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Nature Of Evil In Dante's Inferno

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The devil is the supreme being of all evil. The villain, once called Lucifer and was the greatest of all angels l, rebelled against God over his jealousy of man. Turning evil and fighting the Almighty, he was destined to lose and thrown out of heaven, along with his army. In Dante’s Inferno, he resides in the deepest bowels of hell, where he tortures the three worst traitors in human history: Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Jesus of Nazareth, Cassius and Brutus, slayers Julius Caesar. In hell, contrapasso rules, and the appearances of the fallen angel Lucifer agrees with it.

Dante depicts Lucifer, who was once the most beautiful Angel, as a he does to show his punishment. He is given three faces and bat-like wings as punishment for rebelling against God. His three faces were of different colours and his once golden wings, now “no feathers had they, but as of a bat their fashion was” (Alighieri 49-50). All the beauty, that he was known for, was gone. He become what he was something terrible for his betrayal, a vile creature. Next, Satan is entrapped in a frozen lake at the center of the world. He tries to escape by using his wings and “thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed” (52). The Devil’s efforts to escape makes it even more difficult for he is setting the lake to become more …show more content…

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

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