Examples Of Justice In Dante's Inferno

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God’s Justice In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is forced to make a journey through Hell in order to save his soul and while he comes out with desires to never come back, he has no further comprehension of God’s justice which rules Hell. The journey begins when Beatrice, an angel in heaven, sent the soul of Vergil to guide Dante to do “whatever need be for his good/ and soul’s salvation” (II, 68-69). Vergil decides to show Dante Hell, and concentrates on revealing God’s justice to him as he believes that if Dante could understand this concept, it would drastically change his destiny. Vergil starts by introducing the beginning of Hell as the place where “Divine Justice transforms and spurs” the souls forward (III, 122). Here Vergil presents God’s …show more content…

He then warns Dante not to show compassion to anyone because to do so would be going directly against God. However after hearing only one sinner’s story in circle 2, Dante not only has compassion for her, but he even faints from the amount of pity he feels. As the descent continues, Dante’s responses change. Sometimes he shows less pity, but his attitude is based on the feelings he had towards those particular people during life or his feelings toward particular sins, not on his understanding of justice. In circle 7 round 3, where the violent against nature reside, Dante is again gripped with compassion when he sees men that he perceived in life to be good being eternally punished. A little later in circle 8 bolgia 3, he flat out insults Pope Nicholas III with no trace of pity for his sin of selling church offices because of his predetermined notion of this particular sin being evil. Even this far into his journey, Dante is basing his reactions and judgements off of his worldly and fixed idea of sins and justice instead of God’s, where every sin, no matter how insignificant, must be

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