Justice In Dante's Inferno

The purpose of the pilgrim's journey through hell is to show, first hand, the divine justice of God and how Christian morality dictates how, and to what degree, sinners are punished. Also, the journey shows the significance of God's grace and how it affects not only the living, but the deceased as well. During his trip through hell, the character of Dante witnesses the true perfection of God's justice in that every sinner is punished in the same nature as their sins. For instance, the wrathful are to attack each other for all eternity and the soothsayers are forever to walk around with their heads on backwards. Furthermore, Dante discovers that hell is comprised of nine different circles containing

To merely say that Dante was interested in the world of hell would be an understatement. His needs to explore and write about the nine different realms could best be described as an obsession. It’s an adventure, a tale, a dream (or nightmare) of different historical, biblical, and Greek gods and creatures living their lives in the afterlife of the underground world. Each level has its own form of punishment fitting the crime one has committed.

Dante’s The Inferno is his own interpretation of the circles of hell. The people that Dante places in hell tried to validate their offenses and have never seen the injustice of their crime or crimes. They were each placed in a specific circle in Hell, Dante has nine circles in his hell. Each circle holds those accountable for that specific crime. Each circle has its own unique and fitting punishment for the crime committed. There are three different main types of offenses; they are incontinence, violence, and fraud. These offenses are divided into Dante’s nine rings of Hell. Each of these rings has a progressively worse punishment, starting with crimes of passion and

Who is Dante? He was a man that had a desire to find the truths of heaven and earth even from a very young age; his goal was to understand the three worlds in his mind of hell, purgatory and paradise so that he could find the true everlasting happiness. In Dante’s age there was not really a separation between church and state. “Dante 's philosophical view was also a political view. In Dante 's time, there were two major political factions, the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Originally, the Ghibellines represented the medieval aristocracy, which wished to retain the power of the Holy Roman Emperor in Italy, as well as in other parts of Europe. The Ghibellines fought hard in this struggle for the nobility to retain its feudal powers over the land and the people in contrast, the Guelphs, of which Dante was a member, were mainly supported by the rising middle class, represented by rich merchants, bankers, and new landowners. The enemy was politically, philosophically, and theologically wrong — and thus a Heretic” He was a supporter of the papacy which was a direct opposition to the Holy Roman Emperor, therefore putting himself in danger of his beliefs.

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is on a journey through hell in which he sees the different versions of sins and what consequences come after the immoralities. The person who commits a sin usually has to suffer in some way that would show revenge for the law of God. Dante threatens the people and tells them that they basically have nothing to look forward to except for having to suffer being separated from the will of God. Since these works were written by Dante, he had the power to judge others and decide how they will be punished for their sins. These visions that he had could very well be all false prophecies and may not be believed by every person. One thing that Dante did was to give enlightenment to sins that people did not know and made people

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante (the poet) targets the balance of power between the papacy and empire. The imbalance between the two is at fault of the papacy, according to Dante, which is understood to be due to the great refusal. With the great refusal, the papacy was able to fulfill its greed for power which ultimately resulted in Dante’s exile. However, unlike other poets and other influential individuals of his time, specifically Thomas Aquinas, Dante took the next step to show how all these sins came together to contribute to social disorder. Dante’s divine comedy infiltrates the corruption in the church and its contribution to the political instability in Florence and even all of Italy (which was not unified) at the time. Dante explores the

Dante is a poet who wrote an epic poem called The Divine Comedy. This epic poem is about Dante’s journey as he goes through 3 levels, which he calls Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. In the Inferno, he meets Virgil, his guide throughout his voyage. They both pass through the nine circles of Hell, where they witness many different punishments for those who have done awful things in their past. Good versus evil is a major theme that occurred throughout Hell. In the Inferno, there are times where Dante sees good and evil and also represents it himself.

Dante Alighieri went on a journey that was motivated by acrimony, revenge and retribution. The Divine Comedy is a story of Dante’s expedition through the afterlife with the help from a Roman poet, Virgil. In the Divine Comedy living in Hell is the same as living on earth in poverty today. Today, there are many politicians who are trying to help with the welfare of poverty, but they never follow through with their goals. Throughout Dante’s life on earth he witnesses the corruption of the church and power given to higher authorities because of their image. Many of the journeys that Dante has experienced in his journey through Hell are just like what we have experienced on earth whether you are rich or poor. However, there are significant differences between the two through symbolic signs and other non-religious meanings.

 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

Thesis statement: In Dante's Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy, Dante develops many themes throughout the adventures of the travelers. The Inferno is a work that Dante used to express the theme on his ideas of God's divine justice. God's divine justice is demonstrated through the punishments of the sinners the travelers encounter.

Yet Dante does not stop here. He further complicates fraud by adding the realm of compound fraud. Souls found in this circle of Hell did not betray just a stranger or acguaintance, but rather twisted the confidence of someone who loved and/or respected them. They defiled their own kin or country. They either took advantage of guests or of a host, perhaps within his own home. And, falling closest to the pit of Hell (and Lucifer) are those souls who betray the confidence of their lord or benefactor. All these unfortunate shadows of life are those who consciously sought to gain by lying to or by committing an act of treachery against someone who holds a special place in their life; someone who, in some way, they are

Dante also shows which sins he sees as the worst of sins, putting betrayers in the lowest circle of hell. Dante employs some common sense while discussing hell, putting obvious sinners in the lower circles and prone to harsher punishments, but he also puts the not-so obvious sinners in hell. Even though one may think he is doing the right thing, all motives are evaluated upon judgment and even a trace of selfishness or greed may threaten one’s chance in heaven. This is why Dante’s hell is rife with politicians and leaders. Although they may have the community’s best interests at heart, politicians become obsessed with fame and glory, often forgetting that they are representatives of the people.

The inferno by Dante is a story of faith, religious and moral beliefs with various elements, symbols and themes. Through this journey Dante is guided through hell and back by Virgil a symbolism of his teacher and a comrade philosopher like him. The three elements through out this story that seemed to stand out the most are the perfection of God's justice, evil as a contradiction to God's will, and the style of language.

In The Inferno, Dante descends through the nine circles of Hell, encountering increasingly serious sins, most of which are crimes. The levels of Hell can be interpreted as a gradation of crimes, with penalties in proportion to their relative gravity of sin. While crimes are transgressions against human law, Dante’s Christian orthodox ambitions translate the treatment of these seemingly earthly crimes as sins, transgressions against divine law. For the purposes of this paper, the two terms can be used interchangeably because Dante’s perception of crimes on Earth is in parallel to the punishment of those crimes as sins in Hell. For Dante, the most punishable sins are those of betrayal. With a lucid examination of Dante’s political

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).