Themes of Dante's Inferno

Themes of Dante's Inferno Dante's Inferno exemplifies a Hell in which God's justice is just as perfect as everything else he does. Each division of Hell along with the punishments within them seem to directly correspond to the sins man had commited on Earth. The punishments also become exceedingly more horrible the deeper one finds himself in Hell. As the story progresses, however, the character becomes less and less inclined toward pity, as he discovers that sinners receive punishment in perfect proportion to their sin and to pity their suffering is to demonstrate a lack of understanding of God's perfect justice. It is interesting to find that Dante's moral system prioritizes not human happiness or harmony on Earth but rather God’s will in Heaven. A fraudulent person is placed i the sixth ring of Hell while a murderer is placed in the fourth ring of Hell. Dante thus considers violence less evil than fraud: of these two sins, fraud constitutes the greater opposition to God’s will. God's will is that we treat each other with the same love he has for us; while violence acts against this love, fraud constitutes a perversion of it. A fraudulent person extends care and love while at the same time perpetrating sin against it. Dante finds Yet, while Inferno implies these moral arguments, it generally engages in little discussion of them. In the end, it declares that evil is evil simply because it contradicts God’s will, and God’s will does not need further justification. The people Dante meets during his journey through Hell want him to tell their stories to people once Dante gets out of Hell. This consistent motive of the damned implies that immortality is accomplished by the passing over of memories through storytelling from generation to generation.