NURS 6550 Role of Death and Purgatory

Role of Death and Purgatory as Depicted in Dante and Shakespeare’s Texts Death, they say, is the only visitor that no one ever wishes to host. Despite being unwanted and unwelcomed by everyone, we live with it as well as the fear of facing it. Death as a phenomenon has existed as long as humans came to existence. Both religious and nonreligious individuals believe and ideate death. Everyone understands that dying is an unavoidable eventuality for mankind. Therefore, death is universally accepted as the ultimate stage of human lives. However, the concept of purgatory as a phase of the afterlife is only famous in Christianity, especially among the Roman Catholics. This essay analyzes the role death and purgatory play in literature as portrayed in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, a part of his poem The Divine Comedy and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While Dante and Shakespeare are different individuals with different styles of w