Dante Research Paper

325 Words2 Pages
Deliberately using human reason to corrupt others leads to betrayal, condemnation, and silence. Dante Alighieri uses his Divine Comedie, The Inferno, to portray the sins man commits in life and the punishments man deserves. In the early circles of Hell, the persons damned are able to speak and express emotions. Cantos four through eight contain sinners who threatened social order and could not control their desires. Dante expresses his opinion of sins when he places the lustful, the avarice-filled, and the panderers in upper Hell. As Hell descends in a downward spiral, the sounds made by man become more bestial. By the Ninth Circle of Hell, the convicted sinners can no longer speak or produce any sounds of pain, yet they can still feel the pain; “writhing, but not a word will he scream” (Dante. Canto 34. 65). Dante states, “I do not write it; words would not suffice” when Virgil leads him to face Lucifer in the abyss of Hell (Dante. Canto 34. 27). The sinners’ incontinent actions of betrayal have no penance, resulting in the loss of speech, “the gift which distinguishes man from other creatures” (The Relation of Speech to Sin in the Inferno). In The Inferno, the greater the sin, the less articulate the sinner becomes. In Cantos thirty-two through thirty-four, the sinners commit acts of betrayal. Judas, Cassius, and Brutus all had incredible possibility to achieve in the life above, but those who have the greatest potential can also fall the farthest. Human reason means nothing without speech to validate it. “Speech is a gift of God, like life itself,” and if one cannot explain and express, then he has nothing (The Relation of Speech to Sin in the Inferno). If the power of speech is taken from man, then man cannot praise his God. “There is but one bliss − Godliness; but one damnation − Godlessness” (“On the Congruence of Sins and Punishments in Dante’s
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