Dante's Inferno And The Divine Comedy

Often, we cannot see the good until we have experienced the bad. Dante Alighieri, a poet who makes himself the main character in his Divine Comedy, finds himself lost in a dark wood at the start of The Inferno. Though he sees a safe path out of the wood towards an alluring light, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. As the ending of the pilgrim Dante’s voyage is bright and hopeful, Alighieri the poet aims to encourage even the most sinful Christians to hope for a successful end. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell in The Inferno to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation; his journey an allegory representing that of the repenting Christian soul.

742). Purgatory was contemplated to be a horrible place where souls were tortured until their families prayed for their soul. One-way Catholics helped someone’s soul in purgatory was by praying for forgiveness from God.

Dante Alighieri, on the other hand, takes separating the supernatural world from the physical world to great lengths. Simply the setting of the book in a place which does not physically exist anywhere on earth, but solely in a metaphysical plane, makes the reader aware that purgatory has nothing to do with earth. This differs greatly from the viewpoint of the Greeks and consequently the Romans where the gods resided in actual places the can be seen such as the `Milky Way' (Ovid, 6) or Olympus (Ovid, 7). Dante stresses that he and Virgil are `pilgrims' in Purgatory - their being in

Dante Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy from 1308-1320. The story narrates Dante’s pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven while guided by Virgil and Beatrice. Throughout this journey Dante conforms himself to virtue, properly orders his passions, and conforms his conscience, “Dante 's psychopoiesis operates through the mimetic deformation, reformation, and transformation of conscience” (Macready, 2). This essay will examine what a true conscience is according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and explore the nature of the conscience in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Additionally, this essay will examine the errors of Dante’s conscience regarding divine justice, love, and courage; and who contributes to this formation.

The setting and purpose of Purgatory alone is an example of redemption because Purgatory is “a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven.” Those souls who have sinned are actively trying to save their selves in order to get to heaven. Similarly, when Virgil and Dante reach the entrance to Purgatory a man named Cato requires Dante to “Go… see thou gird his waist/With smooth reed, and from his brow likewise/Cleanse all this filth with which it is defaced” (Dante The Divine Comedy II: Purgatory Canto III 94-96). This action is a symbol of redemption and how it is required to be clean from sin in order to be save or pass on. Once Dante was cleansed he and Virgil we able to start their journey towards

   In The Inferno, Dante explores the ideas of Good and Evil. He expands on the possibilities of life and death, and he makes clear that consequences follow actions. Like a small generator moving a small wheel, Dante uses a single character to move through the entire of Hell's eternity. Yet, like a clock, that small wheel is pivotal in turning many, many others. This single character, Dante himself, reveals the most important abstract meaning in himself: A message to man; a warning about mankind's destiny. Through his adventures, Dante is able to reveal many global concepts of good and evil in humanity.

 One of Dante’s most ingenious punishments are those for the avaricious and the prodigal. The avaricious sinners are those who were miserly on earth, and the prodigal were squanderers. Dante’s punishment for

The theme of equilibrium between reason and faith is one of the core messages of Inferno and it is essential in conveying the main idea of the Divine Comedy and of the pilgrim’s journey that the exploitation of intellect and the misuse of will is the cause of sin, and that through faith, those who are morally lost find their salvation in God. In Inferno Dante makes it clear that he greatly values knowledge and reason in a way that is more characteristic to the Renaissance rather than of his own Medieval time. However, throughout this first book, the author reminds the audience of the Christian nature of his poem as he uses the stories of the sinners he encounters to stress the idea that without faith, the intellect is not sufficient to achieve divine salvation and that the misuse of reason can often lead to terrible sins.

In the beginning of his epic, Inferno, Dante seems to have “abandoned the true path” (1.12). He is lost in a dark forest, which symbolizes not only Dante’s loss of morality, but all of humanity’s sins on Earth. The Dark Wood of Error is a foreshadowing of what the afterlife would be like for Dante without God and without any meaning. Dante appears to be suffering through a mid-life crisis as he flirts with the idea of death, saying, “so bitter–death is hardly more severe” (1.7). Dante has lost his dignity and moral direction following his exile from Florence. Dante must travel through Hell and witness the worst crimes ever committed by humans. By traveling through the depths of Satan’s world, Dante is given an opportunity to reconnect with Christianity. Many people claim that Dante journeys through Hell for revenge, but in fact he is hoping to reset his own moral compass and find God.

Imagine yourself, finished in this world and ready to go into the internal life. How do you think God will judge you? Were you someone generous, humility, loving, gentle, active, temperance, or Chasity? Do you believe that God would be proud in every single thing you have down on this earth? Well, for the most part, no everyone is Jesus and have all of those qualities. That is why Dante have written the world of Purgatory. Purgatory is a place after earth is a transformation process that helps every saved soul to perfect themselves for God. Through this process of transformation in Purgatory, a soul must accept, forgive, and learn from their sin in order to be in Heaven.

Dante had his fair share of the real human experience, whilst traveling through hell in Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy”. Characters in literature have been popularized since this masterpiece to favor sins as a type of personality trope. The lazy bum, the angry husband, or the prideful peacocks; the list goes on and on. The cause and effect of these traits have served well to teach generations of readers, the ideas and meanings of our actions as humans. Although it is rare, some works leave open ended plots for us to contemplate the meaning of said sin. In conjunction to some of the deadly sins, the main characters from “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Veldt”, and “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”, all display a truth about human nature.

Often when we set out to journey in ourselves, we come to places that surprise us with their strangeness. Expecting to see what is straightforward and acceptable, we suddenly run across the exceptions. Just as we as self‹examiners might encounter our inner demons, so does Dante the writer as he sets out to walk through his Inferno. Dante explains his universe - in terms physical, political, and spiritual - in the Divine Comedy. He also gives his readers a glimpse into his own perception of what constitutes sin. By portraying characters in specific ways, Dante the writer can shape what Dante the pilgrim feels about each sinner. Also, the reader can look deeper in the text and examine the

Dante's `Divine Comedy', the account of his journey through hell, purgatory and heaven is one of the worlds great poems, and a prime example of a most splendidly realized integration of life with art. More than being merely great poetry, or a chronicle of contemporary events, which it also is, the `Comedy' is a study of human nature by a man quite experienced with it. The main argument I will make in this essay is that Dante's `Comedy' is chiefly a work of historical significance because in it lies the essence of human life across all boundaries of time and place. I feel that such a reading is justified, nay invited, by Dante himself when he says;

Virgil, human reason, does not only lead Dante physically through Purgatory, but he also leads him with his words as Lombardo does. Vigil tells Dante that he must “give [his] entire attention to [his] words”

Dante’s Inferno is a very straight forward story of Dante’s story to work towards redemption with a very complicated narration. Dante explores the world of the afterlife in his poems with three different sections of hell, purgatory and paradise. Treachery and justice are just two themes that come into play in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Treachery is an act of betrayal and having a deceptive nature, while justice is giving the appropriate treatment to a persons action, good or bad. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the act of treachery is a behavior that belongs in hell. However, being just and the act of justice is a behavior that belongs in paradise. Dante describes treachery as the worst of sins and justice as an act that belongs in Paradise and both related by love.