Ontology: AP Literature and Composition

    Ontology is the philosophical study of natural characteristics in the world. Humans use ontology in order to form the basis of what we believe things may be in our world; it helps us learn and understand our realm.

In Dante's Inferno, he providers readers with a story about the circles of hell and what is in them. What I've noticed is that he never really describes how the beings in his piece look which goes back to ontology. How we have been raised and how we have learned to associate words and descriptions to piece together our conceptualizations on things leads to how we interpret and visualize information given to us. While Dante doesn't really give descriptions, we as readers take the information given to us and conceptualize in our minds. We as readers envision the character descriptions however we have previously learned to or we incorporate given information which will form judgments for the future, just as we would when envisioning Minos in the story. This is where they begin to exist.

There Minos stands,
Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all	5
Who enter, strict examining the crimes,
Gives sentence, and dismisses them beneath,
According as he foldeth him around:
For when before him comes the ill-fated soul,
It all confesses; and that judge severe	10
Of sins, considering what place in Hell
Suits the transgression, with his tail so oft
Himself encircles, as degrees beneath
He dooms it to descend.

In The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare, readers face many descriptions of all different mythological creatures and demons. From descriptions, the beings begin to exist in our minds. While stories create an existence in our minds, many movies are made each year based on them. Past stories or movies might have created an idea of how a vampire or demon look, every time we see a different idea of how one might look, we stamp it into our brain. Movies bring every reader's envisions into actual existence in our world where we have to then aquire those learned associations which continuously shapes future ideas of existence in our minds.



 "Everything you've heard... about monsters, about nightmares, legends whispered around campfires. All the stories are true."- The Mortal Instruments