The Theme Of Good And Evil In Dante's Inferno

Dante Alighieri went on a journey that was motivated by acrimony, revenge and retribution. The Divine Comedy is a story of Dante’s expedition through the afterlife with the help from a Roman poet, Virgil. In the Divine Comedy living in Hell is the same as living on earth in poverty today. Today, there are many politicians who are trying to help with the welfare of poverty, but they never follow through with their goals. Throughout Dante’s life on earth he witnesses the corruption of the church and power given to higher authorities because of their image. Many of the journeys that Dante has experienced in his journey through Hell are just like what we have experienced on earth whether you are rich or poor. However, there are significant differences between the two through symbolic signs and other non-religious meanings.

As Virgil leads Dante through the layers of Hell, they come across evildoers who are trapped in the personification of their own sinful personalities. Their tortures are extreme versions of their sins on earth. Dante imparts his own moral standards to the reader by portraying a hierarchy of evil that corresponds with his disapproval of the sin. As the pair of observers descends farther and farther into the pits of Hell, the punishments they see grow less and less bearable. While the evil in the first layers of Hell is simple, sometimes invoking pity in Dante, the lower levels of Hell punish souls for more complex and condemnable sins. It would be interesting to see a system of political justice based upon Dante's values.

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.

Dante Alighieri wrote Dante Devine Comedy which is a poem, “This poem records the travels of the Christian soul from Hell to purgatory and finally to salvation in three books- the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.”(Sayre, H.). We will be talking about the hell portion of the poem. He explained that there is nine levels of hell and each level represents a certain sin. Dante’s goal was to steer Christians away from corruption and bad ways. This was written to give them an idea of what would happen if they did not make it to Heaven and went to hell instead. He made this trip with poet Virgil and Virgil was guiding him through the inferno. We will be discussing each of the nine levels and who is in each level. He believed as the levels descended you got

Dante is described as someone who is trying to find God in his life, even journeying through Hell to do so. However, along the way Dante begins to see things that bring out the worst in him. Dante sees two of his old political rivals, at two separate times with two separate punishments, and he stopped to enjoy their pain and even laugh at them. Obviously this is not something he would do in his normal life, so it is safe to assume that spending time in Hell is taking a toll on his judgement.

Dante also shows which sins he sees as the worst of sins, putting betrayers in the lowest circle of hell. Dante employs some common sense while discussing hell, putting obvious sinners in the lower circles and prone to harsher punishments, but he also puts the not-so obvious sinners in hell. Even though one may think he is doing the right thing, all motives are evaluated upon judgment and even a trace of selfishness or greed may threaten one’s chance in heaven. This is why Dante’s hell is rife with politicians and leaders. Although they may have the community’s best interests at heart, politicians become obsessed with fame and glory, often forgetting that they are representatives of the people.

Dante clearly distinguishes crimes of passion or desire between crimes of violence and punishes them according to their degree. These sinners, the carnal, the gluttonous, the hoarders and wasters, along with the wrathful and sullen fall just below the virtuous pagans in Dante's hell. Somehow, they represent a loss of self-control, of reason gone amiss, as each dives into a personal world of self-indulgence. To Dante, those that surrender to the pleasures of the 'will' deserve an eternity less painful than the individuals who fall into emotional or mental despair.

Dante eventually realized that sin is a choice, and in his story creates Hell to have different levels of punishment for each sin. The way Dante divides the punishment of sins is accurate, and he is very successful in the way he chose to deliver his message of what Hell is like.

Many readers argue that Dante’s intentions during his journey into Hell were to gain revenge on his enemies. In each Circle of

Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno, translated by John Ciardi, is an epic poem based on Dante and Virgil’s journey through hell. Lucifer was an angel in heaven and God’s right hand man. He wanted to be equal to God and wanted to have as much power and all the respect that God had obtained from all of the other angels. After God found out about how he was trying to gain more power he sent him below the Earth’s surface. This is where hell resides. Dante was inspired to write this book after being exiled from Florence. The Stanford Encyclopedia stated about Dante’s life, “he never returned to Florence, and played no further role in public life, though he remained passionately interested in Italian politics, and became virtually the prophet of world empire in the years leading up to the coronation of Henry VII of Luxemburg as head of the Holy Roman Empire” (1312). One inspiration was because of the political nightmare Florence was facing. Before the fourteenth century the church and state were not separated. Throughout this epic poem Dante shows his major theme of how the state and church should be independent from each other but have equal powers. Another way Dante shows his hatred for the government is by identifying significant political figures at that time period in his journey through hell. Canto five and thirteen show how the sinners impacted Dante, questions that arise from the encounter, and insight to Dante’s main themes of his epic poem.

People view moral failures and sins as just wrong doings, and can easily get away with it, what they don’t realize is that there comes consequences. Dante shows us people suffering for not having bad sins at all. Although moral failures are looked upon differently by each and every person, they all have the same affect on people. Therefore in a way all failures and sins are connected even if it has different affect on your neighbor or some one else out there. Dante gives rankings on the failures and sins, which are the levels of hell.

The beginning lines of The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri indicate a pragmatic journey through the dark woods. It is soon evident that The Divine Comedy is in terms of an allegory. Midway through his life, Dante finds himself lost and in darkness. He is confused and unaware of how he has ended up in these dark woods. Dante soon comes across Italian poet Virgil, who will guide him through the Nine Circles of Hell. Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy: Inferno portrays Dante’s life and adventure through Hell which allegorically represents a much broader subject: man’s journey through life to salvation.

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).

     Judging by the character in the story Dante is a god fearing man who has moral issues in his life. He seem to be in a constant fight with himself about the right way he should live his life. By the end of the story Dante gives the impression that he a is strong believer in the theory of “you reap what you sow”. By the end of the story Dante gives you the impression that he does not feel pity for sinners being punished because he looks at it as a form of divine intervention.