blog




  • Essay / An Analysis of Dante's Inferno - 1041

    “Abandon all hope, you who enter here” (Inferno, Cantos III). This line inscribed above the gates of Hell, and notably one of Dante Alighieri's most iconic lines, Inferno, describes the horrors that await us inside Hell. Dante Alighieri wrote The Divine Comedy while in exile from his home and birthplace, Florence. The Divine Comedy is not only a physical, but also a spiritual journey that consists of three parts. The first part is Inferno where Dante travels through Hell with his guide, the Roman poet Virgil. The second part is called Purgatory, where Dante travels through the place where souls still have hope of entering heaven. Finally, the last part of the Comedy is Paradise where Dante sees the rejection of God. The InfernoDante is like everyone else in that he knows absolutely nothing about Hell. It can be said that one of the reasons Dante wrote Inferno was for a moral purpose. Show the living the error of their ways and direct them to the path of salvation. Dante creates his own vision of Hell, but no one knows for sure if Hell is really as he describes it. It could be less violent or it could be unimaginably worse. Of course, the threat of Hell can only work if someone believes in the notion of Hell and Heaven and, ultimately, if they believe in God. Addressing this problem, Dante assigns places in The Inferno to those who do not believe. There is a special area in Hell for those who were born before the practice of Christianity and therefore could not believe in God. “These were without sin. And yet these merits fail, because they lack the grace of baptism, which is the door to the true faith for which you were born. Their births fell before the age of Christian mysteries, and therefore they did not worship the Trinity of God with the greatest duty” (Hell, Canto IV). His guide, Virgil, says that is where he resides. There is also another category of sinners who are punished for their beliefs. “All around, there are flames and red-hot tombs from which lamentations emerge. Virgil explains to the pilgrim that here are buried the souls of the many and various heretics who are burning. “Hell describes a situation in which the incarcerated have no hope and no possibilities” (Baur). Dante describes hell as the state of the soul after death, influenced by choices made in life. "Constructed like an enormous funnel with nine descending circular ledges, Dante's Inferno is a vast, meticulously organized torture chamber in which sinners, carefully and almost pedantically categorized according to the nature of their sins, suffer hideous punishments, often depicted with macabre attention detail” (“Dante”) Many punishments are very cruel and unusual, such as punishments for suicide. The one who committed suicide becomes a tree and is pecked at by the harpies. twig breaks, it is the equivalent of a dismembered human being Another group punished is that of the debauched (those who did not value their earthly goods “Behind these two, the wood was invaded by). packs of hungry and ready black bitches, like hunting dogs barely freed from their chains, they sank their fangs into this poor unfortunate man who was hiding, they tore him apart piece by piece, then fled with mouthfuls of his wretches; members” (Hell, Canto XIII). There are even more gruesome and painful punishments in The Inferno. This fear of eternal pain succeeds in acting as a threat to motivate people to act morally.