The Inferno opens with Dante’s persona finding himself in a wood, symbolic of the path of worldliness, during Easter Season, at the time near the Spring Equinox, a time symbolic of rebirth. The sun rises over a mountain, but before he can ascend, Dante is stopped by the beasts of worldliness and sin. Dante feels defeated until he is found by the poet Virgil, symbolic of human reason, who offers to guide him through Hell in order to climb to the pinnacle of the mount of joy. As the poets descend, Virgil recounts the message which Beatrice, who symbolizes divine love, brings to Virgil in his limbo in Hell. This symbol represents the power of the divine to allow human reason to bring man to recognize his sin and turn from error. The men now
