Comparing Sin And Punishment In Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno is the first part of the Italian poet’s 14th century epic poem Divine Comedy. It is a storytelling of Dante’s journey through Hell guided by Roman poet Virgil. Hell is portrayed as nine different circles of suffering located in the Earth’s core, where sinners receive punishment in perfect proportion to their sin: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here” (III, 7). As an overarching theme, the Divine Comedy represents the journey of the individual soul towards God, and Inferno being the first piece to the puzzle: the recognition and rejection of sin. In Inferno, Dante creates a correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment it receives in Hell. In other words, Hell exists to punish sin, but not irrationally. The

By analyzing Dante’s Inferno through the lens of Sin and Punishment, the cultural beliefs of the time and their position in society became much clearer. It turns out that the Inferno is narrated from a Christian doctrinal perspective, and not a particularly philosophical, which gives an even greater insight to the cultural values and beliefs of the time. The tension around Sin and Punishment was due to the fact that it was easy to pity someone in suffering, or feel sympathy or empathy for something being punished for their sins. However, one was not supposed to pity someone being punished for their sins, as they were punished fairly in correspondence with their evil. Instead, one was meant to not care, or even take pleasure in other people’s punishments, which is what gave rise to the tensions. However, this is what ultimately lead to the appreciation of this cultural belief. As people learnt how to not pity other people’s suffering, it showed an appreciation and respect of God’s will and His design of Sin and Punishment. Having analyzed the Inferno in that way, the Christian basis of the narration of the poem is what allowed for a greater understanding of these