Dante's Inferno

“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” While the statement may be grim, it is a declaration that hell is for the forsaken, and there is no hope of escape or change. However, this very idea demonstrates the ideology of choosing not to change. The threat of hell as a place after death, however, is not effective overall on moral behavior because it soon becomes a slippery slope, a question of justice and mercy, and even belief. The threat of hell is only significant if one believes in Hell, or even believes what they are doing is worthy of eternal damnation, which only a few people actually believe—which according to many Christian traditions and to Dante himself in the Inferno, the people who believe in the threat of hell or are repentant already …show more content…
First of all, the threat of hell quickly becomes a sharp division of black and white; right and wrong, which makes it nearly impossible for an individual to stay all on one side. Jeff Spinner-Halev examines the idea that Hell will effect moral behavior closely and critically: “The afterlife is too remote and too difficult for people to imagine for it to have much effect on behavior… Most people will easily convince themselves that despite some of their errors, the balance of their lives will be in their favor and they will end up in heaven…The choice of heaven or hell is simply too stark to motivate people to act morally. Few people think that what they do deserves hell. The threat of hell will affect the behavior of only a few, if any.” In Dante’s Inferno, it quickly becomes apparent that Dante is not promoting the idea that people …show more content…
Dante seems to rather focus on a change in mind-set in terms of God and repentance. Dante took issue with the Church and its extreme power of the day, as well as its intrinsic corruption. “Religious doctrines about hell as punishment for breaking rules that arguably benefit society will occur in religions in cultures where the church is relatively more influential than the family, community, and government.” This was precisely the type of culture Dante was living in in Italy. He was subject to the corruption of the Church in more ways than one. People in his day appeared more concerned with buying Indulgences than actually acting morally and the Church was more concerned with gaining money than promoting pure spirituality and morality. Therefore, in a modern world, the threat of Hell does little due to individual freedom in the current life and the separation of Church and State, which ensures that the State and Church do not corrupt one another nor the latter given too much power. Dante points out the problems of a society run by religion with the multiple Popes he confronts in