The Divine Comedy Dante By Dante Alighieri

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

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 Alighieri wrote the Divine Comedy from 1308-1320. The story narrates Dante’s pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven while guided by Virgil and Beatrice. Throughout this journey Dante conforms himself to virtue, properly orders his passions, and conforms his conscience, “Dante 's psychopoiesis operates through the mimetic deformation, reformation, and transformation of conscience” (Macready, 2). This essay will examine what a true conscience is according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and explore the nature of the conscience in Dante’s Divina Commedia. Additionally, this essay will examine the errors of Dante’s conscience regarding divine justice, love, and courage; and who contributes to this formation.

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

Often, we cannot see the good in something until we’ve experienced the bad. Dante Aghileri, a poet who stars in his Divine Comedy as a pilgrim, finds himself lost in a dark wood. Though he sees a safe path to the light and out of the wood, he is forced to take an alternate route through an even darker place. The Divine Comedy is an allegory representative of the Christian soul. As the ending is bright and hopeful for Dante, Aghileri spreads that the ending for even the most sinful Christians can be as hopeful as dante’s, provided that they take the steps needed to achieve salvation. Thus, Dante the pilgrim goes to hell to better understand the nature of sin and its consequences in order to move closer to salvation, his journey an representing that of the repenting Christian soul.

In Dante’s Inferno and his levels of hell there are many things that we have in common as a person today’s society. This essay will discuss the issues in Dante’s Inferno and The Divine Comedy that are still true to this day as they were back when Dante wrote this comedy. Some views Dante considers are not the same to everyone, but some views are still apparent in today’s society. With these views being common it can be said that Dante’s views are common for people in today’s society. Many people do not understand the journey that Dante describes in this comedy. Finally, many of the sins considered by people today, were sins worthy of hell in Dante’s time.

In Dante’s Inferno, one chapter of three in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the main protagonist of the poem, Dante frequently uses romance and love as one of the main themes to express his message and vision of Hell he portraits in the story. Dante’s Inferno is an epic poem about a recounting of Dante and his incredible journey through Hell and its many levels while he is being guided by Virgil. In the story, Hell is shown to have nine levels of suffering depending on what kinds of sin you committed during your life and each circle serves as different forms of punishment. During his journey, Dante starts to understand the soul, God, and Lucifer, as he describes the nine circles of hell being anger, gluttony, treasury, fraud, violence, heresy, lust, greed as he explores the circles and meets various people on the way.

As demonstrated would be the second circle of hell which consists of the lustful. As their punishment for their unholy desires, they are being blown violently back and forth by strong winds which prevents them from getting rest in comparison to a higher level such as the fifth circle which contain the wrathful who live in the mud river and is constantly fighting and hurting each other because they could not manage their anger in life. The punishment reflects the type of sin committed during their lifetime. All of this organized based on the severity of the sin. Dante teaches us that whatever you do will always come back regardless. Justice is considered one of the most important theme and concept that it comes with. The term “right of law” means that a person does what is “just” or “ morally right” and for things to be overall fair which ties in with the concept that involves people getting what they had coming for them.

With the mention of Hell, flames and spankings lick the minds of children, while adults contemplate the evil ratings of their own soul and the uncertainty approaching them. How uncertain should a person be in considering their afterlife? If a grand god randomly flings humans about, dividing them into heaven or hell, or if he chooses favorites, every cause for uncertainty and fear should remain. However, if the determination of a human’s placement into heaven or Hell was not soley the jurisdiction of a higher being, the question raises to what ability humans have in determining their place in the afterlife, and where does the perfect justice of an eternal God intervene? In God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis writes,“It's not a question of God 'sending'

The Divine Comedy: Inferno begins when Dante is midway through life and he has lost his way. In the starting lines, Dante claims, “Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray From the straight road and woke To find myself Alone in a dark wood.” Dante declares that he has strayed away from the “straight road.” In Dante’s allegory, the straight road symbolizes the right and virtuous path that leads to God. Mankind must be constantly seeking morality, and once man begins to lose sight of this righteousness, they will begin to abandon God’s honest path. In order to remain on the right path, man must carefully strive for virtue and be aware of their sins.

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.

When you think of Hell, what do you see, perhaps a burning pit full of criminals and crazed souls? Or maybe you’re like Dante and have a well organized system of levels in correspondence with each person’s sins. In Dante Alighieri’s epic The Inferno, Dante and his real life hero, Virgil, go on an adventure through a rather elaborate version of Hell. In this version of Hell numerous thoughts and ideals are brought to the attention of the readers. Through Dante’s use of both imaginative and artistic concepts one can receive a great visual impression of how Dante truly views Hell, and by analyzing his religious and philosophical concepts the reader can connect with the work to better understand how rewarding this work was for the time period.