Examples Of Justice In Dante's Inferno

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

justice as the ultimately good and right power that sends souls into their correct destiny, as determined by their choices on earth, in eternity. As the pair moves on to the circle where Vergil now lives, Vergil expresses to Dante that he regrets ending up there, but he still accepts the fact and readily admits that, according to justice, that is where he belongs. He hopes to impart this same understanding to Dante by the end of Hell.
As they begin to watch and interact with the various sinners, Vergil reiterates the fact that each soul is placed in their particular circles according to the choices they made in life.

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

punished.
However, as Dante represents the human soul, his sense of compassion cannot be the only gauge for his understanding of justice since compassion is an innate sense of the soul that cannot always be repressed. Nevertheless, if Dante really understood the concept of God’s justice in the book, he would understand that if he did not change his ways that led him “astray/ from the straight road”, he would also be punished justly (I, 1-2). Yet there is no place in his journey where Dante comes to this conclusion and no place where he becomes aware of his sins or tries to change his ways. Instead, he goes through Hell passively, merely seeing every punishment and watching tortured sinners but never applying Vergil’s wisdom to his life. Clearly, he does not wish to end up in any of the situations that he witnessed, but he makes no change to prevent it, but simply leaves Hell, perhaps just hoping he will never end up there again. Between showing compassion to sinners based on his impressions of sin and sinners and making no change to his own life, it is clear that even Vergil’s wise words have no impact on Dante’s comprehension of the way God’s justice works.