While both Augustine’s confessions and Dante’s Inferno are concerned with the individual's repentance and conversion of life, Confessions seems to be more personal and Inferno more encyclopedic. Augustine organizes his work to be about him finding who God is and his conflict for conversion. It is a biography to how Augustine found faith in Christianity and within God. Dante in the other hand, while being a character in his poem, struggles as well, looking to get to heaven but the journey he takes is an experience for the character and not the actual poet himself.
Dante’s Inferno is an epic poem by Durante “Dante” degli Alighieri, written in the 1300s. He wrote a trilogy, known as the Divine Comedy, consisting of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante was inspired by many events and issues happening at that time, such as the war between Guelphs and Ghibellines, the Battle of Montaperti, and Christian religious beliefs. In this paper, I will explore the first book, Inferno, on the topic of Hell and how the sinners had a significant impact on Dante’s journey through Hell. In Circle 5: Styx, Canto VIII, Filippo Argenti, a sinner of Wrathful, helped Dante to symbolize to readers his anger towards Black Guelphs, political enemies of the White Guelphs.
The only time someone has faced consequences for their actions is by possessing a book. Towards the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, Clarisse, a girl who thinks differently from the rest of society, is run over and everyone overlooks it. No one gives a second thought about who killed her, they just move on with their lives. In the society that we live in, people can get out of jail with good behavior, a decent lawyer, and a bail amount, which results in no long-term consequences. An example of this happening in society today is the minimum amount of money that counts as theft being raised to $950.
The reason Dante choose the particular punishments for the sinners in the same ring is because Dante believed that the punishments should fit the crime the person they committed. Dante’s hell is divided into different parts where at the top is the sins that aren’t seen as big and at the bottom are the sins that are considered the worst to him. Dante believed in God’s fairness and believed God wouldn’t let anyone get away with committing sins and would seek justice by punishing people with punishments that fit the crime. In the first circle, which is Limbo, is where the unbaptized go this ring is made up of non-Christians and babies who died before being baptized who are punished with eternity in an inferior form of Heaven they live in a castle
Dante portrays the punishment of these sinners as exceptionally brutal, with demons constantly tearing them apart. This highlights the severity of their sin and the damage it caused to society. The retribution is a form of poetic justice, as the sinners experience the same violence they inflicted on others. Disunity is a significant concept that can cause harm to
In Inferno, Dante is the main character who is fighting between good and evil, which translates to be the theme of the story. Dante explores deeply the Christian hell and heaven, which includes the immediate Purgatory. This experience makes him cast his allegiance to good and God. The differences between these two stories are depicted when comparing the epic conventions, epic characteristics, and when comparing the various religious backgrounds of the times in which these two stories were written.
In the Inferno, Dante describes the different levels of hell and the punishment which corresponds to the sin. Dante categorize hell into three major sins consisting of incontinence, violence, and fraudulent. Fraudulent is portrayed as the worse sin in the Inferno while incontinence is seen as a less serious sin. Each category has sinners which have all been punished for their wrong doings in life. The three major sins consist of circles where Dante separates the different sinners.
On his journey, he meets people and listens to their stories and how they received their punishments. Dante shows the punishment of the sinners by use of analogy and antithesis. This is shown in canto five through lush between a couple, in canto thirteen through violence against oneself, and in canto twenty- three through fraudulence between hypocrites. Dante shows the punishment of the sinners by use of antithesis in canto five through lust between a couple. First, Dante meets the lustful.
The punishment fits the crime. That statement conforms to the ideas of a system know as retributive justice. Retributive justice is rooted in proportionality. This means that a punishment should be to the same degree of ones sin. This system appeals to me personally because it avoids giving people the chance to seak revenge.
The novel begins with Dante being lost in the woods and almost being attacked by three beasts, a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf, which later I realized as the reader that these beasts represented his sins. Virgil is able to save him from the beasts and guides him through the nine circles of Hell, each circle representing a different type of sin. During their journey through Hell, they encounter many different people, including many famous poets, along the way that have disobeyed God and were being punished in the pits of Hell. I did find it interesting that some of the people Dante encountered in Hell were his
As human beings, we constantly make sinful mistakes and we seek to find the degree of how badly each sin really is. There are the individuals who seek to find these degrees or levels of severity in the context of what society deems fit and to conform to society’s needs. Then there are the spiritually involved individuals who seek the answer from a religious standpoint, in order to calculate where they stand in terms of the afterlife. This is where the great poet Dante Alighieri gave his input on the different sins of his time and the degree of evil that corresponds to each sin. He shared his thoughts with the world in his epic poem Inferno.
In this literary masterpiece outlining the layers and punishments of hells, and Dante’s (the traveller) journey through hell. Dante is met by Virgil at the edge of the forest that has three beasts blocking the way to a hill, Dante decides to follow Virgil to the depths of hell in order to reach this light. Through his journey through hell Dante sees the many levels of hell: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Avarice and Prodigality, Wrath and Sullenness, Heresy , Violence, Fraud and Treachery. These levels have different punishments for each sin, ranging from being constantly blown around in a hurricane to eaten by Lucifer, and when Dante sees these punishments he is disgusted yet learns from the poor actions of humans. The end of his journey in hell takes
Dante wrote Inferno in 1321, it was published shortly after his death. During this time there were a lot of wars and political conflicts going on. Which means there were people who betrayed each other. The author of Inferno reveals his contempt for political and religious traitors by putting them through severe punishment in circle nine, and through the use of literary devices. Dante enters the first round of circle nine, Caina, here are the people who were treacherous against their family, their punishment is to have their necks and heads out of the ice.
Dante’s Inferno is about a man name Dante Alighieri that goes thru the nine circles of hell. Each circle represents a sin(s) that you have committed and you’ll have to repent for them before your soul completely passes on. Limbo, the first circle of hell is for non-Christians and unbaptized pagans that reserve punishment from within entity of this circle from heaven’s inferno. Lust, the second circle of hell is for the people who are filled with nothing but lust, which means all they want is sexual pleasure, and they are punished by strong winds that violently push them back and forward. It is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Canto 22 explores the eighth circle of Hell, where the fraudulent are punished. In this canto, Dante and Virgil meet the False Counsellors, who receive a punishment that matches the severity of their sin. This canto comments on the moral and political landscape of Dante's time and is significant within the time in which Dante lived. The False Counsellors are divided into two groups: the seducers or flatterers. Seducers are punished with flames, flatterers with excrement.
