Poetic justice, with its raised scale, Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Where, in fair balance, truth with gold it weighs, And solid pudding for empty praise. - Alexander Pope In the seventh story of the eighth day of Boccaccio's In the Decameron, the storyteller states: "Many stories already told have made us laugh greatly at the tricks people have played on each other, but in no case have we saw the victim take revenge.” The poetic justice of Boccaccio's version of hell lies in the fact that the tortured becomes the executioner and vice versa. The poetic justice is enhanced by the fact that throughout the story, the characters of Rinieri and Elena move from divine to satanic roles. This essay will also highlight some points in the story that are very similar to the ideas of Dante's Inferno. Boccaccio immediately draws a comparison between Elena and Lucifer with his portrait of her as "dressed (as our widows usually are) in black" and his description of Rinieri's immediate infatuation with her at the precise moment when he "needed 'a little diversion' (i.e. idle hands doing the devil's work). It is also worth noting that Rinieri found Elena, like sin, very tempting and intriguing: "[She] seemed to him the most beautiful and fascinating woman he had ever seen." Rinieri's perception of Elena as beautiful at the beginning of the story is sharply contrasted by Boccaccio's image of her charred and bloodied body later in the story, when Elena is described as "the ugliest thing in the world.” This transformation of Elena, in Rinieri's view, from a beautiful goddess into an ugly devil is symbolic of humanity's tendency to find certain sinful acts beautiful and tempting at first, and then to be repelled by the ugliness of these same acts. Boccaccio further shows the error in Rinieri's lust for Elena by writing that Rinieri thought that if he could hold Elena "naked in his arms" he would truly be able to claim "he was in paradise", so that in reality his pursuit of this evil woman leads him to a night of hell. Elena's comparison to the devil continues when Boccaccio describes her as not "keeping her eyes fixed on the ground...[she] quickly singled out men who showed interest in her." This passage evokes in the reader the image of the devil in hell looking down to earth, constantly searching for potential sinners. In contrast, Rinieri is portrayed as an honest and somewhat loyal character at the beginning of the story. Boccaccio's use of Christmastide as the moment of Rinieri's infernal night and his reference to the scholar as "the happiest man in Christendom" are subtle clues that the scholar is an innocent, almost human-like character. God, who is about to be deceived by the antichrist. or Lucifer. But Boccaccio lets the reader know that God (as represented by the scholar) will certainly prevail in the end when he writes in reference to Elena "Ah, what a poor unfortunate and misguided creature she must have been, dear ladies, to suppose that she could get the better of a scholar!' This passage also implies that God favors the intelligent and that evil is inherent in the ignorant, as represented by the unintelligent and evil Elena On the other hand, it is possible to view Elena as. the divine figure at the beginning of the story; her lover addresses her in a very Augustinian way as "the true source of my well-being, my rest and my delights, and the haven of all my desires" . When she observes her lover dancing in a ridiculous way..