“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" (Canto 3). A truly scary and miserable place to be in. Exactly with this scripture begins Dante's journey towards the depth of Hell and ever farther. His way of finding out the truth about the human soul, the journey to learn the nature of sin, the nature of happiness, and the way to God. Genuine morality is bestowed upon Dante as he travels the dark realm of Hell and the nature of which will he explore.
First of all, morality resides on the set of rules and instructions on how to behave and what to do as well as how to not behave and what not to do. The Hell personifies the latter, what should not be done. On his journey to the center of Hell, Dante learns about the hierarchical nature of sin itself. He finds out that the more conscious is the sin, the worse it is. The mildest and coming first in the structure of Hell are the sins which are the inability to confine own desires. The next come violent sins, and the last and the worst are malicious sins such as fraud and treachery. The punishment also changes correspondingly to the burden of sin. The harder the sin, the more are sinners tormented, and the more pitiful their existence is. As we travel together with Dante, we learn more about what sin actually is and why do sinners get what they get.
In the first circle of Hell, Limbo, reside the unbaptized virtuous men as well as babies. There is no actual punishment for them except for their existence in an ordinary earthly-like territory and a slight twilight. Although they have not committed anything sinful, moreover, the virtuous life they lived gave them the possibility to get the best of they can out of a rational mind. Without the procedure of baptism, without the acceptance of Jesus Christ, their souls could not see the divine and transcendent side of the Creation. This is the first exercise that Dante undergoes in learning the true nature of sin. As we can see, the residents of Limbo are not punished in any sense of this word. They just got what their way of life has led them to. They lived virtuously, but without the knowledge of God and they continued to live in the same manner. This pushes us slightly to Dante's greatest discovery that the Hell is already within us, and it is simply a depiction of the effect that our faulty decisions have on our lives. This point is supported in the second circle, where the lustful reside.
In the second circle, a huge whirlwind whirls and sweeps the sinners who submitted their lives to lust. In contrast to the Limbo, these are getting actually and actively punished, very gently, however, as we will see in comparison with deeper circles. As Vergil explains to Dante:
That lustful she made licit in her law,
.
he next is she who killed herself for love,
And broke faith with the ashes of Sichcaeus; (Canto 5).
As we can see, the sin they committed was their surrender to desire, which governed their life. Dante also speaks with Paolo and Francesca as they fly by in a storm. They loved each other, however, they could not hold themselves from succumbing to lust and carnal desires. They call it love, but it cannot be called "love" in a sense of true love or God's love. The latter is merciful, transcendent, and leading the soul to growth; the former is very selfish and devouring. Here, Dante gets the proof of the nature of sin as the consequences of a certain lifestyle. The sinners are whirled by storm just like they were whirled by their feelings during their life. And evidently, these processes take place simultaneously – these whirlwinds are exactly what takes place inside the soul of a lustful person.
