Struggle of Pity Within the Inferno

Often, we cannot see the good until we have experienced the bad. Dante Alighieri, a poet who makes himself the main character in his Divine Comedy, finds himself lost in a dark wood at the start of The Inferno. Though he sees a safe path out of the wood towards an alluring light, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. As the ending of the pilgrim Dante’s voyage is bright and hopeful, Alighieri the poet aims to encourage even the most sinful Christians to hope for a successful end. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell in The Inferno to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation; his journey an allegory representing that of the repenting Christian soul.

In Dante’s Inferno, part of The Divine Comedy, Canto V introduces the torments of Hell in the Second Circle. Here Minos tells the damned where they will spend eternity by wrapping his tail around himself. The Second Circle of Hell holds the lustful; those who sinned with the flesh. They are punished in the darkness by an unending tempest, which batters them with winds and rain. Hell is not only a geographical place, but also a representation of the potential for sin and evil within every individual human soul. As Dante travels through Hell, he sees sinners in increasingly more hideous and disgusting situations. For Dante, each situation is an image of the quality of any soul that is determined to sin in

Dante's "Inferno" is full of themes. But the most frequent is that of the weakness of human nature. Dante's descent into hell is initially so that Dante can see how he can better live his life, free of weaknesses that may ultimately be his ticket to hell. Through the first ten cantos, Dante portrays how each level of his hell is a manifestation of human weakness and a loss of hope, which ultimately Dante uses to purge and learn from. Dante, himself, is about to fall into the weaknesses of humans, before there is some divine intervention on the part of his love Beatrice, who is in heaven. He is sent on a journey to hell in order for Dante to see, smell, and hear hell. As we see this experience brings out Dante's weakness' of cowardice,

One of the major themes which Dante inferno raises is the nature of the virtues. Like the spirits of hell, the spirits that are encountered by Dante have all sinned. The spirits out there were punished

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.

The text answers the question in a direct way using the works of Aristotle, “How his Ethics describes, and deals with at length, the three dispositions rejected by Heaven, Incontinence, malice, and bestial rage and how one of these offends God less and so incurs less blame?” (Canto XI 80-83). At this explanation a reader could draw the conclusion that God’s judgment is merciful and perfect. The question though still remains, if those of previous levels offend God less why do they still incur such a horrible punishment? This question leaves implications that God’s punishment might not be perfect and just. In previous cantos Dante seems to have developed some pity for those shades he has met in previous circles, such as Ciacco, and Francesca. He sympathizes with those damned almost as if he is realizing his own sins of his world. The implications of an imperfect and unjust God can ripple right to the very core of our own existence. If god is not perfect then

In the 24th canto of Dante’s “Inferno”, we see how Dante depicts forgiveness and the idea keeping an excellent mindset through troubling times by enlisting an epic simile. “The peasants who lack fodder then arise and look about and see the fields all white… go back to the house, walk here and here, pacing, fretting, wondering what to do… I saw my masters eyebrows lower, and my spirits fell and I was sorely vexed”. This quotation compares Virgil to a humble farmer: both are stumped by a seemingly impossible problem to conquer, are both mad that it’s happening and also that no matter what they can’t overcome it. However, both stories continue, “Despair falls from them when they see how the earth’s face has changed in in so little time… he stood and turned on me that sweet and open look”. We see that, like how the farmer is pleased to see that winter has finished so he can feed his herd, Virgil has seen that there is another way down. This simile that shows forgiveness is an important and underlying theme through the entire comedy. Had all of these people repented and asked forgiveness while still in their mortal life then they would have to suffer tar pits or hands bound by snakes. This is also a subliminal message to those that read it that he should no longer be banished from Florence.

Dante had different thoughts when seeing the good and the evil sinners. As Dante goes through the Inferno, he sees sinners who are tearing up and looking terrible. In circle eight, he witnessed sinners who have committed fraud and rape, yet also saw some who were accidently accused of those crimes and did not deserve to be in Hell. “Here pity, or here piety, must die if the other lives; who’s wickeder than one that’s agonized by God’s high equity?” (Aligheri, Canto 20). He felt pity for some, in which Virgil had to tell him to bear with it and that there is no pity in Hell. Dante was biased about his thoughts of good and evil when determining which sinner was good and which sinner was evil. Sinners are also in Purgatory and are considered good too, since they repented their sins.

In the note to Canto V regarding Francesca and Paulo, the Hollanders exclaim that “Sympathy for the damned, in the Inferno, is nearly always and nearly certainly the sign of a wavering moral disposition” (112). Indeed, many of the touching, emotional, or indignation rousing tales told by the souls in Hell can evoke pity, but in the telling of the tales, it is always possible to derive the reasons for the damned souls’ placement in Hell. However, there is a knee-jerk reaction to separate Virgil and, arguably, some of the other souls in limbo from this group of the damned, though, with careful perusal of the text, the thoughtful reader can discern the machinations behind their damnation.

Reason, logic, and pure thought are the compasses of humanity. Unfortunately, today no one even bothers to look at the compass or to ask for directions. The lack of logic and reason in our everyday decisions leads to the larger scale chaos that results from apathetic actions. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, as in Dante's case, we have slipped from our guide of Reason and shown pity to people, like Francesca and Paolo, who fall to carnal lusts, or to those like in the Wood of the Suicides. Like Dante, we are only too eager to hear their stories and report back to those above, still in the Dark Wood, of their fate. We feel as though the punishment which God, in His great Wisdom, has dealt out for them were unfair. And we fear for our own

Journeys can be taken many ways. Some people take the path less traveled and some people take the easy way out. Dante happens to be on journey that is less traveled, by exploring the depths of Hell in the Inferno. The epic poem’s story is about self-realization and transformation. It sees Dante over coming many things to realize he is a completely different person from the start of the Inferno journey. Dante sees many things that help him gain courage in order to prove to himself and the reader that accepting change and gaining courage can help one to grow as a person and realize their full potential. After seeing people going through certain punishment Dante realizes that he must not seek pity on himself and others in order to fully realize his true potential.

From Dante's perspective, crimes of passion or desire are the least abhorrent and consequently deserve minimal punishment in comparison to what he believes are the more serious offenses. These sinners, the carnal, the gluttonous, the hoarders and wasters, along with the wrathful and

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.

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.

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.