“The devil is not as black as he is painted” (Alighieri), this statement especially holds to be true in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. According to Dante, Hell exists to reprimand sin, and the appropriateness of Hell’s punishments affirms God’s divine perfection that sin violates. Looking at Hell from Dante’s point of view, allows the readers to visualize the devil as a sinner not from Earth, who oversees God’s divine punishment of other unrepentant sinners from Earth. A perfect description of the devil comes from SparkNotes, who states, “The prince of Hell, also referred to as Dis. Lucifer resides at the bottom of the Ninth (and final) Circle of Hell, beneath the Earth’s surface, with his body jutting through the planet’s center. An enormous …show more content…
It can be assumed the punishment in Hell is a direct result of unrepentance before death on Earth, or in the words of Dante, “Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us; it is a gift” (Alighieri). Dante shows this concept in a few different ways. An example would be the lovers, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta who are condemned to the second circle of Hell due to an adulterous love affair that occurred after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. They felt they were not responsible for their lustful adulterous actions; it is obvious to conclude that if they do not feel they were at fault they did not repent before death. Another example would be Dante’s own progression from the dark forest through Hell to Earth where he gazes up at heaven’s stars. In this narrative poem, Dante represents a person who has sin but has gone through the process of repentance now making him Heaven bound, at least it can be presumed. The most obvious example would be Dante’s conversation with Guido da Montefeltro, an advisor to Pope Boniface VIII who was promised anticipatory absolution, about how he was damned to Hell because he failed to repent for his sins. Dante purposely included this conversation between him and Montefeltro, so the reader could see that unrepentance of sins before death is a serious issue that is the cause for a person’s descendent into Hell. …show more content…
According to SparkNotes, “Sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their sin, in a manner matching that sin’s nature” (SparkNotes). The physical construction of Hell looks like a gigantic funnel that leads to the very center of the Earth. According to Dante, this huge, gigantic hole in the Earth was made when God threw the devil out of Heaven with such force that he created a giant hole in the Earth. The devil was cast all the way to the very center of the Earth and has remained there ever since. Throughout Dante’s journey through Hell, the reader can continually see sinners being punished with this ironic punishment that symbolize their sins on Earth making the reader directly connect the sinner’s punishment with the sin committed. The lustful, the second circle canto five, are constantly blown by dark, stormy winds symbolizing their whirling desire of their licentious urges causing them to constantly be whirl about in Hell. The wrathful, circle five canto seven, constantly tear and mangle each other, symbolizing their anger and the pain they caused others in their lifetime that is now constantly inflicted on them in death. The slothful, circle five canto eight, exist beneath the slime of Styx, symbolizing their laziness on Earth leading them to permanently be lying idle in Hell. Those who murder, circle
Lucifer in other words knows as Satan had three faces, three sets of wings attached, each face had two eyes in which constantly shed tears, each mouth also chewed a sinner. To illustrate, in Canto 34 it states, “ When I beheld three faces on his head! The one in the front vermilion was, two were the others, that were joined with this above the middle part of either shoulder And They joined together as a crest” ( Pg. 47. line 36). Moving forward, Lucifer is the biggest sinner because he was once an angel and he was no longer that angel because he went behind Jesus back and perform acts that Jesus nor God would permit. To show, “ in Canto 34 it states, “ The creature who once had the beauteous semblance” (Pg. 47 Line 18). To explain, Lucifer is the angel who rebelled against
In most ancient literature some sort of divine justice is used to punish people's acts in life. This is that case with Dante's Inferno, where the Author categorizes hell in 9 circles. Circle 9 being the lowest sins and punishments as the circles decrease. From the time this was written to now in days many things have changed, and things are not seen the same no more. Back then sins like greed and gluttony were ranked as high sins but now people would probably rank those very low with other things like murder way on top. Yet the basic structure set by Dante remains.
Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno. Trans. Allen Mandelbaum. Notes Allen Mandelbaum and Gabriel Marruzzo. New York: Bantam Books, 1980
God states that we treat each other with the love he gives to us as individuals; while us stating violent acts against love, fraud constituting a corruption and, greed becoming normal thing amongst people defines everything god had envisioned for mankind. Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally states very little about them. Dante discusses with each of the souls in the different circles of hell although it is not truly stated as to why they are specifically in that circle. Only because God justifies there sin belonged there. In the end, it declares that evil is evil, simply because it contradicts God’s will and justification, and since God is God, he thus does not need to be questioned about his morals. Dante’s journey of evil progressed as he winded down the depths of hell pitiless and was driven to make it to purgatory. Inferno is not the normal text that most people would read, then think about how it relates to todays morals; its intention is not to think about the evil discussed but, rather to emphasize the Christian beliefs that Dante followed through his journey.
Everyone has a different perception of what really is heaven and hell and where people end up in the after life. Some people are not even religious and have their own personal thoughts about what is next after death. The Inferno or to be more precise “Hell” can be described and defined as a place where people end up after death in the natural world, when people have not followed God’s ways and laws of living. It is has been depicted throughout the years of time that suffering in hell is horrific, gruesome, and unimaginable. In Dante’s Inferno, Dante portrays the protagonist as he is guided by his ghostly friend Virgil the poet through the nine chambers of Hell. The transition from one circle to another is very shocking and graphic at what he witnesses through each circle. Dante uncovers where each sin will lead people to once the sinners souls face death. He faces many trials and tribulations through the beginning to end of the Inferno. Dante felt impelled to write the Inferno because he was going through his own personal struggles at the time. In a way he was extremely depressed because he was exiled out of Florence, and the love of his life Beatrice died. While Dante was in exile for so many years, it allowed him to write some of his most significant works of literature that people still read to this day.
He had meticulously described it to illuminate the Bible’s interpretation, especially for the degrees of sin. For instance, during his journey through Hell, he had traveled through nine rings, each containing different forms of sin. Within the rings, Dante had met individuals who were cast into Hell for adultery and heretical beliefs. However, Dante had not only described who he saw, but also the quality of their lives in Hell. D’Epiro states, “The poet’s most famous portrait of flawed grandeur is that of Ulysses, whose sins as a false counselor have caused him to be enveloped in flames like a human torch.” (99) Dante had wanted to put an emphasis on how perilous Hell was because of the time period’s grasp on religion in 1320.
In the Inferno we follow the journey of Dante as he wanders off the path of moral truth and into Hell. The Virgin Mary and Santa Lucia ask Beatrice, Dante’s deceased love, to send some help. Thus, Virgil comes to the rescue and essentially guides Dante through Hell and back to the mortal world from which he came. However, things begin to seem kind of odd. When reading the Inferno one may begin to question the way Dante describes Hell and the things that occur within, or even the things we have always believed about Hell. Despite the way it is described and well known in western civilization, Hell is not at all how we expect it to be because of Dante's use of irony throughout this poetic masterpiece.
...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.
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 paradiso. 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. With that in mind, one can look at Inferno as a handbook on what not to do during a lifetime in order to avoid Hell. In the book, Dante creates a moral lifestyle that one must follow in order to live a morally good, Catholic
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...
Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with many questions and thought provoking dialogue to interpret. These crossroads provide points of contemplation and thought. Dante’s graphic depiction of hell and its eternal punishment is filled with imagery and allegorical meanings. Examining one of these cruxes of why there is a rift in the pits of hell, can lead the reader to interpret why Dante used the language he did to relate the Idea of a Just and perfect punishment by God.
Brown, Sapphire M. "Referenes to Dantes Inferno." Humanities 360. 8 Jan. 2009. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
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.