... Literature explains the process of punishment as, "either resembling or contrasting with sin itself" (64). Contrapasso in regard to Dante's Inferno, has two meanings. Initially, contrapasso refers to divine retribution for the sin. This is evident, as Born is being punished in Hell for ... There, like a grain of spelt, it germinates (XXIII.93-99). Suicides (those who have committed violence against themselves), by rejecting the gift of human life, renounce their right to the human body. For such souls, "there's no place to which it is allotted, but wherever fortune has flung [it]," ... X...

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• Grade Level: High School

... , which was in a corrupt state. The physical ends of the journey are to strengthen the pilgrim's body for the upcoming and rigorous ascent on mount purgatory. The intellectual ends of the journey, however, are far more beneficial to the human soul. Man must first understand the foundations of sin before he can hope to climb the mountain of salvation; it is only ... constantly in opposite directions" (XV.26-7). The body, as well as the soul, has again been turned from its proper function by a perversion of nature. Dante's Inferno enables man to understand that the punishment of the soul i...

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... of those that have knowledge of the good. According to Plato the nature of the divine begins with the assumption that gods are perfect beings. They are essentially the forms or the perfect ideal. He brings up the matter when discussing myths told about the gods that portray them taking on different forms. Plato argues that since the gods are perfect that ... to take on an inferior outward form is to worsen one self and no being would willingly make itself worse. He's arguing the point that despite the fact that they are many gods they are only different facets of one being, aptly title ...

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... the beginning of The Inferno of Dante, by Robert Pinsky, Dante builds a great deal of tension between the objective of God's justice, and Dante's human sympathy for the souls that he sees around him. As the story progresses, however, the character becomes less and less inclined toward pity, and repeated comments by Virgil encourage this ... husbands brother Paolo da Rimini, in turn both wound up in The Second Circle of Hell. Both are condemned to a spinning torment. On his way, Dante reaches the Third Circle of Hell, only to see that these souls must lie in the mud. Torrential rains of f...

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