Bhagavad-Gita And Dante Alighieri's Inferno Final Analysis

The Bhagavad-Gita and Dante Alighieri’s Inferno both present the complexity of the human moral code. The Bhagavad-Gita presents the hypocrisy of enforcing punishments for sin, as the same act can either be met with honor or damnation. Inferno provides the reader with a ranking-like insight into Hell and the levels of punishment for different categories of sinners, revealing that the harshest punishments are not necessarily given to the most severe sins. Sin has too transient of a definition too be met with such a brutal punishment; humans simply cannot be expected to perfectly understand the morality of God. The concept of spending eternity in Hell is a cruel and inappropriate form of retribution for sinning because the definition of sin is

God creates Hell in order to impose justice on those who sin or go against his will: as the gate states, “JUSTICE IT WAS THAT MOVED MY GREAT CREATOR; / DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME, / AND HIGHEST WISDOM JOINED WITH PRIMAL LOVE,” (III. 4-6). The reader, however, is able to disregard this belief quickly after entering Hell; there is no justice being achieved. Dante further supports the claim that damnation to Hell is an unjust punishment by providing examples of numerous characters who do not deserve to be there. Directly before entering the First Circle of Hell reside the souls who are not even sinners, but just those in a purgatorial state who did not live for good or evil during their lifetimes. Dante observes their torment, seeing the souls “stung and stung again/ by the hornets and the wasps that circled them / and made their faces run with blood in streaks;/ their blood, mixed with their tears, dripped to their feet, / and disgusting maggots collected in the pus,” (III. 65-69). Dante’s vivid description of the gruesome degradation of the people stuck in Hell directly attacks the idea that God created Hell with justice in mind; no justice can be found in brutally punishing those who did nothing to deserve it. Dante then enters the First Circle of Hell, which brings Dante overwhelming grief when he sees his poetic idols stuck in Hell. The sight of these poets is explained by Virgil, who says:

Now you should know before we go on farther, / they have not sinned. But their great worth alone / was not enough, for they did not know Baptism, / which is the gateway to the faith you follow, / if they came before the birth of Christ, / they did not worship God the way one should.” (IV.