We become fence sitters when we do not have the courage of our convictions. Our choicelessness betrays our values and ourselves because we are so self-absorbed that we need to keep all our comfort options constantly open. We aimlessly drift away from ourselves because we do not ground our behavior and opinions on convictions and deep self-knowledge. Choice is humanizing and strip us our dignity. Dante’s poem urges us to make conscious use of this exquisite gift of choice. We can use it or abuse it but it isabsolute torment to refuse to make choices.

In Dante’s Inferno, the main scheme is to gain individual satisfaction. Personal recovery is dependent on the love of others. This is true when Dante first meets Beatrice. Beatrice was sent to help guide Dante through Hell and it is she who is the patron of Dante’s self-remembrance. The encouragement, love, and passion of another have a restorative effect on a person. To become isolated from others is to be submerged in the ice of Hell. A person's self perceptions can be frozen and they are unable to move or respond to love. A person rarely gives up on those they love, at least not with out a great struggle. Giving up on our own liberation is quite natural, most of the times. Being found worthy in the eyes of another allows us a new perspective on ourselves, especially if their admiration and compassion is coupled with actions of self-sacrifice. In other words, to discover one-self they must go and find someone who will love them. It may not be a demonstrated love but merely an act of human kindness that point to a great love. As in Dante, one may have to move backward in time to remember when they were loved and valued. Our personalities may have become knotty in the Dark Wood that only a past hope can supply the needed spark to change. Falling in love can help recognize and bring out the best in us.

Love and choice are two tools of character that I will discuss in this paper. Love and choice will increase our chances of progressing toward liberation and union with each other and our source. Essentially, these traits have to do with the courage to hope. It is easier to believe that we cannot change and that our circumstances or fate determine our destiny. People tend to give up before they start. It hurts to give something our best effort only to fail. We are pessimistic and automatically think that we are going to fail. Dante’s poem develops this realism of the two tools of character, love and choice.

We must also become familiar with the place that personal choice has in our journey in life. In Hell, our choices are frozen and can never to be made again. In Purgatory, our choices are a prerequisite of progress. In Heaven, our choices are celebrated. Dante characterizes those who live an erratic life as fence sitters whom follow one voice, and then another but never their own. They impulsively go one-way and then another, fearful of the consequences of their choices. They run after this standard and then clapping their hands in nervous applause and then weeping in fear. According to Dante, fence sitters neither lived nor died; they merely reacted, having lost the benefit of reason. Reason can be described as the ability to act ant think logically and critically. It can be considered as a state of sanity. Reason is weighing every option before proceeding. It often leads to positive things in life. People, who live by reason, live by a standard of living that is acceptable by society. In contrast fence sitters are utterly self-interested having never given themselves to any higher obligation than immediate comfort. For their indecision and lack of courage they are overlooked in both Heaven and Hell.

In many ways, Dante's Inferno can be seen as a kind of imaginative taxonomy of human evil, the various types of which Dante classifies, isolates, explores, and judges. At times we may question its organizing principle, wondering why, for example, a sin punished in th

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