In Dante’s Inferno, we followed Dante as he narrates his decent and observations of hell. A wonderful part of that depiction is his descriptions of the creative yet cruel punishments that each of the different sinners receive. This story is an integral part of literary history, and even if I were to have the imagination and ability of Dante Alighieri, I don’t believe I would change this tried and true version known universally.
Since I have the desire to maintain the validity of Dante’s version of hell in its entirety, I will explain the parts I found most intriguing, and why.
His use of incredible and descript wording was impressive. Dante narrates the vile stench in which groups of men were chained to the hard floors, and the dim lighting to describe the overall atmosphere in The Inferno.
The punishments were by far the most interesting to me. Dante describes several that are medieval in nature. The first type is from the medieval culture and is gruesome and cruel forms of torture. The second type, is Dante’s creative and incredibly imaginative punishment for sins. Torturous types of punishments create a physical and bodily pain for the sinners. The creative punishments are used to inflict a mental and psychological pain and meant to be understood in a metaphorical way of thinking. However, it is possible for the creative punishments to inflict both a mental and physical pain upon the sinner (Cantor).
Since a medieval approach was taken to inflict the punishments, prisons where the prisoners were forced to freeze in the winters and roast in the summers by providing them with little ventilation or protection from the cold (Cantor). This theme of unbearable extremes of temperature is also used througho...
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...wis). I’m certain that the crime rates in the United States or anywhere, for that matter, would dramatically decrease if that were the case in modern day.
Not only is The Inferno full of originality, but I enjoyed the journey that Dante takes his reader on. I was assigned to read this story when I was in high school, and I was nowhere near capable of comprehending its impact. It is full of physical and mental ideas and it is also a dynamic read that caused me to dig deeper within my own mind to completely understand. That is another reason, I am leaving Dante’s version of Hell, to him.
Works Cited
1. Dante Alighieri, The Inferno, trans. Allen Mandelbaum Bantam Books, New York; 1980
2. Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages Harper Collins Publishers; 1993
3. Carol Swain Lewis, PhD. Dante's Inferno Study Guide. Carol Swain Lewis, PhD. Print.
On the other hand, the punishments that are borrowed from medieval torture techniques and imprisonment inflicts a physical and bodily pain upon the sufferer that is supposed to be taken literally. In the Medieval Era, their prisons were more like dungeons in the way that they were usually dark rooms with naked and ragged men that were chained to the stone floors. These prisoners were not allowed to move so they had to live in their own excrements, blood, and vomit which ended up filling the room with an odor that was so pungent it could have been a form of torture within itself. Dante used this idea of darkness and awful smells throughout the Inferno as the overall atmosphere of Hell. Also, the idea of the fiery and icy environments that Dante incorporates comes from the medieval prisons where the room would get so hot the prisoners would feel like they were on fire, and during the winter it would be extremely frigid. These ideas of extreme temperatures and darkness are only a few of the torture devices that Dante uses throughout his novel.
Torments among the sinners are established by Dante Poet who is hungry for fame and ruthless to the inhabitants of Hell. Dante Pilgrim is a caring, yet a reasonable man who craves knowledge from the sinners. Dante Poet’s ability to inflict any punishment he sees fit on any sinner allows him to evoke specific responses out of Dante Pilgrim. Therefore, Dante Pilgrim perceives the lessons he learns to be valuable; but Dante Poet is over exaggerating both the wrath of God and validity of punishments taking place in Hell. Although Dante Pilgrim is learning, he is learning at the will of Dante Poet and not God.
