Similarities Between Lewis And Dante's Inferno

The Inferno, is the first part of the trilogy within the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri. The Inferno incompasses the story of Dante’s journey through Hell to reach the path of righteousness going toward Heaven’s Gate. Across the immeasurable and extensive journey of Dante and Virgil, both together observe the punishments brought upon oneself, as a result of the sins committed by the hopeless residents of Hell. Within the novel, the severity of punishment and the discipline itself whilst in Hell, is a direct correlation to the sins that the souls of Hell are bound to from before their individual descent down the steps of Hell. The symbolism or irony behind each of the different punishments are all fitting of the actual sin, as the people that reside within Hell got what they deserved for sinning, and now being punished for eternity to atone for those sins.

Dante and Virgil have just left limbo, the first circle of hell, and are now on their way into the second circle of hell, where hell really begins. It is here that Dante first witnesses the punishment brought upon the sinners. They encounter Minos, the beast-judge who blocks the way into the second circle. He examines each soul as they pass through and determines which circle of hell they must go to by winding his tail around himself. Minos warns Dante of passing through but Virgil silences him. Dante encounters a dark place completely sucked of any light and filled with noises more horrible than a tempest and sees the souls being whirled around in a

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

The Inferno illustrates the journey of Dante the pilgrim as he travels through the nine circles of Hell wherein each circle objectifies a specific sin like lust, gluttony, greed or violence; there the sinners endure eternal punishment. In the seventh circle, the circle of violence, Dante interacts with the suicides and profligates. Condemned to live eternally as

In the sixth cantos Dante explains how he travels through the third layer of Hell. After Dante faints in the second layer because of his heavy crying, he wakes up in the third layer of Hell confused on how he got there. Dante learned that this layer of Hell contains all the souls that practiced the sin of gluttony. The word gluttony is defined as being selfish. Whenever they decided to move along on their path through hell Dante decided to forget about how he got there and worry about what goes on in this layer.

In Dante’s Inferno, the Roman-Italian poet Dante paints a horrifyingly detailed and illuminated visual walkthrough of the entirety of his journey through the caverns and levels of hell. On his journey, guided by the dead poet Virgil, Dante meets and sees a large variety of deceased individuals from many periods of time, and is able to interact with them in specific ways, and learn from them the deeper purposes of the inferno in which he walked. From these individuals, Dante learned to be accepting of the horrors that he was presented whilst within the inferno, that that which he saw was fair and deserving punishments, from limbo to the 9th realm of hell. It must not be forgotten however, that the placement of each of these individuals comes from within the mind of Dante himself, and with a closer look it becomes very easy to see the bias that Dante held while constructing this poem. This placement serves to open to the reader to a piece of the mind of Dante, into his own feelings and predilections regarding religion, politics, and philosophy. Using a selection of the individuals Dante stumbles across in the fires of hell, it is possible to see very specifically both what Dante hated or disliked in that person, in addition to his feelings over all to a group of people, grouped in the mind of Dante either by occupation, by origin, or by practice. Let’s begin this insight with the some of the first people that Dante meets.

Dante’s Alighieri’s Inferno is an epic poem that describes the journey of a man known to be Dante and his journey through hell. As he is on this journey he meets and encounters different people, some that he met and some that he has never seen before. As he travels with a poet that he studied, Virgil, he takes Dante through nine circles of hell. Each circle of hell is a realm for the souls of people who have already died and sinned. The worst the sin, further down into hell that the sinner will go, and in each circle, there is a certain punishment that each sinner’s soul must suffer through for the rest of eternity.

The Great Divorce is an allegorical book that takes the narrator on a bus ride from hell to heaven. Lewis’ idea is to show that one reaches heaven rather then hell or purgatory. Heaven and hell are described as very real places as both distinguished by either eternal happiness or despair. Lewis develops themes that affects a Christian’s salvation such as pride, arrogance, and love. All the ghost within entering the heaven are given a chance to stay only if they repent by accepting God and letting go of their petty interests. There are many examples given of such people who simply do not give up their pride, ego, and vice and return to the gray town or the hell. This extended metaphor describes in detail what prevents people from choosing heaven

Dante’s Inferno and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are both tremendously significant literary works that are still relevant to this present day. Dante’s Inferno depicts one pilgrim being led into the depths of Hell at the hands of a guide named Virgil. As the two descend into Hell, it becomes apparent that Dante has strong religious opinions that influence his placement of several individuals into the various levels of Hell. One thing he makes obvious in his works is that hypocrisy and fraudulence are revolting characteristics. This piece of literature has the tone of darkness and warnings.

In The Inferno of Dante, Dante allows the reader to experience his every move. His mastery of language, his sensitivity to the sights and sounds of nature, and his endless store of knowledge allows him to capture and draw the reader into the realm of the terrestrial hell. In Canto 6, the Gluttons; Canto 13, the Violent against Themselves; and Canto 23, the Hypocrites; Dante excels in his detailed description of the supernatural world of hell.

Dante’s Inferno uses a man’s journey through hell, to give an eye-opening description of hell’s stark reality. Throughout his book, Dante uses the various levels to compare sins severities and their deserving punishments. Written in a time of political turmoil in Florence, Dante uses numerous historical figures to give examples of what he believed real immoralities would merit in hell. Comparing this book to the political differences of Dante’s time, a stark correlation can be made between Dante’s political and religious viewpoints.

Dante Alighieri endured immeasurable adversity throughout his life when he began composing the Inferno. Affliction arose at a young age when Dante’s mother passed. Soon after, Dante met Beatrice and fell in love, yet a formal marriage contract with Gemma Donati prohibited Dante from pursuing Beatrice. In his early literary studies Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, his best friend, and Brunetto Latini, his mentor, and saturated himself with love poems centralizing Beatrice. At the age of eighteen Dante buried his father, and a few years later fought in the Battle of Campaldino. As a fervid patriarch of Florence, Dante became active in the life of politics as a White Guelf. While faithfully serving his city, Dante’s long lost love (Beatrice 1290), mentor (Brunetto Latini 1294), and friend (Guido Cavalcanti 1300) had perished. Subsequently, Pope Boniface VIII and the Black Guelfs drove the White Guelfs out of Florence in 1302, while Dante too was exiled, his belongings were confiscated. “His wife did not follow Dante into exile in 1302, probably because her family ties to Florence were so strong,” (Forman 3). Submerged in solitude, it was essential for Dante to deeply examine his experiences, beliefs, and life. Understandably, as a literary scholar Dante used poetic documentation to understand, accept, and forgive himself and others. Dante’s readers find an overabundance of personal experiences throughout the Inferno, and just as Dante used Virgil’s Aeneid and the Bible as counsel

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).

Dante’s Inferno originally named The Divine Comedy or in modern Italian The Commedia , follows the contemporary Christian ethos by showing how the consequences of man are equal to their sins; passed upon them in death. The physical sins that man does on earth if not repented of, will then become their eternal consequence in Hell. Dante shows us in his travels through the circles of hell how this suffering is the direct and equal result of their earthly sins. The sins of the cowardice, the lustful, gluttonous, greedy, angry, heretical, violent, fraudulent and treacherous have their bodies in constant pain equivalent of the actions of their human bodies on earth. The thesis of this paper is to show how physical pain enacted upon corporeal bodies in hell, are the logical consequence of sin on earth. I will show this by citing examples of sinners featured in The inferno that are tortured for the sins in their respective layer of hell.

As Dante travels deeper into the pit of hell he finds much more horrific places which climaxes in the fourth ring of the ninth circle, Judecca the lowest part, of hell were people go who betrayed their benefactors. These people spend eternity completely