Love 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

Imagine a place where tyrants stand up to their ears in boiling blood, the gluttonous experience monsoons of human filth, and those who commit sins of the flesh are blown about like pieces of paper in a never-ending wind storm. Welcome to Dante 's Inferno, his perspective on the appropriate punishments for those who are destined to hell for all eternity. Dante attempts to make the punishments fit the crimes, but because it is Dante dealing out the tortures and not God, the punishments will never be perfect because by nature, man is an imperfect creature. Only God is capable of being above reproach and of metering out a just punishment. While Dante 's treatment towards the tyrants is fitting, his views on the

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

Dante's Inferno explores the nature of human suffering through a precautionary light. As Dante and Virgil move through the Inferno, Dante sees what has become of people who overindulged in things such as, lust, gluttony, violence, and bribery. Few of the punishments described in the Inferno have a direct correlation to the sin that the souls committed while they were living. Rather, they are a representation of what happens when we commit those crimes against ourselves and others. We create hells for not only ourselves, but those who we have sinned against. These hells are almost impossible to come back from as most of these sins cannot be taken back or undone. Some of the punishments that were clear representations were the punishments of

Dante’s purpose for writing Inferno is to warn humanity about all of the sins they commit and the effect that they will eventually have. Contrapasso contributes to Dante’s purpose because it helps portray Dante’s view on the ethics of various sins. This helps the reader to reflect on the cultural and political state of Italy at the time. God renders justice through imagery and power in Dante’s Inferno. Dante’s major theme in Inferno is the perfection of God’s justice. God’s justice moved Him to create Hell, “The inscription above this gate--ending with the famous warning to "abandon all hope"-- establishes Dante's hell as a creation not of evil and the devil but rather of his Christian God, here expressed in terms of the Trinity: Father (Divine Power), Son (Highest Wisdom), and Holy Spirit (Primal Love).” (Dante’s World), In Dante’s world, Hell is the holding pen for all sinners. However, all sins are not equal in the eyes of God. Early in Inferno, the relationship between God’s justice

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, “Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.” Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an

While love is not frequently mentioned in the poem the Inferno, it always has a presence on the back of the reader’s mind. The most surprising appearance of love comes at the gates of hell. This is where Dante learns that this place of punishment has been created from “Primal Love”. Dante displayed hell as being birthed from “the primal love”, or the Holy Spirit. Though those who do not believe the justice of eternal punishment are all less inclined to regard it as a byproduct of God’s love. In this essay I will reveal how hell is the result of God’s loving character, and how it was indeed created from love.

As Dante, the pilgrim, makes his way through the second circle of hell in Canto V of Dante’s Inferno, he comes across the lustful. Lust is a very strong sexual desire. Having the desire to have sex is not a sin, but it becomes sinful when the desire is defected. This means, if the sexual desire is out of context such as desiring another married man or woman, it then becomes a sin. In Dante’s Inferno, Francesca da Rimini tells a story of her and Paolo Malatesta and how lust and adultery lead to their deaths. For the first time in Hell, Dante feels pity for a soul and I believe he reacts this way to her story because he puts himself in their shoes and feels their pain. Dante empathizes with Francesca because this is now her eternal fate.

La Vita Nuova is a collection of poems by Dante about an unconventional love story. Dante expresses his Love for a woman named Beatrice but his definition of love is not of courtly or romantic love. To Dante, the meaning of true love in La Vita Nuova is God.

American Educator Susan Blow studied Dante’s Inferno with great respect to the implements of ethics and theology. “In the following excerpt, she discusses the Inferno from an ethical and theological point of view, explaining that divine retribution implies man's fundamental ethical responsibility, and that ‘Hell is the Creator's final tribute of respect to the being he made in his own image’ “ (Blow, para 1). Blow clearly understood Dante’s views and states, “His poem is not individual but universal; he utters not his own thought, but the unformulated creed of Christendom. Nay, he reaches beyond Christianity and speaks to the universal conscience of humanity—that inward witness which is always calling upon man to rejoice in his freedom and tremble before the responsibility bound up with it” (Blow, para 2).

Hell exists to punish sin. However hell is insinuated that it existed long before mankind was created so God didn't originally create hell for humankind, he created it to punish his angels when they fell from grace. For example a love of wealth and power, drives many souls to commit terrible sins. The second circle of hell contains those sinners who gave into excessive lust, including the memorable Francesca da Rimini. These sinners follow lust and desire, rather than chaste love like that between Dante and Beatrice. Dante also includes Sodomites in his vision of hell, a category including those who engage in homosexual

“The Christian church … conceived of hell as a place where the good were separate from the evil, and the deeds on earth were weighed and judges.”(Bondanella XXXIII) Hell is a place that was created as a punishment for those people who died with mortal sins and did not ask for forgiveness. In this case Dante’s hell in the Inferno is divided into three sections and nine circles. These circles within hell were based off of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. Along with the seven deadly sins Dante’s Catholic religion also influenced him in his choices about who to put and where to put people in Hell. According to his beliefs, if you were not a Christian, you automatically went to Hell. (Trotter) As well even though Dante's hell affected all people no matter their religion, the representation of how Hell

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.

In Dante Alighieri’s poem, The Divine Comedy, Dante’s quest to find Beatrice symbolizes the importance of allowing love to be ones guide to divine understanding, for this is the only action which is completely controlled by God. Dante argues that although we have desires for sinful actions, humans have the ability to control these desires and decide our own fate. Furthermore, he argues that even if humans commit sin in life, if they will redemption before being sent to hell, they have the opportunity to purify themselves of purgatory. Thus, for Dante, choice is an ever present and vital part of life, and therefore, fate does not exist. But love for Dante is different. Dante argues that love cannot be controlled or chosen. There is no

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).