Analysis of Dante's Inferno

He has finally understood how to hate sin. Dante has come far. From bouts of pity to disgraceful insults, he realizes the way to act in the face of sin. The sinners deserve no mercy, just more torture. This philosophy is what Dante needed through his journey of Hell to get closer to his faith.

The justice that exists there consists of eternal punishments handed down by God. God sentences the unrepented to different circles of hell due to the severity of the sin they committed. God also correlates the punishments of each sinner to the individual sin. Man can see justice in the punishments of each crime and one can see that Dante portrays an image of a just God because the image Dante presents represents the essence of true justice. Dante’s definition of justice is fascinating because it incorporates many aspects of Philosophy and Catholicism.

The ninth and final circle of Hell is those of betrayal. Betrayal of family, country, guests, and worst of all benefactors. After Dante goes through the circles of Hell and understands the punishment for the different types of sin, he wants to live a life more virtuous and repent in order to get to Heaven. The contrapasso or God’s perfect justice is used for offenders to relive their sins they chose over serving God. Dante relates to the reader because he too chose sin over God, but finds redemption as the poem suggests the reader can also.

Virgil’s guidance will provide contrast and the necessary guidance to reach Paradise. The change of character Dante experience, is dreadful; pity and remorse must be exempted to honor retribution for the sinners’ defiance against God. All the answers regarding Hell, lies upon meeting the primal sinner, Lucifer, the Fallen Angel. Dante’s journey unfolds a critical analysis in which portrays the human struggle in every individual. There are several implications of the four functions of myth that can be derived from Dante’s Inferno.

The penalty in the medieval era for heresy was often public humiliation or to burn to death. For Dante, to be a heretic was to follow one’s own opinion and not the beliefs of the Christian Church. Dante’s punishment for the “arch heretics and those who followed them” was that they be “ensepulchered” and to have some tombs “heated more, some less.”  Since the archheretics believed that everything died with the body and that there was no soul, Dante not only punishes them with the hot and crowded tombs, but he punishes them with their beliefs and lets them feel what it is like to die. This punishment by Dante is one in which he was more focused on inflicting a physical pain rather than a mental one. Although he uses various tor... ... middle of paper ... ...h the two types of punishments that Dante has used, he has clearly illustrated how horrible Hell truly is.

He was a pious man whose own experiences in a corrupt society shaped his writing style and the symbolism he included in his stories. There are graphic details of each circle of hell by describing the appropriate judgement of each sin. In essence, the condemned are those who ignored with God’s laws and eluded His spirit. He describes the different realms of Hell and always descripts the emotions he is feeling in order for the reader to understand the severity of what he has witnessed. The comedy is supposed to symbolize the world we reside in; and Dante’s journey into the afterlife evaluates the human struggles when confronted with sin whether they conquer or succumb to it.

Dante begins The Inferno by embarking on a journey to Hell with his poet guide, Virgil. Along the voyage, the reader gets a taste of the gruesome imagery and depictions of the punishments for the different levels of sinner. Throughout this journey Dante encounters many sinners whom he knew or knew of in the real world, and in the beginning the sinners wanted their name to be spread in the world when Dante got out of Hell. But, as Dante explored further and further into the underworld, the sinners got less and less enthusiastic about themselves, which eventually turned into outright shame among the sinners in the lower depths of hell. Dante uses over the top examples of punishments for sins committed and the differing levels of shame the sinners feel to cause the reader to reevaluate his or her own life in the context of religious wrongdoings.

Dante uses contrapasso, the Aristotelian theory that states a soul’s form of suffering in Hell contrasts or extends their sins in their life on earth, to ensure that the sinners never forget their crimes against God. Even though some of the punishments the sinners in Hell seem arbitrary, they are fitting because contrapasso forces each sinner to re-live the most horrible aspect of their sin to ensure they never forget their crimes against God. As Dante and Virgil, Dante’s guide through Hell, approach the Gate of Hell, Dante reads the inscription above the gates: “Through me the way to the suffering city, through me the way to the eternal pain, through me the way that runs among the lost. Justice urged on my high artificer; my maker was divine authority, the highest wisdom and the primal love. Before me nothing but eternal things were made, and I endure eternally.

Interpretation of God and Satan in Paradise Lost In John Milton's Paradise Lost, he tells of Satan's banishment from Heaven. He and his brigade have plotted war against God and are now doomed to billow in the fiery pits of hell. Satan is a complex character with many meaningful qualities. The relationship between Satan's qualities and Hell's atmosphere tell the reader more about why they seem to go hand in hand. Without Satan's features and Hell's tormenting aspects, the place would not be all it is.

The two travel through hell in hopes of reaching Heaven. While Dante walks as a bystander in the terrors of hell, he begins to commit sins himself, although towards the sinners which he encounters he still is admitted into heaven. While Dante occasionally sins throughout his journey, he usually meets the sinners with compassion and pity, but Virgil meets them with the opposite and views them in disgust. While they may treat them any way they want, the one which causes them the most torment is God, which Dante himself views cruel at times.These incongruities and travesties, bring the morality of the Catholic system of condemnation into question. Dante eventually makes it out of hell and travels to heaven, but he really was not deserving of it seeing as he committed multiple sins along the way.