Post V  Dante's  Divine Comedy  (Inferno) - Hell  Experiences of those GREEDY for material things.

In this "circle of hell" Dante describes experiences through his role as a "Pilgrim" what individuals suffer if when on Earth they were drawn to "get and spend" or being careless and wasteful about use of material wealth.

Individuals with these tendencies were made to undergo being forced to roll uphill great weights and lumps of matter in extremely heavy bags, containing coins.

This is shown graphically in an illustration by Gustave Dore entitled The Avaricious and Prodigal. Enter these details into the Net for this illustration. See the gestures of the individuals, referred to as shades, depicting their bodily strain of heaving and pushing the weighty bags upwards - without success. There are round objects on the floor symbolising coins. The whole gesture of this illustration can be felt as entrapment in greed and wastefulness.

The following lines - 58-66 from Canto 7 of Inferno, translated by Mark Musa, represent the plight of these people:


It was squandering and hoarding that have robbed them

     of the lovely world, and got them in this brawl:

     I will not waste choice words describing it!

You see, my son, the short-lived mockery

     of all the wealth that is in Fortune's keep,

     over which the human race is bickering;

for all the gold that is or ever was

     beneath the moon won't buy a moment's rest

     for even one among these weary souls."


The final three lines describes the plight of many today.

Consciously formed speech sounds for the vowels O and U in key words within the last three lines support well presentation of the image of this dilemma.

The O of "gold" helps question the value of this metal, to the soul. The deeper (questioning) sounds of U from the the two O's in the word "moon" followed by staccato O sounds in the words "won't" and "moment's" lead very effectively towards the fundamental meaning provided through these final lines epitomised in the combined vowel sounds of OU in the final word - "souls."