DANTE'S INFERNO AND COMPASSION FOR INHABITANTS OF HELL
Dante's Inferno was composed in the 14th century and therefore containselements of rigid orthodox Christian beliefs. Here the author acts as thecustodian of morality and makes a concrete attempt to help people see howabsolutely terrifying would be the conditions in Hell. Despite the factthat the book revolves around various forms of punishments and stories ofsinners, the author who is also the protagonist of the book, initiallyadopts a very compassionate stance on the issue of punishment. Dante, likeany other human being, is initially taken aback by the horrendouspunishments that await the sinners in Hell. He is so consumed by compassionthat he almost faints yet with the passage of time, he realizes that hiscompassion is misplaced. Dante resolves the long-standing conflict betweencompassion and judgment by concluding that those who are guilty ofwrongdoings deserve no sympathy or compassion but only punishment for theystrayed away from the right path and thus failed to establish God's orderIn Inferno, Dante focuses on the horrors of hell. He portrays himself asthe hero in his epic saga and helps us understand that there is no escapefrom punishment for sinners and thus compassion need not b
The two had beenengaged in an illicit love affair since Francesco was married. Yet, although the poem stages an imaginary voyage through the realmsof the afterlife, it deals with human experience. He believed that with his visions of Heaven andHell would ensure that readers would return to the right side of the path. It ispresented in the form of a vision experienced by the author in the year1300, when, as he puts it, he was at the mid - point of his journey throughlife. In reply,Virgil admonishes him severely for sympathizing with those who sinned whenclear orders of God had reached them. Dante used his Biblical knowledge to a great extent when he portrayed avery graphic and disturbing image of hell. Hesays that the sinners are given the same punishment in a continuous loopfor eternity. InChristianity as in most other religions, such behavior is severelycondemned and thus the two lovers had also been given terrifyingpunishments in Hell. But his compassion fades gradually andturns into abhorrence when he realizes that every punishment could beeasily justified. Borgese has put it soaptly in his essay "On Dante Criticism" (1936), "the history of Dantecriticism is, broadly speaking, the process of recovery or discovery ofstructure and unity from scattered gems of beauty amidst barbaricobscurities" (Monarch Notes, 1963, reference 1)Dante's purpose of composing Inferno was his curiosity about the possiblefate of the human body and its soul after death' The author was hopefulthat his stories of Hell would stop the readers from committing sin andmove to a self-righteous path. Those who would sin would awaittheir punishments in Hell and the self-righteous would reap the rewards inHeaven. This was the only way we couldresolve the eternal conflict between compassion and judgment. He draws a very terrifying picture of these punishments butthese graphic images were important since they helped serve the realpurpose of the book i.
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