Christianity And Sin In Dante's Inferno

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The Divine Comedy is a series of 3 books--Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso--made up of 33 cantos each, that describes life after death in an allegorical manner. The Divine Comedy was written by Dante Alighieri, an Italian author from the 1300s. The protagonist of the Divine Comedy is Dante, an allegoric representation of the author himself used to portray the author’s views on Christianity and sin. Dante further uses his character to demonstrate humanity's flaws through his nine layers of the Inferno. By witnessing these flaws, Dante learns that all sins originate from love and want and that while sins may be considered harmless on earth, they are actually much worse than humanity thinks. …show more content…
Love could be the love of yourself, someone else or an object. In canto 5 of Inferno: “Dido, faithless to the ashes of Schaeus, she killed herself for love.”(lines 61-62), showing that the want for love caused her to end up in the third layer of hell, for being too lustful. Dante is overwhelmed with compassion for the sinners because of their commitment to their love. Love can be for a loved one,but also be used to betray them. In canto 33 of Inferno Alighieri writes: “Father, it would give us much less pain if you ate us: it was you who put upon this sorry flesh; now strip it off again”(lines 61-63), and the father continued to eat his sons, betraying them in the process even though it was what they asked for. They ended up in the 9th circle for betrayal of a loved one. Again, love drove this compulsion to eat his son’s flesh; if his son had not told him to he wouldn’t have done so. The repetition of these lessons demonstrates the importance of this theme throughout the

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