Comparing Theme For English B And Dante Alighieri's Inferno
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We all have experienced a moment in our lives in which the status quo of our identity is comes into doubt. Whether by a loss of faith in ourselves, our beliefs, or in the world that surrounds us, we have all fallen into a state of disconnection to the person we once were. This is a journey into the state of error, a journey of to find a new sense of self. The journey to seek a new sense of self is long and labyrinthine ordeal of self-reflection and self-discovery that results in a transformation of identity. In the poems Theme for English B by Langston Hughes and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, each author describes a pilgrimage of descent into introspection, an existential narrative into a state of error from which each character ascends with…show more content… Right about whom we are, where stand in the world and what it all means. We believe we are right about just everything all the time. Until we are no longer right. Sometimes the erosion of beliefs is slow and takes years, at other times it is quick and painful. However, in that moment of change, when we realize that we were wrong about what we knew and who we are, that is the state of error. We are right about something, up until we are wrong. Because of error, we can amend our understanding of the world and ourselves. In the book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, author Kathryn Schultz describes the state of error as the mechanism of how we react to the collapse of our beliefs and convictions and the inevitable growth that comes from it. She described the process as the central experience of being wrong, when our past selves begin to disappear and the new the new self begins to awaken. (184) This is a moment that is crucial to our moral and intellectual development, also it is why we fear and detest being wrong. Nonetheless, this process is essential to aiding us to understand and move beyond the fear of change. Often we try to vault from the solid…show more content… This narrative chronicles the journey of a young African-American man attending an all-white English class at a college in 1950’s New York City where African-Americans are subjected to a considerable amount of discrimination. As he walks down the hill from the school into Harlem, the speaker falls into his abyss of error while contemplating what he should write. The instructor told his student that the writing should come within them, so that the work can bear a measure of truth. This sets the speaker’s mind to work about the nature of truth. Through Hughes’ prose, we can see the speaker questioning himself if truth is the same for a “colored” as it is for a white. As the speaker moves through the neighborhood, he questions his role in a society where one man has more freedom than another does. The state of error for Hughes’ speaker emerges as he struggles with the notion being an African-American, but that the white instructor and society are also influencing him. He wonders if the instructor can see who he truly or if he only sees the color of his skin. This is Hughes’ point “A”, the belief that there the separation between the two people goes beyond skin deep. However, as the speaker travels from the college to Harlem he is greeted with the sights and smells of a vibrant and diverse city. He realizes that