Out of three parts of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the first part – Inferno is by far the most understandable and reasonable. Dante uses Hell to show and educate the readers his vision of morality. As an artistic technique, he depicts his own travel over the depths of Hell. He is led by Vergil, who explains all about those who are in Hell and what happens to them according to their sins. This, indeed, is a very powerful method to deliver the main idea to the reader, especially concerning that most of the readers perceive the poem literally but not figuratively.
The most important message that Dante left in his masterpiece is the concept of how one should live his life i.e. the concept of morality. Moreover, the poet reports that this knowledge was not invented by him, but bestowed by a higher force. After his vision described in the Introduction, Dante enters Hell, which is the first stage of his journey. In Hell Dante is supposed to learn the nature of sin i.e. how one should not live and what he should not do. Inferno consists of nine circles which are situated in a descending order. The worse the sin the lower is situated the corresponding circle. This brings us to finding out the hierarchy of sins. Each following sin is punished much harder than the previous, and with the increase of punishment, the suffering of the sinners increases too. Dante learns that sins are situated in such order of growing burden: lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. Evidently the traitors are situated in the lowest, the most inner circle of the Hell, while the ones who were overcome by lust are nearly at its top. Dante's journey to the innermost circle takes a while, and as he descends to the lower circles, he learns the nature of sin and punishment for it. Before entering the seventh circle, the circle of the violent, in Canto 11, Vergil explains:
And if thy Physics carefully thou notest,
After not many pages shalt thou find,
Genesis at the beginning, it behaves
Mankind to gain their life and to advance;
And since the usurer takes another way,
Nature herself and in her follower
Disdains he, for elsewhere he puts his hope.
In this example, Dante’s guide explains to his follower, as Dante explains to the reader, that the nature of the sin lies in not following the way of advancement, the way of Nature and the way of God. When one step aside from the path of pure and virtuous life, from the path of constant advancement, from the path of God, he submits to sin and will face its consequences. As we can see, the sinners are not simply punished, but they are exposed to the aftereffects of their faulty life. This can be noted from the nature of the punishment. For example, in the second circle, the ones who submitted to lust during their life are whirled and swept by a huge storm. Many notable persons can be found in that whirlwind:
Helen I saw, for whom so many ruthless
Seasons revolved; and saw the great Achilles,
Who at the last hour combated with Love
Paris I saw, Tristan; and more than a thousand
Shades did he name and point out with his finger,
Whom Love had separated from our life. (Canto 5).
So, the ones who stepped from their virtue's path because of lust are in a whirlwind which symbolizes their desire. Dante shows us that, in fact, the Hell is not somewhere where we will be after death, it as a metaphor to describe what actually happens in one's soul when he submits to sin. Another great example is the fourth circle, where hoarders and squanderers remain. They push heavy weights with their chest and strike each other with them. This symbolizes the lives of people who are burdened with fortune. Because of this obsession, their life becomes akin to constantly pushing a heavy weight.
