about those woods..." this is describing that telling about 'dark' things is going against Catholic religious teachings - The mentioning of 'My left foot always lower on the hill,' is saying Dante is putting his sinister side and earthly desires first before the right foot or Godly side.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos XXVI Story of Ulysses (as told by him)

- Ulysses was one of the Greek Leaders during the Trojan War. He was the one who created the plan of the trojan horse used to ultimately kill the opposing army and win the war. He is placed in the Eight circle of Hell with the false counselors. He is placed here because his gift of guile was the ultimate sin that ruled his life. - Ulysses embodies all human sin and specifically the human desire for vice and virtue (or knowledge), he wants to know everything and this includes all the good and the bad. - Ulysses was a very horrible and self-centered man who was only concerned for himself (and his knowledge) and only viewed others as a means to an end to reach his goal. He showed his true colors when he gave his crew an inspiring speech that compelled them to sail the seas with him till the reached the beyond (the west - this means that they were sailing away from the light and away from God). He tempts his crew by describing this new world beyond the west as not constrained by divinity, but instead by free will. He also suggests that there is the opportunity to become more than human beyond the west. During this speech (which he is retelling to Dante) has three audiences: his crew, Dante and Virgil, and the readers of Dantes Inferno. In this way, Ulysses is replicating his earthly life by exhibiting his true power, the power of his words. Through his story, he is exhibiting control over his life and making himself immortal because now he will forever live in the words of Dantes Inferno (besides his own work the Odysee). This shows that word has power and can make us into more, into immortal figures like God. This is where the idea of words as 'double-edged sword' because as Dante describes Ulysses power of speech, words can be liberation from human contraints or it can be our ultimate destruction. - During Ulysses voyage, he described them as always turning left, which when thought of in terms of the circular globe, they would constantly be approaching purgatory and hell, which mortals are not supposed to do without divine intervention like in the case of Dante who is supposed to learn a lesson in hell. -Ulysses defies God by almost reaching the west and beyond human knowledge and almost creates his own fate/rewrites it. - The line 'a mere brute... we are simply human' as told by Ulysses tells us that humans are limited to their imagination and perception of reality, he says that if we limit ourselves to our vice and virtues then we are not living to our potential to be more like God, with the ultimate knowledge.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos XIII Suicides

-This canto brings to light the fallacies in the catholic religious system because the sin of the suicides can be perfected during the revelation and final judgment, which is based on the Catholic belief that the ultimate pain and justice can only be truly felt when the body and soul are connected, but the suicides will never be reconnected with their bodies instead their bodies are placed on their tree-like spiritual bodies. The suicides also show an error in the system because it is the human attempts to take control over our stories, which are supposed to be in Gods power, and through this we are taking the power from God and becoming more like God. - This canto shows how the punishment fits the crime by taking away the gift the suicides have trashed in Gods name. The sinners are carelessly cast into the second pouch in the seventh circle, which shows how they simply cast away their gift from God this also takes away their control that they tried so hard to gain by killing themselves. In addition, these sinners are turned into plant-like creatures, which makes them less than nature which they violated in life. This also takes away their control because now they have no control over their new bodies. Lastly, the Harpies constantly peak at their bodies, which correlates to the nagging voices that tell people to kill themselves. - Suicide is a violation of nature and therefore God (ex. Judas hanging himself) because it is a break in self-control and despair (a sin of the mind) this reflects a loss of faith in God and his plan. Dante is saying in this passage that faith is fundamental for humanity because it gives us a purpose and reason to thrive for perfection, which we attempt to do to get closer to God. - Suicide is dehumanizing because we see ourselves as caught in causality which according to Dante is predesigned. This reflects the harsh reality that humanity isn't perfect, which reflects how God isn't perfect and neither is his system. -Suicide is so serious because it causes a ripple affect and affects people all around us. - Suicide is a proclamation that the system isn't perfect and is a rebellion of the self, attempt to write your own story, and violation of nature.

Why is art wrong according to Dante's Inferno?

1) Art creates monsters in the eyes of God because we are creating false life. This makes it seem like we are playing God because we assume and act like these images are alive when only God can create living creatures. 2) Art creates false images of God because what we create if a reflection of us and therefore a reflection of God. In this sense, we are defiling the image of god with our creations.

