The Irony Of The Sinner

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.

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

Dante explains, “If I had words grating and crude enough that really could describe this horrid hole supporting the converging weight of Hell, I could squeeze out the juice of my memories to the last drop. But I don’t have these words, and so I am reluctant to begin.” On his journey, Dante states that he does not have the words to explain Dante believes that an individual has to see the circles of hell to understand it’s make up and importance. This is crucial to individualism because Dante believes that every person should have the chance to see the circles and form an opinion about hell based off of their own findings, not from what they hear from another individual. Dante understands that individuals should have their own intellectual development, their own thought process of thinking, learning, and questioning, by creating one’s own interpretations Dante questions his ‘master’ Virgil during the journey, which proves that authority figures, role models, or people of a higher status should not dictate how one lives their life.

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.

Central to “Inferno” is the concept of contrapasso, the idea that the punishment one experiences in Hell is the reversal of one’s sin on earth: gluttons are forced to consume filth against their will; prophets and soothsayers have their bodies disfigured to turn their heads backwards; adulterers are forever forced to couple with their lovers; it is a poetic, medieval take on Exodus’s reciprocal punishment of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (King James Bible, Exodus 21:24). Within Canto XIII Dante meets those who have committed suicide: those that have taken their lives are “reborn” into bleeding, deformed trees upon which harpies feed and onto which harpies nest. There they remain forever, subject to all forms of abuse--and completely unable to abuse themselves again (as they did in life). While Dante’s intent may be to illustrate the justice of God’s punishment for sins done on earth, the forest of suicides found in Canto XIII questions the punishments delivered by God through the words and actions of the unfortunate souls found in this level, the words of our guide, Virgil, and our the words of our protagonist, Dante.

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, “Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.” Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an

While love is not frequently mentioned in the poem the Inferno, it always has a presence on the back of the reader’s mind. The most surprising appearance of love comes at the gates of hell. This is where Dante learns that this place of punishment has been created from “Primal Love”. Dante displayed hell as being birthed from “the primal love”, or the Holy Spirit. Though those who do not believe the justice of eternal punishment are all less inclined to regard it as a byproduct of God’s love. In this essay I will reveal how hell is the result of God’s loving character, and how it was indeed created from love.

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

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.

In Canto V of The Inferno, Dante offers what seems to be a sympathetic portrait of two medieval lovers caught and condemned after re-enacting a passionate scene from Arthurian Romance. A modern reader might well find the story of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta moving, especially when the narrator himself swoons with pity at the canto's end. It is true that in Dante's ethical scheme, the sin of Paolo and Francesca is not among the worst: the two lovers are guilty of "incontinence" rather than bestial intemperance, and the elegant, literary way in which they sin only increases our desire to

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.

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.

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.

In the Inferno, Canto XXVII, Dante comes across the Sowers of Scandal and Schism while on his journey through hell. Dante, the poet, reveals that schism and scandal cause division within family and community. The sinners must walk in an endless cycle of punishment. Their bodies are cut up by the sword of a devil, only to heal and come back to be sliced again. These sinners are aware of certain things going on in the world, but they can only contact the living through Dante the pilgrim. There idea of helping the living reveals their inability to recognize their sins and why they are in hell. Through poetic imagery and narration, Dante uses a comparison to the battle of Puglia, the mutilation of the bodies, and the encounter with