Dante's Contrapasso In The Inferno

All the punishments are awful. However, when Dante describes the punishments of those who committed violence against god he clearly shows his anger towards these people through the punishment he gave them. Those who are: simonists, fraudulent, magicians, diviners, and fortune tellers. The punishment for all the fraudulent is to be boiled in pitch and furthermore to have devils jab them with pitchforks. As for the other sins they have four punishments any of them could get such as: Face down in holes while their feet burn, being integrated with others forever, to wallow in ordure, and lastly being covered with sores and scabs from head to toe. Dante was pretty serious when coming to this certain kind of people, and these many punishments were

Dante’s Inferno describes the three levels of Hell. Each level is reserved for different types of sinners. The Inferno has three beast that represents the three types of sin. The she wolf represents self-indulgence. The lion represents violence, and the leopard represents fraud. Within Hell, there is nine circles that are divided into these three levels. The sixth circle and the seventh circle are for the violent sins, level two. The sixth circle of hell is reserved for those who are guilty of heresy. The seventh circle of hell is for those who are guilty of violence towards themselves, property, or other people.

Jesus has descended into Hell and granted salvation to the souls in Limbo with hope. With the absence of these saved souls, every soul left in Hell has no hope of salvation. The sigh that states “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” acts as a warning for only the souls damned to stay in Hell for all of eternity (I, III, 31). No matter what ring of Hell a soul is punished within, the loss of hope is part of their punishment. Dante is one of the few that enter Hell that retains hope. His journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven is what grants him salvation and the reason he never loses hope. The souls atoning for their sins in Purgatory have hope of salvation since all the most do is wait and atone in order to be in Heaven. The hope is only stripped from the souls damned to Hell while every other soul possess hope for

The damned sinners of hell will receive their punishments for eternity. Each of the damned souls have been carefully judged and they all get the right punishment.. According to Dante, Brutus, Cassius, Judas, and Lucifer are all the greatest sinners of all time. They each got the torture that they earned from their terribly wrongful doings. No one shall pity them, only ignore them. Contrapasso shall always be just because justice is not prejudice. Justice like contrapasso has no pity or remorse, and it cannot be reasoned with or bribed. It is set perfectly and Dante set hell up with that philosophy for its cruelty. All evil shall receive the eternal discipline that God had set

Dante meets people through his journey of the many circles in the Inferno that lead him down into the center of hell, where Satan is. Satan is seen as being monster-like with three heads, representing a mocking of the Trinity and blowing his wings around the cocytus river. The final thing seen here is the fact that Dante’s description of Satan is a bit disappointing compared to the other descriptions he has written about the inferno. Dante’s portrayal of Satan is paradoxically empty and monstrous; it captures Satan in his true form and speaks of who he truly is.

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. Each circle explains the sin and the punishment the sinners endured in their afterlife. Some circles even included historic figures in Dante’s hell because of their actions in life. The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale reveal characters who were not portrayed as good people. In the Prologue, the Wife of Bath explains the encounter she had with five of her husbands. Three of the husbands were pleasant while the other two were not. On the other hand, in the tale she tells a story about a Knight who takes the maidenhood of a young girl which almost causes him to lose his life and about women gaining sovereignty. The Wife of Bath fifth husband, King Arthur, the Knight, and the Wife of Bath will be placed in Dante’s hell in the Inferno.

Religion was an extremely important aspect of the Renaissance. During that era, it was near enough impossible to find a text that was not heavily influenced by Christianity and what it represented for different types of people. Perhaps the most famous text that did this was The Divine Comedy, or more specifically, Inferno, written by Dante Aligheri. In this poem, Dante, as a fictionalised version of himself, reflects on morality, death and sin. He wrote the poem in his native tongue to make the poem more accessible to readers, so that they fully understood the message he was attempting to send. I thoroughly believe that in a culture so reliant on religion, sin and sinners are represented reasonably well due to the detailed accounts of various sinners in Hell. In my opinion however in modern times, this is not a brilliant representation of sin as Dante allows his feelings about personal experiences to cloud the judgement of fictional characters in the poem.

