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Humanity In Dante's Inferno

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Moral Standards of Humanity and Behavior
In Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, Dante the Pilgrim goes through Hell under the guidance of Virgil in order to understand the levels of punishments and how sinners are designated to certain circles within Hell. The standards that Dante Alighieri uses to categorize sinners can still be applied to people regardless of time as shown through the analysis of Jeffrey Dahmer and Henry H. Holmes. Through the analysis of Dante’s Inferno and 20th century criminals, it can be inferred that the standards of humanity and behavior are susceptible to both time and culture while still remaining true to the idea that committing the act of killing another human in any way other than in self-defense is immoral. The absolute standard of morality can be applied to Jeffrey Dahmer, a murderer and rapist that ate his victims, who would be placed in the circle …show more content…

He admit to killing 17 boys and men, and he raped or ate a few of those victims. The people of Dahmer’s time period believed that Dahmer’s “urges to have sex with the dead led him to drug, kill and dismember” his victims. The use of the phrase “urge to have sex with the dead” shows that the people of the 1990s believed that Dahmer’s ulterior motive when committing his sins was based upon his inability to avoid giving in to lust. The families of the victims deal with the “pain they suffered” that was caused by the crimes of Dahmer and one girl even went as far as to call Dahmer “Satan”, thus showing that the people of Dahmer’s time believed his crimes worthy of Hell ("Dahmer Is Sentenced to 15 Life Terms”). Dahmer had “consensual sex” with the majority of his victims or the victims were “photographed nude” before they were drugged ("Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer”). The author mentions that most of the victims engaged in consensual sexual activities with Dahmer and that Dahmer had sex with their corpses in order to point out that Dahmer’s primary reason for committing murder

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