Fear In Dante's Inferno

The Inferno is a tale of cautionary advice. In each circle, Dante the pilgrim speaks to one of the shades that reside there and the readers learn how and why the damned have become the damned. As Dante learns from the mistakes of the damned, so do the readers. And as Dante feels the impacts of human suffering, so do the readers. Virgil constantly encourages Dante the pilgrim to learn why the shades are in Hell and what were their transgressions while on Earth. This work’s purpose is to educate the reader. The work’s assertions on the nature of human suffering are mostly admonition, with each shade teaching Dante the pilgrim and by extension the reader not to make the same mistakes. Dante views his journey through hell as a learning experience and that is why he made it out alive.

One of the major themes which Dante inferno raises is the nature of the virtues. Like the spirits of hell, the spirits that are encountered by Dante have all sinned. The spirits out there were punished

In Dante’s Inferno, throughout the epic journey of the character Dante into the depth of Hell, he encounters a number of beasts and monsters as he passes along the way, especially through the seven stations of the greatest monsters of Hell. The most significant of these seven major monsters is of central importance to the character Dante’s journey as well as to the narrative, for these monsters not only challenge the presence of the character Dante in Hell, but they are also the important custodians of Hell. Moreover, some of them even have more particular duty to perform, apart from being the Hell guardians.

Dante as a madman is defined as well as understood as an irrational figure, a figure possessing qualities that contradict Dante the poet who in turn is rational and calculated through his use of language within Inferno. The idea of madness can be portrayed in various different ways, one being to be in a state of madness (a madman), is to be, “mentally ill”, or otherwise to be someone that portrays irrationality in their actions (Soanes, Hawker and Elliott 2006). Wilson considers two such contrasting characteristics (the scholarly poet as well as the irrational madman) to derive from one Dante Alighieri: the author as well as creator of the Inferno. Such a form of malice can be seen through the idea of revenge, an intention to harm on a personal level. In the eighth canto through Dante’s encounter with Filippo Argenti, a political figure representing Dante’s opposition in political Florence during the thirteenth century, whom attempts to violently attack Dante

Dante realizes why the sinners are fearful of God. The Inferno makes allusions to Biblical characters. For instance, we see Ciaphas being punished by Dante in Circle Eight. Ciaphas was a high priest in the Bible and he was placed in the sixth Bolgia for his “hypocrisy” (Inf. 23). This alludes to the Bible because Ciaphas was a religious leader who assisted the Pharisees in the crucifixion of Jesus.

In those individual lives, we learn how sin engulfs them, and the punishment they must receive for it. In the end, Dante created a work full of vivid imagery, and detail that truly made for an impeccable storyline. Even though the Inferno is just one of three parts, Dante allows the audience to form a firm understanding of human evil, and all it contains. Moreover, it’s also important to realize that Dante’s Inferno is a profound exploration of humanity. He simply illustrates an imaginative correspondence between a person's sin, and punishment they received for their sinful

“When Cerberus discovered us in that swill his dragon-jaws yawned wide, his lips drew back in a grin of fangs. No limb of him was still” (Canto VI, 21-24) The role of monsters for Dante is clearly present. The monsters as well as the sinners in each circle, represent Dante’s own sins; they are a reflection upon

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

Dante the writer employs the tone of terror for the possible future for a hope of salvation, using cantos 24 and 34, through the chaotic imagery of torture and success of demons, to demonstrate the need for repentance and to establish panic in the actions of past spiritual challenges and beliefs in their journey to salvation. The use of terror and imagery in Canto 24 claims the past difficulties in spiritual life confirm the future horrors, by describing what these sinners look like in vital detail, to explain the torturous scene of the future soul without redemption and salvation. Throughout Canto 24, the spiritual journey gets viewed as a stopping point: Virgil speaks about how the soul always prevails over the body and fights against the pain while climbing up the mountain, just as humanity must endure past

Religious people always fear that they will not make it to Heaven or the place their God resides. The bible and other religious text give advice on how to avoid the pain of Hell. Dante Alighieri, a famous Italian poet, wrote about the physical description of Hell and the punishments each sinner would receive for their sins. Although The Divine Comedy chronicles Dante's journey from the depths of Hell to the glory of Heaven it contains a deeper meaning. Dante reveals the true meaning of the Inferno through his leading motif, his interactions between the sinners, and the intertwining of other literary works into the Inferno.

While every person has a different depiction of Hell, Dante provides fascinating imagery of his portrayal, so the reader can truly experience the

It’s difficult to reason why Dante would punish homosexuality differently in purgatory than in Hell, or vice versa. Why is homosexuality a sin of violence against nature in the first book, then a sin of incontinence in the next? One must keep in mind that there have been several cases of inconsistency in the Inferno, and that The Divine Comedy is an extremely long, comprehensive poem. As a result, there is great room for error; Dante has certainly benefited from considerable poetic leniency. There is an absolute possibility that Dante simply forgot, or simply chose to ignore, previous things he wrote. As Shakespeare once said, “there’s a method in the madness.” Dante’s writing provides compelling evidence to support homosexuality as a sin of violence against nature in the Inferno, and judgement about its place in Purgatorio will have to be made separately. Whether Dante sometimes made foolish mistakes, or intentional omissions, the Inferno remains an exceptional masterpiece that broke the boundaries of

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.

Much has been written in the story about heaven and hell, about areas populated with angels and celestial beings and dark dungeons infected with demons. But singularly for me, since I do not consider myself a religious person, I think that Dante's main intention was to reflect the bible form and also comparing it with the events of his life, all this in order that the people of his time could get rid off of the penumbras that lived within these and could purify their souls, all this in a personal way of each individual and their

In Dante's Inferno, Dante places people of all types into one of the nine different circles depending on what they had done in their life and what punishments they deserve. His religion is what said which sins made someone have to spend eternity in Hell and what sins were worse than others. Some of the sins Dante chose to be included in his own version of Hell are wrath, sloth, greed, lust, and gluttony. These sins were seen as some of the worst in the Catholic religion, which influences Dante’s decision to have them in Dante's Inferno. Some of the other sins Dante chose also exemplified his strong Catholic faith. For example, the people who fall in Limbo did not believe in God and in the Catholic religion, this means they were not saved and would therefore end up in Hell (Brantl 208). Dante, just like all catholics, believed that going against God was a sin. In Dante's Inferno, there are punishments for people who go against the catholic religion and the Lord as well as betray them. Dante’s religion also influenced his choices for whom he put in hell and where. According to Dante, no madder how good of a person you are, if you didn't believe in God and Christianity, you were sent to hell. Hawkins says that “…Limbo, the first circle of hell. It is beautiful, refined, civil, and dead. Knowledge may well be perfection, but it is the knowledge of God, the beatific vision, that is the journey’s true end” (107).