Through his architectural work, Palanti expresses a unique/particular style; his work exhibits an “inclination toward heavy ornamentation and a deft handling of mass and proportions” (Neumann 142). By a small twisting of definitions, this description can easily apply to Dante’s writing style. One must only look to the elaborate, meticulously wrought world of the Inferno to see that Dante is a master architect in his own right. He builds his vision of hell so scrupulously and so inventively that it not only persists, but continues to inspire so many years after its construction. Alice K. Turner credits Dante’s “architectural ingenuity” with the Inferno’s lasting popularity (33). His construction of Hell is a “direct inversion” of the Ptolemaic universe model, in which nine spheres orbit the earth in concentric circles (Turner 135). Rather than descending outward toward the Heavens, Dante’s nine circles of Hell funnel inward toward the center of the earth. Each circle is lower and smaller in circumference than the last, resembling “amphitheater bleachers,” according to Hilger. The landscape variations run the gambit from open green fields, to swamplands, to scorching desert, to forest, and more (Turner 133). The rich manufactured scenery of Hell includes “underground embankments, moats, castles, [and] paved trenches;” Dante’s attention to detail
Dante’s concept of sin and punishment conflicts with the modern American idea of morality. Not only sequence and grouping but also the punishments of sin in the original Circle of Hell are much different of that in a modern American version.
One of the first punishments we observe comes from the fifth circle of Dante’s hell, the wrathful and the sullen, as the author expresses his thoughts of the fitting consequence with each sin. This portion of the text begins in the seventh canto and in it the punishment of those who lived in wrath are discussed, when Dante and Virgil first enter the circle they see a marsh containing people who endlessly beat upon each other the idea being that because they lived their lives in wrath they will live out their eternity with pure hatred for any soul they may encounter. Also addressed in this circle is the punishment for those who lived their life in a sullen manner, ignoring the goodness that the world around them contained. “‘Sullen were we in the air made sweet by the sun; in the glory or his shinning our hearts poured a bitter smoke. Sullen we begun; sullen we lie forever i...
Both works take the readers into the minds of their authors where each author gives their interpretation of hell. Dante's and Jean Paul Sartre's works both have similar aspects of setting that are expressed in similar styles. Through symbolism, representation, and finite physical details each author establishesirony, yet also reinforces his theme. When Dante wrote The Inferno his mind thrived on the different levels of interpretation; likewise, Jean Paul Sartre's mind thrived on this, and he patterned No Exit after Dante's work.
...ards monstrous figures and sympathy towards those who seem to be tortured unjustly. In his perverse education, with instruction from Virgil and the shades, Dante learns to replace mercy with brutality, because sympathy in Hell condones sin and denies divine justice. The ancient philosopher Plato, present in the first level of Hell, argues in The Allegory of the Cave that truth is possible via knowledge of the Form of the Good. Similarly, Dante acquires truth through a gradual understanding of contrapasso and the recognition of divine justice in the afterlife. Ultimately, Dante recognizes that the actions of the earthly fresh are important because the soul lives on afterwards to face the ramifications. By expressing his ideas on morality and righteousness, Dante writes a work worth reading, immortalizes his name, and exalts the beliefs of his Christian audience.
Dante Alighieri presents a vivid and awakening view of the depths of Hell in the first book of his Divine Comedy, the Inferno. The reader is allowed to contemplate the state of his own soul as Dante "visits" and views the state of the souls of those eternally assigned to Hell's hallows. While any one of the cantos written in Inferno will offer an excellent description of the suffering and justice of hell, Canto V offers a poignant view of the assignment of punishment based on the committed sin. Through this close reading, we will examine three distinct areas of Dante's hell: the geography and punishment the sinner is restricted to, the character of the sinner, and the "fairness" or justice of the punishment in relation to the sin. Dante's Inferno is an ordered and descriptive journey that allows the reader the chance to see his own shortcomings in the sinners presented in the text.
