The Consequences Of Punishment In Dante's 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

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.

In Dante’s Inferno, a permeating theme of the work is the idea of contrapasso. Contrapasso is only mentioned once and late in the Inferno in Canto XXVIII of XXXIV by Bertran de Born: “In me you may observe fit punishment / Cosí s’osserva in me lo contrapasso” (XXVIII. 142). Although the literary device of contrapasso is only mentioned once and late in the Inferno, the tool is used in every circle and subdivision in hell. Contrapasso is seen in the punishments of the damned in a physical manifestation, which represents an appropriate mode of retribution in terms of a kind of divine justice. In Dante’s Inferno, contrapasso, while it describes the physical agony of the damned as fit punishment for their habitual sins, represents the damage

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 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’s work Inferno is a vivid walkthrough the depths of hell and invokes much imagery, contemplation and feeling. Dante’s work beautifully constructs a full sensory depiction of hell and the souls he encounters along the journey. In many instances within the work the reader arrives at a crossroads for interpretation and discussion. Canto XI offers one such crux in which Dante asks the question of why there is a separation between the upper levels of hell and the lower levels of hell. By discussing the text, examining its implications and interpretations, conclusions can be drawn about why there is delineation between the upper and lower levels and the rationale behind the separation.

While traveling through Hell, Dante the pilgrim encountered numerous sinners on each level, all prepared to tell their tales of misfortune and transgression. However, though some ask Dante to remember them or tell their stories on Earth, most of them speak for their own gain, not simply to educate Dante on the penalties of their sins. Each sinner appears to wallow in the past, isolating themselves in their sin and occasionally ignoring Dante as a person entirely. Even when these sinners find themselves physically trapped together with another soul, they remain lonely and miserable in their suffering: they have deprived themselves of the forgiveness and love God offered them and now must find something else to love. As they have rejected God, these sinners still seek to fill that void of emptiness to which they have forever condemned themselves. In Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the irony of the sinner’s contrappaso reflects the irony that, even in the suffering they have brought upon themselves, they have a misplaced love in their sin in place of the love God offered them.

After passing through the City of Dis, Virgil and Dante enter Nether Hell, where violent and heretical sinners are punished. Dante portrays these sins of corrupt will as more evil and deserving of worse punishment than the weak-willed sins of upper hell. Souls who, during life, were violent against their neighbors boiled in a river of blood. Suicide cases are trapped in the form of trees, unable to scream unless gauged by horrible birds. The violent against God are sprawled face-up on burning sand, eternally confronting the proclaimed enemy. Even within an individual circle, some sinners are punished more than others. Among the violent against God, Capaneus is more severely punished than his peers because of his pride. He continues to be blasphemous, even in death, declaring, "That which in life I was, in death I am." His stubbornness and pride in death causes

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

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante narrates his descent and observation of hell through the various circles and pouches. One part of this depiction is his descriptions of the various punishments that each of the different sinners has received.  The various punishments that Dante envisions the sinners receiving are broken down into two types. The first type he borrows from various gruesome and cruel forms of torture and the second type, though often less physically agonizing, is Dante’s creative and imaginative punishment for sins. The borrowed torturous forms of punishments create a physical pain for the shades, whereas the creative punishments are used to inflict a mental and psychological suffering. However, it is possible for the creative

“My Guide and I crossed over and began to mount that little known and lightless road to ascend into the shinning world again.” The Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, is an epic poem, divine comedy, which was written in the 1500’s in Italian. Dante Alighieri lost his mother at a very young age and was exiled from his hometown, Florence when his group, the White Guelphs got into a disagreement with the Black Guelphs. Dante was a writer and greatly involved in politics which influenced him to write this epic poem. The story starts at with him meeting the ghost of Virgil, his idol, who becomes his guide for the remainder of the book and tries to escort Dante to heaven to be with his love, Beatrice.

In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is taken on a journey through hell. On this journey, Dane sees the many different forms of sins, and each with its own unique contrapasso, or counter-suffering. Each of these punishments reflects the sin of a person, usually offering some ironic way of suffering as a sort of revenge for breaking God’s law. As Dante wrote this work and developed the contrapassos, he allows himself to play God, deciding who is in hell and why they are there. He uses this opportunity to strike at his foes, placing them in the bowels of hell, saying that they have nothing to look forward to but the agony of suffering and the separation from God.

Renowned poet Dante Alighieri lived in a tempestuous political and religious era. Fourteenth century Italy was riddled with political factions, most notably the Guelphs and Ghibellines, which were constantly engaged in conflict. This ongoing political and religious upheaval would eventually lead to Dante’s exile from Florence. After his banishment, Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, an epic poem that sets up a flawless system of punishment, redemption and salvation. This retributive structure, most readily apparent in the “Inferno”, heavily contrasts with the imperfect earthly one that failed Dante. Although the primary message of the poem appears to be religious, the “Inferno” gives insight into how Dante was making an inherently political statement.

In Canto XIII, Dante enters the second subcircle of the seventh ring of Hell, reserved for those who commit violence against themselves. Here, the contrapasso of suicide is becoming a part of the thorned and treacherous woods. Although this seems odd as the idea of a contrapasso is, “the punishment fits the crime,” and other punishments seem much harsher, the real workings of the contrapasso are shown once Dante speaks to the souls. Here it is revealed to Dante that these souls are constantly reminded that they have willingly given up what is most important to them, their identity. In turn, they must suffer for abandoning the bond that existed between them and God.