Lit Review

The argument that people do not have the power to change their identity and that significant events alter identity has not changed from Dante’s era to Tolstoy’s, because the control has ultimatelybeen out of their hands due to divine will, tragic events, and irrational decisions.
In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is led through hell and given a rare chance to witness the consequence of sin throughpain and suffering, and he even sees Lucifer himself in the deepest part of hell. Through this journey, Dante’s identity and ignorance of punishment is challenged by the will of God and is out of hiscontrol. This quote is taken from Cantos V:
Do not attempt to block his fated path:
Our passage has been willed above, where One
Can do what He has willed; and ask no more. (Dante 41)
This sceneoccurs when they encounter Minos judging the souls and placing them in the appropriate rings of hell. Dante’s guide tells Minos not to block Dante’s path because his journey has been willed by God andno can interfere. Since Dante’s journey into hell has been willed by God, his ability to alter his own identity from this experience has been put in the hands of God and not his own. Thus any possiblealteration of identity in Dante was God’s purpose for this journey of divine will.
While the control in Dante’s Inferno was left to divine will, Shakespeare’s Hamlet found the power of alteringone’s identity was in a significant tragic event of Hamlet’s father’s murder. The event affected Hamlet so much that his identity was changed from a sane, well upheld person to a mad and regretful beingthat some did not recognize as the Hamlet they once knew. The event was out of the control of Hamlet, and the effects of it altered his perceived identity. Ophelia is the one who gets the brutal impactof the effects of the murder of Hamlet’s father. She also gives us an example of how people now view him as compared to his usual identity:
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The...