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What Is The Theme Of Justice In Dante's Inferno

Decent Essays

Nichamon Roongroj
Professor Harrington
RN 106
November 15, 2017
The Inferno of Dante
In the Fourth Circle of Hell, Dante encounters those who have been condemned to the inferno for reasons of greed. In this Fourth Circle, once again Dante’s use of contrapasso is apparent with the punishment assigned to the greedy. These people have lived a life on Earth that was constantly distinguished by their avarice. Thus, such individuals hoard their wealth in an effort to merely accumulate material goods. They are not concerned with any type of use of these goods, but instead simply attempt to multiply them, in line with the logic of greed. For the avarice person, it is the constant acquisition and storage of material goods, such as money, which dominates …show more content…

For instance, the flatterers are forced to eat excrement in hell because their words are meaningless. In Canto III, the first seven lines read, “through me you enter into the city of woes…justice moved my high maker, in power divine, wisdom supreme” which suggests that God created Hell for justice. Many of the sins mirror the actions on Earth to create a balance. The sinner receive punishment that befits their sin. Dante, speaking from a Christian perspective, upholds that a concept of justice is central to the faith. When the human being sins he commits a transgression, which must be paid for in the afterlife: if there was no punishment, there would be no justice, since every human being, regardless of how they lived their life, would be treated the same. These punishments reflect justice in this sense, and also in the specific sense of how each punishment suits a specific sin. Without punishment, without a sense of justice, it would show a God who essentially does not care how people have lived their lives. And in this sense, it is also love: precisely because through justice God does show that he cares about how human beings have conducted themselves and does pay attention to the actions of human beings and recognizes ethical

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