The middle ages saw a struggle between the papacy and the Roman Empire. By the time of Dante’s existence, there arose two major political groupings, that of Guelphs and Ghibellines. This led to major divisions between families, cities and communities. It is in this kind of confusion that Dante found himself in and the society of his time was in chaos. It is through this perspective that Dante wrote Inferno. It is based on the moral fabric of society and the resulting effects there is after a person’s actions. The morality or lack of it that is depicted is widely borrowed from a religious point of view where a person is rewarded according to their actions. This is the reason why hell is there in the first place. The goings on therein are a clear testimony of borrowed traditions from the Romans and Greek as well as Christianity. It is therefore true to say that Dante portrays hell as an end result of the deeds of the people of the middle ages with regard to their actions on political, economic and cultural actions.
Dante goes on to bring out the picture of people receiving their share of punishments because of the evils that they committed when they were alive. When the sinners receive their share of punishment, it is because of the political, economical and cultural stance that they took while they were alive. This stance happens to be what they did that was against the agreed upon principles of operation in life. From the very moment that Virgil leads Dante through the gates of hell, he encounters souls of those people who are subjected to a kind of life that befits that which they did while on earth. The occupants of hell are not a happy lot. In fact, everyone in there in one way or another lead a torturous life just that the level of the torture is different. There are those experiencing a worse form of torture from others but the bottom line is that all of them have to undergo that life as a punishment due to the kind of things they did when they lived. In fact, Dante feels pity for them. The kind of picture that Dante paints is that of persons suffering because of not doing that which was expected of them when they were alive. In fact, he brings forth hell as it is said to be from the Christian point of view.
The happenings in hell include among many others, souls of persons being swirled over and about because of their lustful nature when they were alive. These are people who found themselves in the second circle. In this circle, there is a monster called Minos who assigns these condemned souls to the punishment that they are condemned to serve (Fowlie 103). He determines the number of times that a soul is supposed to go round and they do so in a terrible storm. The activity surrounding this punishment is symbol of how God goes about administering justice. Sin is punished and this passes across a moral message about how people are to be awarded that which they deserved with regard to the extent of their moral decadence. The gravity of their sins befits the kind of punishment they get and this is a lesson that Dante wants to pass across, that of people serving their terms in hell according to their actions when they lived.
Another group of people who receive a fair share of their punishment is the group of thieves. In fact, as compared to other people in hell, they received a fairer and easier punishment. In fact, their hands, with which they stole, were cut off (Fowlie 109). Their bodies too, were entwined together with snakes. Misers and spendthrifts on the other were subjected to bombarding each other with very huge stones. This was as a form of showing them how wrong they were in worshipping money. These are very good examples of people who served a punishment that may not have best suited them and the sins they committed, but rather, they had to serve a form of punishment because of not doing that which they knew was right.
Dante seeks to bring to the reader’s view the repercussions of not doing that which was right when they were alive. At the time, religion had been mixed so much with politics such that there was no clear line between the two. The end result was a manipulation of the two to best suit the people who were in power at the expense of the citizens. Dante’s portrayal of hell is meant to show how ills committed by people do not go unpunished now that the people exist against a background that is more religious than political. The bottom line is that through the Inferno, sin does not go unpunished. If anyone commits sin, either political economical or anything that goes against the known culture of the people, has to face a punishment which one faces in hell.
Work Cited
Fowlie, Wallace. A Reading of Dante’s Inferno. Illinois: University of Chicago. 1981
