Dante Alighieri wrote a major work known as the Commedia that consisted of three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The work's major theme is Christianity, specifically what it takes to get to heaven. In the Inferno, Dante learns that God's punishment is just, God's power is divine, and God's reign is eternal. .
God's punishment is just because the people committed their sins with full knowledge and full consent. When Virgil sees that Dante is upset with the people's punishments in Hell, he tells Dante that the people have openly committed the sins to which they are being punished. The law of symbolic retribution is that every sin has a fair punishment. An example would Cocytus being frozen because fraud is the worst sin, a cold crime. The deeper Dante and Virgil go into Hell, the worse the sins are. In every level the sinners are punished equally according to their crimes. .
Dante learns that God's punishment is just, but he also learns that God's power is divine. An example would be when the Furies will not let Dante and Virgil get passed the Gate of Dis. Heaven's messenger comes down and opens it with no effort. This shows that God has power over everything. Virgil represents human reason. Virgil's powers are limited just as human reason is limited. This shows that humans can only go so far without God's help. .
With God's divine power Dante is able to see every part of Hell, allowing him to see that God's punishment for committing sins last eternally. In every level of hell Dante asks the sinners to tell them their story so Dante can tell their story to the people who are still alive. In learning the stories of the sinners in Hell he can give knowledge to others so they can see that God's punishment will last forever. .
God's just punishment, divine power, and never-ending reign are major things Dante learns while he is in the Inferno because Dante is trying to teach the audience that doing God's will is important.
The classical works were pre-Christianity and used reason to explain things. ... Dante was around from 1265 to 1321. ... The book had a lot of Christian themes in it. ... Boccaccio lived in Florence with Petrarch and Dante in 1350. ... He also wrote a bibliography on Dante. ...
This essay will focus on comparing the Greek and Roman views of hell to Dante's medieval version. ... The whole theme of The Odyssey celebrates the abilities of the individual, which contradicts the theme of The Aeneid, holding truth to being "duty bound" to the state. ... It is interesting to read about the different layers or circles that have their own punishment and theme. ... Dante saw hell as a horrible place of eternal torture and separation from God, and that is not how Greece or Rome saw it. It was a place for the souls of the dead to go, and especially those who were wicked...
Darwinian Proofs Charles Darwin is one of the most recognizable names from the Victorian period. His works caused a major flux in culture including religion, science and human nature. Darwin showed that scientific observations collect facts and through these facts we can learn things about how th...
