Juxtaposition In Dante's Inferno

Burning Up

(A Discussion of the Allegorical Significance of Dante’s Hell) Fire and brimstone, flames engulfing people, and the endless cries from the souls that are suffering are all things that are commonly associated with hell. It’s not thought of as some place of just punishment, but filled with pain and torment. The question raised is whether or not it is actually full of fire and heat, or is it something different. When we read about hell in Dante’s Inferno, he describes the place not only full of fire, but also of ice, wind, and rain. All of the elements sit on different levels that have been thoughtfully laid out by Dante himself. Carol Forman speaks of how Dante set up his hell, “Hell is structured around Dante’s concept of sin.

The first being that there was a certain construction to his hell. The shape, first and foremost, was with a cone. Being largest at the top and getting smaller and smaller as you went down. Of course, the farther you went down, the worse the sins. When taking into consideration how I would construct my own hell, I decided I would follow this same format. The people who committed the worst sins would sit in the bottom on hell, in like a pit. The people that committed sins that were the least offensive would be at the top of the cone, where it’s the widest. As far as the actual geography of hell, I don’t think I would follow Dante’s schemata exactly, although I would draw a couple ideas from it. One thing that I would keep the same is the fact that the punishment of the sinner would reflect the sin that he or she committed while on Earth. The thing that I would change would make hell a lot more personal. For example, the sin committed would deal with the person directly. What the person feared or dreaded the most would be the punishment inflicted upon them. Depending on the severity of the sin. For instance, someone simply lied, then the extent of their own fear wouldn’t be as severe as it would if they had killed

When reading Dante’s Inferno, you could see that the worst possible sin for him was betrayal, especially that of a master. He put the people that directly betrayed their masters in the very center of hell. These people were eaten alive by the devil. He had different opinions on what the ultimate sins committed were. When looking at how I would create my own hell, I to would put people in different levels of hell due to the sins they committed on Earth. First of all, I would give souls who weren’t baptized the chance to change that. There are several factors that come into play; maybe their parents didn’t believe in religion, or maybe they died before they got the chance to be baptized. Either way, I would allow souls who haven’t been baptized the opportunity to change. If they chose not to, then they would spend forever in Limbo. It’s difficult to say where I would put each and every sinner; there are several different aspects to take into consideration. The severity of the sin, what it planned out of simply out of rage, etc., but there is a certain category of people I would put in the bottom of hell. Here would reside the souls of all those who hurt children. There is something truly awful about these people. Kids have no way of really knowing just how bad the world is, and the people that hurt them make them grow up much too fast. They take away their innocence. There are even