The story revolves around metaphors where everything has a double meaning behind what is said. Here what Dante is trying to tell us is that he wakes up in hell because he has strayed from the righteous path that the church and God has set for him. This medieval writing continues throughout the layers of hell sinners are damned to hell and live in a world devoid of any sanitation everything around them is full of suffering and death. Above the gate is a message that tells the beginning of the journey into hell and the suffering that will be caused, “I AM THE WAY INTO THE DOLEFUL CITY, I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL GRIEF… ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER” (399, 1). The church brings out these punishments seeing as the medieval era he lived in was during the time that the church dominated a person’s way of living. According to the church you would be sentenced to hell by God if you had not going to a clergyman before your death and pleaded them to pray to God for their forgiveness. Each punishment is also reflective of medieval writing as the punishments fit each of the crimes that the sinners have done. The first time we see sinners being punished

In Dante’s Inferno it also says, “The sinner is the middle, whose feet are sticking out of Lucifer’s mouth, is the worst human sinner of all time: Judas, who betrayed the Son of God… The other two sinners, whose top halves are sticking out of Lucifer’s mouth, are Cassius and Brutus,” (34).This shows who the three biggest sinners were and shows how the punishment is way tougher for them. Since Lucifer flaps his wings eternally and has three faces, Judas, Brutus and Cassius are placed in Satan’s mouth to be chewed on eternally. Dante feels that he has also been betrayed by these sinners so that is the way in which he has those three sinners punished eternally in hell. Dante feels that they should spend an eternity in hell due to the fact that he has been betrayed . Him being betrayed makes it the biggest punishment as where it fits contrapasso.

Dante ensures this happens by using the concept of contrapasso, which describes the relationship between sin and the resulting justification in Hell. The literal definition of contrapasso is the 'counter-strike' or the 'counter-suffering which translates literally as "counter-penalty." And in Dante’s Hell, sinners are punished according to the nature of their sin, so that their punishment fits their crime. And as we see throughout the story, some sinners literally become the personification of their sins while others become victims in Hell of the crimes they committed while on

Purgatory fills Dante with relief and hope. As Dante travels through Purgatory, his mind becomes pure through Virgil’s teachings. In Canto III, Virgil teaches Dante “to be satisfied with the quia of cause unknown.” Dante learns to have trust and faith in God and not question His power. Dante confront sinners in a completely different way than in Hell. He is able to show forgiveness because the sinners opened their heart to God’s love and admitted their sin. Dante is washed from all of his sin at the end of Purgatory, “I came back from those holiest waters new, remade, reborn.” Now enlightened, Dante is no longer consumed with empathy, hatred and forgiveness. He is only filled with the love of God.

Everything within the universe is part of this hierarchy because everything has its own “impulse”—its own inclination that is either earthly or celestial (Pa.I.101-102, 114). This hierarchy of light suggests that Dante’s transition from earth to heavenly paradise is possible because his impulse originates from God, or from the Light. Within the universal order, Beatrice says, “[E]very nature has its bent, according to a different station, nearer or less near its origin” (Pa.I.109-111). Thus, earthly creatures like Dante, at least until the moment he and Beatrice ascend from purgatory to paradise, have impulses toward earthly light because they are closer to the earth than they are to the divine. Dante can change his impulse from earthly to divine through the transformative light that initially touches him on his ascent to

One of the most significant themes, if not the most significant theme within Dante’s Inferno is the perfection of God’s divine justice. Dante expressees divine justice within Inferno in a multitude of ways, with one of the the most prominent examples being the overall structure of Hell and how the punishment for the sinners (perfectly) reflects upon the sin. To the modern reader, Hell likely seems more like an act of cruelty than divine justice, much less a product of God’s love. At first,the torments that the sinners are subjected to seems extreme and grotesque. But, as the poem continues to progress, it becomes quite clear the there is a perfect balance within God’s justice as the degree of each sinner’s punishment perfectly reflects upon the gravity of the sin. Furthermore, the inscription on the gates of Hell explicitly states that Hell exists as a result of divine justice; “ll. “Justice moved my great maker; God eternal / Wrought me: the power and the unsearchably / High wisdom, and the primal love supernal (III.4-6).”

In Dante's Inferno, Dante who is main character is getting a tour of hell by his tour guide Virgil. Virgil his tour guide presents to him all the nine levels of hell, including the punishments the sinners must suffer with for all eternity. In the ninth level of hell, the worst sinners are frozen in a giant lake. The sinners are then eaten alive by whom is so called satan. According to Dante, Satan is described as “Than do the giants with those arms of his; consider now how great must that whole, which unto such a part conforms itself… O, what a marvel it appeared to me, when i beheld three faces on his head! The one on front, and that vermilion was…” (Dante's Inferno: Canto XXXIV) In other words, the theme of satan's description is an eternal punishment that will be powerful enough for the divine right. Using contrapasso, sinners must pay for the punishments in which they have committed in their lifetime. The sin will always fit the punishment. In other words, contrapasso is a reflection of the sin being punished.