What scene in Dante's Inferno show art is dangerous to humanity and the system?

1) Francesca and Paolo 2) The Suicides 3) Ulysses

The Garden of Forking Paths: Circumstances of Deja vu.

1) Our lives are problematic; it is very possible to be in similar situations that would cause this feeling of deja vu. Even if they are event of different events because we aren't particular to remembering specific details of events. 2) Our lives are circular with patterns (crystalline structures- uniform design) and we have learned to look and focus on these patterns, but this path is always forking creating new paths.

What are considered the two necessary parts of a garden?

1) a wall 2) space

The Garden of Forking Paths: Levels of the Story

1) garden- the phyiscal garden he walks through to get the Albert's house 2) book within a book- the historical text about World War I by Liddell Hart (with forking paths of racial degradation), the narrative of the spy, and the physical book of forking paths by the ancestor 3) labyrinth- describes how he can be in two places at once (in the book written by the ancestor and describe by Albert)

What two points make up the theological view?

1) the dominant worldview of the time 2) (what) defies the nature of the worldview

Who wrote Notes from Underground?

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Who wrote The Garden of Forking Paths?

Jorge Luis Borges

Who wrote 'To Spirng in Wu-ing?'

Li Ch'ing-chao

"From that moment on, I felt about me within my dark body an invisible, intangible swarming. Not the swarming of the divergent, parallel and finally coalescent armies, but a more inaccessible, more intimate agitation that they in some manner prefigured."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that describes how the forking paths of the labyrinths are in all of us and it is real to us because it influences our choices and future.

"Once again I felt the swarming sensation of which I have spoken. It seemed to me that the humid garden that surrounded the house was infinitely saturated with invisible persons. Those persons were Albert and I, secret, busy and multiform in other dimensions of time. I raised my eyes and the tenuous nightmare dissolved. In the yellow and black garden there was only one man; but this man was as strong as a statues... this man was approaching and he was Captain Richard Madden. The future already exists. I replied, but I am your friend. Could I see the letter again?"

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that is a riddle of what will happen next. That in this form of reality, Albert and him were connected and there is only one possible future for this reality.

"I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, I have corrected the errors that the negligence of the copyists has introduced, I have guessed the plan of this chaos, I have re-established--I believe I have re-established--the primordial organization. I have translated the entire work: it is clear to me that not once does he employ the word 'time.' The explanation is obvious: The Graden of Forking Paths is an incomplete, but not false, image of the universe as Ts'ui Pen conceived it. In contrast to Newton and Schopenhauer, your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in a infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that questions (1) the mistakes and our perceptions of mistakes, (2) contradicts planned chaos, (3) the riddle of time that is limited to our understanding of time but with no limits, (4) states that all possibilities are endlessly neither good nor evil but full of potential, (5) infinite player in the possibilities, and (6) his concept about not changing this reality because he thinks he can't or doesn't want to change what will happen or see what will happen.

"A labyrinth of symbols...and invisible labyrinth of time"

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that shows that language is a system of symbols and therefore language is a labyrinth itself.

"From this broken state...A lamp enlightened the platform but the faces of the boys were in shadow. One questioned me, "Are you going to Dr. Stephen Albert....if you take the road to the left and at every crossroad turn left..." descended a few stone steps and started down the solitary road. It went downhill, slowly. It was of elemental earth; overhead the branches were tangled; the low, full moon seemed to accompany me."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that shows the nature of always turning left being associated with wrongness and down (the illusion to hell in Dante's Inferno). This suggests always turning inwards (toward the human desires- in this case, it is his pride and shame) and suggests he might have been here before.

"Beneath English trees I meditated in that lost maze: I imagined it inviolate and perfect at the secret crest of a mountain; I imagined it erased by rice fields or beneath the water; I imagined it infinite, no longer composed of octagonal kiosks and returning paths, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms... I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and future and in some way the stars."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that shows the possibilities of labyrinths that can be imagined, a labyrinth of labyrinths. This also might suggest a fourth dimension at play within labyrinths.

"I did it because I sensed that the Chief somehow feared people of my race-for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me. I wanted to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths that shows the racial motivation (as well as the personal motivation-the shame of the ancestor) that pushed the man to become such a devoted spy.

