Themes and Analysis of Dante's Inferno
Themes and Analysis of Dante's Inferno
Dante’s Inferno by Dante Alighieri is a classic tale that involves Christian morality, and mythological and classical literature. In this tale we watch Virgil guide Dante through the circles of hell in order to reach heaven where Dante’s beloved Beatrice awaits. Dante created this tale in order to give the world a visual image of afterlife and to explain the Christian belief of sin and punishment. He explicitly takes us through each circle of purgatory describing what it looks like, who gets sent there, and what punishment they receive. Through this story Dante is preaching the perfection of God’s justice. He shows that Hell exists to punish sin and the sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their sin, as to correspond allegorically to that sin’s nature.
Each circle of Hell is described with great detail using gory images and specific examples of people who committed specific sins and what their consequences were. This was done to paint a picture of Hell and to make it a more feasible and realistic place. Through this Dante successfully portrays his theme of sin and purgatory that is the way to heaven is through hell.
In Dante’s Inferno, there are 34 Cantos. Each individual canto is filled with numerous connections to other literary pieces and tons of symbols on both an obvious and deeper level. The Inferno is a book that can be read over and over because of how dense and complicated each canto is. Therefore, I will analyze one very specific canto which is widely known and loved and which caught my own attention. My analyses will be on Canto V, which takes place in the second circle of Hell.
Starting off with the first three lines in Canto V, Dante creates the image of how hell is shaped. He says, “…It encloses a smaller space, but so much more suffering that it goads the souls to shriek” (pg 87). From this we can conclude that the first enclosure of Hell is Limbo and that each successive enclosure or circle gets smaller and smaller creating a funnel-like shape. Yet, while the circles get smaller in size they become greater in punishments, and the circumstances for these sinners become more and more uncomfortable. In the next line we are introduced to a new character called Minos. Dante draws the character Minos from...