Dantes Inferno Contrapasso essay sample

Contrapasso of Dantes Inferno People usually imagined hell as a place where souls of sinners suffer because they couldnt feel love from God. Dante Alighieri used the term of Contrapasso that all sinners in hell must be punished for sins in a way that reflects their sins. Dante separated hell into nine circles, and each soul that appeared in hell for sins, was going to the certain circle to get their punishment. The first circle of hell is for unbaptized souls or for those people who died before the coming of Christ. Dante Alighieri supposed those souls couldnt be saved so they should get their punishment. All sins connected with the inability to control base desires (such as anger, gluttony, sloth, lust, depending on money), were going for their punishment in circles 2 – 5. Circles six and seven were for souls that made any kind of violence. Such sins as malice or fraud were punished in the eight circle, and sinners of treachery go to the nine circle of hell. Almost every punishment that was described in Dantes Inferno is created to present a Contrapasso, a mirror of the sin. Dante travels with Virgil through levels of hell and presents to readers different punishments that sinners get there. At start, we appear in the Vestibule where uncommitted souls get their punishment. They are stinging by bugs constantly just because they were uncommitted in their life. Dante says they were never truly alive so they cant be truly died and must suffer forever. The only place in the hell without Contrapasso is Limbo. Dante decided that those people who werent baptized or born before Christ, dont have their own sins, but they appeared in hell because they couldnt be saved. These souls didnt get any physical pain, but they suffered mentally because they couldnt get Gods love. Contrapasso of the second circle throws sinners into the dark storm forever, this reflects how they allowed their passions to rule their minds. Sinners in the third circle that ar e punished for gluttony, suffer from greedy monsters that tears souls and swallows them, and then they heal only to be torn and ate up again and again. In fourth circle sinners are punished for hoarding on useless items, so they get punishment with suffering from wearing the weight of material wealth. In fifth circle Contrapasso reflects sins of anger and sulky, and such sinners suffer being in the boiling water. Sinners of the sixth circle are encased in sepulchers of fire to punish them for their heresy. On seventh circle sinners are punished for their violence. Depending on the type of violence, Contrapasso leaves them to boil in the blood of victims, stay on the burning sand or being attacked by monstrous harpies. Malicious and fraudulent souls are punished in ten bolgias of eighth circle. They get cruel physical punishments according to their sins. And, in the ninth circle sinners goes to the frozen lake and become ice sculptures to stay frozen forever. We can see that Dante expresses his views on ethics of sins through the concept of Contrapasso, mirroring the political and cultural status of Italy of that times.