Levels Of Hell In Dante's Inferno

limbo, 2. lust, 3. gluttony, 4. greed, 5. anger, 6. heresy, 7. violence, 8. fraud, and 9. treachery. Dante journeys through hells layers and as he gets closer to the center of hell, the sins, and their penalties get crueler. In the first level, limbo, all the individuals who died before becoming Christians reside, including famous philosophers Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. After limb, arrives the part of hell which is comprised of sins of the flesh: greed, anger, gluttony, and lust. In the last remaining circles, Dante witnesses’ souls that have committed severer sins such as; violence against God, fraud, false prophets, violent against nature, thieves, and hypocrites. The punishments for these sins are extremely painful, including souls being submerged in boiling blood and fire. The last circle of hell is treachery. This round is separated into four compartments corresponding to the gravity of their sins and all of the sould are stuck in the frozen

When you think of Hell, what do you see, perhaps a burning pit full of criminals and crazed souls? Or maybe you’re like Dante and have a well organized system of levels in correspondence with each person’s sins. In Dante Alighieri’s epic The Inferno, Dante and his real life hero, Virgil, go on an adventure through a rather elaborate version of Hell. In this version of Hell numerous thoughts and ideals are brought to the attention of the readers. Through Dante’s use of both imaginative and artistic concepts one can receive a great visual impression of how Dante truly views Hell, and by analyzing his religious and philosophical concepts the reader can connect with the work to better understand how rewarding this work was for the time period.

To merely say that Dante was interested in the world of hell would be an understatement. His needs to explore and write about the nine different realms could best be described as an obsession. It’s an adventure, a tale, a dream (or nightmare) of different historical, biblical, and Greek gods and creatures living their lives in the afterlife of the underground world. Each level has its own form of punishment fitting the crime one has committed.

Dante’s The Inferno is his own interpretation of the circles of hell. The people that Dante places in hell tried to validate their offenses and have never seen the injustice of their crime or crimes. They were each placed in a specific circle in Hell, Dante has nine circles in his hell. Each circle holds those accountable for that specific crime. Each circle has its own unique and fitting punishment for the crime committed. There are three different main types of offenses; they are incontinence, violence, and fraud. These offenses are divided into Dante’s nine rings of Hell. Each of these rings has a progressively worse punishment, starting with crimes of passion and

After passing through the City of Dis, Virgil and Dante enter Nether Hell, where violent and heretical sinners are punished. Dante portrays these sins of corrupt will as more evil and deserving of worse punishment than the weak-willed sins of upper hell. Souls who, during life, were violent against their neighbors boiled in a river of blood. Suicide cases are trapped in the form of trees, unable to scream unless gauged by horrible birds. The violent against God are sprawled face-up on burning sand, eternally confronting the proclaimed enemy. Even within an individual circle, some sinners are punished more than others. Among the violent against God, Capaneus is more severely punished than his peers because of his pride. He continues to be blasphemous, even in death, declaring, "That which in life I was, in death I am." His stubbornness and pride in death causes

Though it is not technically a level of Hell, I could not help but think of myself when Dante and Virgil traveled through the Vestibule. This antechamber is the eternal home to "the opportunists." Here, these souls are condemned to forever chase after a banner, punishment for leading their lives only following themselves without ever taking the side of good or evil. They are constantly being stung by hornets, representing their guilty consciences that always swarm them.

While this punishment does not seem as severe as the other circles, it is symbolic of the greedy's fruitless pursuit of earthly riches. Dante places this in an even lower circle of hell because in regards to the sin of miserliness or squandering money, the abusers are even more aware of their sin. Furthermore, sin's underlying principle is even more visible here. According to Aquinas' reasoning of sin in Dante's Inferno, pride is at the root of all sin. “Whereas pride regards sin as turning away from God, to Whose commandment man refuses to be subject, for which reason it is called the beginning, because the beginning of evil consists in turning away from God” (Aquinas, 385).

Inferno, the first part of Divina Commedia, or the Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, is the story of a man's journey through Hell and the observance of punishments incurred as a result of the committance of sin. In all cases the severity of the punishment, and the punishment itself, has a direct correlation to the sin committed. The punishments are fitting in that they are symbolic of the actual sin; in other words, "They got what they wanted." (Literature of the Western World, p.1409) According to Dante, Hell has two divisions: Upper Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of incontinence, and Lower Hell, devoted to those who perpetrated sins of malice. The

They did not commit any sins, yet this region is more hospitable than the rest of the levels. The Limbo level includes right-minded non-Christian adults to unbaptized infants. Therefore, there are bountiful of many of the great heroes, thinkers, creative minds and the great philosophers there, since the punishment for them is boredom and not knowing God -- continuing into Lust. Lust is the second level of Hell, The lascivious people in hell, are those whose actions frequently pilot their lovers and themselves to oblivion, because the desire, the beauty, and the power of attraction towards a person can led to a destructive force of avaricious sexual desire. Lust is farthest from Satan.

All people sin, the only difference is the degree of the sin. Can someone really rank the level of sins and the punishments in hell? This vision of hell was acceptable in the minds of many people hundreds of years ago, but

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, “Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.” Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an

The Seventh Circle of Hell, which contains those who are violent. Dante asks Virgil why these divisions of Hell exist, wondering why the sinners they have seen previously do not receive this same degree of punishment, as they too have acted contrary to divine will. Virgil’s explanation of the organization of Hell reveals its accordance with the moral order in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics accord to the outside sources I found. As we have already seen, Dante is indebted to Aristotle for the majority of his philosophical, if not his theological ideas. With Virgil’s discussion of the rest of Hell the picture of Hell is almost complete.

In Dante's Inferno, Dante places people of all types into one of the nine different circles depending on what they had done in their life and what punishments they deserve. His religion is what said which sins made someone have to spend eternity in Hell and what sins were worse than others. Some of the sins Dante chose to be included in his own version of Hell are wrath, sloth, greed, lust, and gluttony. These sins were seen as some of the worst in the Catholic religion, which influences Dante’s decision to have them in Dante's Inferno. Some of the other sins Dante chose also exemplified his strong Catholic faith. For example, the people who fall in Limbo did not believe in God and in the Catholic religion, this means they were not saved and would therefore end up in Hell (Brantl 208). Dante, just like all catholics, believed that going against God was a sin. In Dante's Inferno, there are punishments for people who go against the catholic religion and the Lord as well as betray them. Dante’s religion also influenced his choices for whom he put in hell and where. According to Dante, no madder how good of a person you are, if you didn't believe in God and Christianity, you were sent to hell. Hawkins says that “…Limbo, the first circle of hell. It is beautiful, refined, civil, and dead. Knowledge may well be perfection, but it is the knowledge of God, the beatific vision, that is the journey’s true end” (107).

eternal punishment. These newer books perceive hell as more of a concept than an actual place of punishment.