This notion of the suitability of God’s punishments figures significantly in the structure of Dante’s Hell. To readers, as well as Dante himself (the character), the torments Dante and Virgil behold seem surprisingly harsh, possibly harsher than is fair, Dante exclaims this with surprise. He doesn’t actually wonder who decided on these tortures. He knows it was god. What he is questioning is how these punishments are just, since they don’t appear to be just from a human’s point of view which views each punishment together with its conjugate sin only superficially. For example, homosexuals must endure an eternity of walking on hot sand, and those who charge interest on loans sit beneath a rain of fire. At first glance, each one seems too terrible for any sin. However, when the poem is viewed as a whole, it becomes clear that the guiding principle of these punishments is one of balance. Sinners suffer punishment to the degree befitting the gravity of their sin, in a manner matching that sin’s nature. The structures of the poem and of hell serve to reinforce this correspondence.
There is not a single, better example than contrapasso to show the literary and theological influences that Dante uses to write The Inferno. Dante makes the punishment fit the sin –sometimes the sinner gets exactly what they wanted [such as in the case of the lustful couple] or sometimes they get the exact opposite [as in the safe of those who never took a stand in life.] The idea of contrapasso teaches human-beings to keep consequences in mind before they perform certain actions. God has chosen the punishments for these sins and he does not make mistakes –these sinners get the punishment they deserve.
Dante’s The Divine Comedy illustrates one man’s quest for the knowledge of how to avoid the repercussions of his actions in life so that he may seek salvation in the afterlife. The Divine Comedy establishes a set of moral principles that one must live by in order to reach paradise. Dante presents these principles in Inferno, where each level of Hell has people suffering for the sins they committed during their life. As Dante gets deeper into Hell, the degrees of sin get progressively worse, as do the severity of punishment.
Seeing as this work was written by Dante, and the journey is taken by Dante, he has a unique opportunity to judge his fellow man and decide how they will be punished. He also gets to place his enemies in hell, forever besmirching their names for generations to remember. Perhaps unknowing to Dante, that is worse than any of the punishments that he placed his enemies in. The reality of The Inferno is unlikely and therefore these punishments are nothing but a fictiona...
Hell-Dante-Hello My name is dante and I wrote a book called Dante’s Inferno I am here writing this today to tell you about my experience with hell. So if you have read my book you know that there is nine levels to hell which I all visited. When it comes to describing the levels of hell basically as you go down the worse the punishment gets. For example the worst level you can be on is level 9 which is with satan and it is freezing down there. Satan is eating frozen people on that level. Compared to level which is just nothingness. So I hoped this story helped you to get a better feel of what hell is like.
In the first bolgia of circle eight Dante describes one of the most provocative punishments, which is being beaten with lashes. The souls who reside here deceived women for their own advantage. Because of this they are stuck in a place where they have no advantage. Either way they turn they meet the same terrible fate. More provocative than lashes in The Inferno is being exposed to burning rain in the third round of the seventh circle of hell. In the third zone the usuers must sit under the fire rain with purses around their necks. These purses contain the family emblems that they stole while they were living. Burning constantly would be a terrible, painful punishment. In bolgia five of the eight circle yet another provocative punishment, being plunged into boiling pitch and tormented by black devils, is seen by Dante and Virgil. The demons take chunks out of their skin, much like the grafters too chunks of money from other people while they were alive. This punishment is appropriate when considering the sin, but the thought of enduring something so painful is what is what makes it provocative. After reading this poem it is obvious that it had an intended audience. Dante was trying to set people straight and put them on the right path. The fear of hell is a good way to do that because fear is what motivates people above all else. Dante was provocative at times, but it was only in order to reach his intended
Inferno, the first part of Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is the story of a man's journey through Hell and the observance of punishments incurred as a result of the committance of sin. In all cases the severity of the punishment, and the punishment itself, has a direct correlation to the sin committed. The punishments are fitting in that they are symbolic of the actual sin; in other words, "They got what they wanted." (Literature of the Western World, p.1409) According to Dante, Hell has two divisions: Upper Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of incontinence, and Lower Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of malice. The divisions of Hell are likewise split into levels corresponding to sin. Each of the levels and the divisions within levels 7,8, and 9 have an analogous historical or mythological figure used to illustrate and exemplify the sin.