Punishment Of Sinners In Dante's Inferno

The people in Dante's second circle of hell all committed crimes regarding sexual desires. Whether it was falling in love for one, when being promised to another or simply cheating. These were all against the code of conduct and looked at as offences that landed them in hell. Another transgression was people who act out of sexual desire rather than doing what's right.

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.

Dante structures the Commedia in such a way as to enable the pilgrim to function as a progressively more sophisticated reader of confessional texts throughout his journey, and as such he becomes a reflection of our own possibilities as interpreters of these canti. Our initial attempts at interpreting the equivocal texts provided by the sinners are fitful, inadequate, and constantly in need of later correction and reassessment, thus reflecting the pilgrim's own progress. In the reading and re-reading, these confessional passages and canti define themselves as exercises in humility: as understanding becomes the product of a series of misreadings and revisions of the text. In the case of Francesca we have a confession that is more a literary rationale for her offense than an admission of individual culpability, for Francesca seeks to use the language of dolce stil novo poetry as a kind of cloaking device to hide herself as the historical agent or subject who bears responsibility for her

In verse 25, Dante describes the choir of anguish to be "like a wound" with a simile. Next, by using a metaphor, he describes the fate of the adulterous sinners and their punishment as being battered eternally by the winds and storms of hell, as they were figuratively battered by the winds of passion in their lives on earth. He describes with a simile how "as cranes go over sounding their harsh cry, / leaving the long streak of their flight in air, / so come spirits, wailing as they fly" (v 46-48). Finally, he makes use of another simile to iterate how after Francesca tells of her tale of love, Dante faints and falls, "as a corpse might fall, to the dead floor of hell" (v 140).

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.

“But Virgil rebukes his cowardice, and relates the chain of events that led him to come to Dante. The Virgin Mary took pity on the Pilgrim in his despair and instructed Saint Lucia to aid him. The Saint turned to Beatrice because of Dante’s great love for her, and Beatrice in turn went down to Hell, into

As Dante explores the Second Circle of Hell, he is horrified by the punishments that the sinners must suffer through. When he hears the story of Francesca and Paolo’s lustful actions, Dante relates deeply to their stuggles because he reflects on his own sins and believes he may be cast to a similar fate in the afterlife. Dante reacts to the story when he says, “I fainted, as if I had met my death. / And then I fell as a dead body falls” (5.142-143). Dante faints from compassion for the two sinners’ pitiful story. Dante struggles to grasp the wrongdoing these people have participated in to be placed in Hell because he continues to search for the noble qualities in everyone. On the one hand, Dante believes God’s punishment for the lustful sinners, relentless winds and storms, is unethical. On the other hand, this belief is naive because it is known that all of God’s punishments are just. The lustful are condemned to an eternity in Hell because they did not care about their actions on Earth, so the raging storm that torments them is not concerned with what is in its path. Dante is not only attempting to discover the possible consequences of his own actions, but also learning to trust in God’s judgement.

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.

“I came to a place stripped bare of every light and roaring on naked dark like seas wracked by a war of winds” (Canto 5 inferno), this when Dante goes into the second circle of hell and watches as the lustful are swirl around in this never-ending storm of lust. Dante is using this point of view to try and give a realistic vibe to the readers. He talks to Francesca and Paolo two lovers who were murdered after found having affair against Francesca husband Giovanni Malatesta. After talking to them Dante is starting to get a sense of how real his journey is, he is feeling overwhelmed Dante falls to the ground and pass is out. “And while one spirit Francesca said these words to me, the other Paolo wept, so that, because of pity, I fainted, as if I had met my death. And then I fell as a dead body falls.”(139-142)

Dante sees the brutality that is depicted in the Circles as needed. He views sin and transgression as the result of rejecting the world of the divine. If any of the transgressors had come to God and asked for forgiveness, Dante would see them as being forgiven. Asking God for forgiveness is when the sinners would get redemption. They are condemned to eternal suffering in the underworld because they failed to take God in their hearts and souls.

Paolo and Francesca represented, or symbolize, sinful love by example. They show how an intrinsically noble emotion, love, if contrary to God’s law, can bring two essentially fine persons to damnation and spiritual ruin. Dante’s personal response of overwhelming pity should not blind us to the justice of the penalty. Dante describes himself as fainting at the end of Francesca’s recital, his purpose is partly to portray the attractiveness of the sin. Dante allows the lovers the bitter sweetness of inseperability in Hell, but they have lost God and thus corrupted their personalities; they can hardly be considered happy. In a sense, they have what they wanted; they continue in the lawless condition that

This is quite interesting and makes the reader think whether there is an underlying cause that lead the sinners to end up on this circle of Hell. This suggests that Dante expects his readers to realize that she is actually in Hell because of not the adultery action itself, but because of her

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.

Dante learns that Francesca was forced into marriage but fell in love with her brother-in-law, Paolo. One day, Francesca and Paolo became moved by the story of Guinevere and Lancelot and shared a fatal kiss. Their desire for one other condemned them to hell (Inf. 5. 124-135). Upon hearing their tragic story, Dante becomes overwhelmed and faints (Inf. 5.

Dante’s first stop is the Inferno. He begins in a state of shock as he is overwhelmed by what he sees. In Canto V, Dante faints because of the sympathy that he feels for the lovers Francesca and Paolo. Yet, Dante does not realize that by feeling sorry for those sinners, he is questioning whether they deserve to be there, which is essentially questioning God. By Canto VIII, Dante begins to realize that the sinners deserve their punishment as, “May you weep and wail for all eternity, for I know you, hell-dog, filthy as you are.” Virgil praises Dante for this, even kissing him on the head, as Dante realizes that the sinners deserve this fate.