"For an instant,...renounced worldly power in order to write a novel that might be even more populous than the Hung Lu Meng and to construct a labyrinth in which all men would become lost..."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths this shows the significance of the shame brought on by his ancestor who wrote the book.

"The rest is unreal... The Chief had deciphered this mystery. He knew my problem was to indicate (through the uproar of the war) the city called Albert, and that I found no other means to do so than to kill a man of that name. he does not know (no one can know) my innumerable contribution and weariness."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths which shows how similar he is to his ancestor because they both initially sacrifice themselves for some cause. This also shows that there might have been other possibilities had the reality been different it also shows that the nature of a choice should be based on the consequences. This also suggests we are aware of the multidude of choices and possibilities but we are limited to a narrow category of choice, but how much choices we really have- there is no true answer.

"The damp path zigzagged like those of m childhood. We came to a library of Eastern and Western books. I recognized bound in yellow silk several volumes of the Lost Encyclopedia, edited by the Third Emperor of the Luminous Dynasty but never printed. The record on the phonograph revolved next to a bronze phoenix. I also record a famille rose vase and another, many centuries older, of that shade of blue which our craftsmen copied from the potters of Persia..."

Quote from The Garden of Forking Paths. The story of the labyrinth.

"But then I fear those little boats of Double Creek won't budge if they are made to bear this much melancholy."

Quote from the poem that correlates melancholy to the consequences of indentity, saying the SELF or I is dangerous and isolation from everything is the consequence of indentity.

"Yet I've heard it said that at Double Creek the spring is lovely still, and I think I'll go boating there."

Quote from the poem that describes spring contradictory to what is actually is a time for growth and prosperity, but instead says it is lovely still which illudes to it as a slowing down or decay (like winter). It also illudes to the possibility that Double Creek is wrong to because spring is lovely still this is a definace to the system and to society because she is trying to be more than just a cog in the wheel of life, but to idenitify herself as an individual as a SELF.

"Everything in the world is right; I am wrong; all that will happen is done; before I can say it, tears come."

Quote from the poem that makes the most claim about identity and the SELF. In this section, the author says she is wrong and not apart of society but by simply saying this it gives her power to become herSELF. This is because it is a definance of what is considered right. This also questions the idea of a deterministic world-view and preset destinies, but she challenges this view by claiming power in her wrongness and becoming an I (and accepting the consequence of indentity).

"The wind dies down, the fagrance in dirt, the flowers now are gone; late afternoon, too weary to comb my hair."

Quote from the poem that set the scene of the poem (afternoon- light is dwendling and so is everything else i.e. the flowers) and shows the winding down of time, the symbolism of death in dirt, fagrance of flowers in dirt, and the suggestion that death is not a complete ending because something is always left behind (in this case it is a fagrance). This also tells the audience that the author has lost all motivation to do anything even comb her hair.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos VIII City of Dis

The City of Dis is the city of wrongness because everyone there goes against the logic of eternal good.

Poem: Overall theme

The questioning of the system and society. Showcases the WRONGNESS in human nature to go against rules (in this case natural rules) or fate but instead wanting to change the rules or fates. This is an example of the questions of deterministic view of the world, where you think your choices have no meaning and you are not responsible for your 'choices' because they are explained by nature or rules. The author explains this theme through separating herself from society and nature and through contradictions between what is being said and what is being felt.

Dante's Inferno: Cantos II Virgils telling of why he came to help Dante and how he was told by three heavenly figures Dante was important and needed help and guidance.

This cantos is expanding on Dantes challenge of the Catholic system by symbolizing Beatrice as Dante's guiding light, which is contradictory to catholic teachings that women are unholy and therefore less than men (goes back to the original sin). This passage describes further describes how Dante is on the wrong path through the questioning of his faith, the Catholic religious systems, etc.

What is the significance of theology or specifically the post-theological age?

This is the era the man from the Underground is living in. In an era that has moved past religious views and focus on more political and social problems through the scientific view (natural laws, science, and mathematics). The man states that this new age calls for a reimagicnation of the religious time/era.

The Garden on Forking Paths: Overall theme

This poem changes our perceptions of time and space (reality) through the overlapping of spaces and time (different paths, and two kinds of space; the wall and field). This poem describes how the smallest past decisions can and do affect the future (bad ancestor causes the man's unnatural sense of purpose. which causes him to kill the historian.