Week1-Paragraph(Second Draft)

R200603674 Eun-Jin Hyun The Gates of Hell              Unlike heaven, the concept about Hell is so little that the image is mostly connected to only fire and brimstones in a very vague way. Hell is a place of fear itself but does not give specific details of how the people or souls are tortured. Since I have no religion and very little belief of world after death, hell was also an imagination world for me with only red and black colored background. However, after seeing Auguste Rodin's sculpture "The Gates of Hell", I was distressed at the sight and it also changed my attitudes toward Hell. "The Gates of Hell" depicts a scene from Dante Alighieri's "The Inferno" representing a very clear vision how Hell would look like; a place where it is full of people suffering because of their sins. This bronze sculpture gate stands at 6.35m high, 4m wide and about 1m deep with two door panels and two panes surrounding the gate. It contains 186 human figures which are entangled with each other and have wretched faces on them which make me also frown as I observe them. Among them, there are several outstanding statues in "The Gates of Hell". On the very top of the gate, stand three sculptures, called the "The Three Shades,"which are 98cm high, posing downwards, heads bended and each of them have one of their arms stretched with their fist clenched. Although they are facing down, I could imagine that their face is full of grief.  Below them and right upon and the middle of the door panels, there is a statue which is sitting on a stone and looking down on other figures. This sculpture which is called "The Thinker" has its right elbow on its left knee and the hand holding his chin, while the other arm is just resting on the same leg. As if he is thinking about something, he is furrowing his brows with affliction. Beneath and behind of it, there are smaller figures on the door panels and on the panes surrounding the door. These figures are much smaller that the facial expressions are not clear, but their legs and arms are all twisted together and some of them are stretching their arms as if they are trying escape from the gate. Whenever I see a picture of "The Gates of Hell", I get an urgent felling that I have to pull out those people. "The Gates of Hell" does not demonstrate scary carvings, but conveys the idea of hell by expressing humans' pains and agony in its statues.