Dante: Sin And Salvation

3 Pages 734 Words

The Inferno
Dante’s opinion of sin and sinners changes as the book Dante’s Inferno moves forward because this is Dante’s way to come to terms with God. In the beginning, Dante repeatedly expresses sorrow for the sinners but this sorrow eventually turns to resentment when he comes to terms with the deeds these people had done. He loses all respect for people who could have sinned in such blasphemous ways. He comes to term with his hatred for sinners in his book, as a way for him to get closer to his own salvation.
The book begins with Dante becoming lost in a wood explained by the quotation, “Midway on our life's journey, I found myself In dark woods, the right road lost.” He begins this way in the book because in his life, he feels he strays from personal salvation. The book becomes a way for Dante to communicate his personal journey from being on the lost road to finding his path to Paradisio.
One of the first instances that Dante conveys his sorrow for sinners, is the story of a woman named Franceska. She tells of how her and a lover read the story of Lancelot and Guinevere and decided to embrace each other with a kiss much as those two had, only for both of them to be murdered by her husband before they could repent their sins. Dante expresses his grief by stating, “When the mind returned, which closed itself before the pity of these two kinsfolk, that had all confounded me with sadness, new torments and new tormented souls I see around me wherever I move, and howsoever I turn, and wherever I gaze.” He is sad for the two lovers, which is understandable to the reader by the fact that their sin was not a blasphemous act or outrageous disobedience but a simple tale of two people caught up in the moment.
Although he has sorrow for persons in the early circles, his resentment and bitterness starts to prevail as he goes deep in to the Inferno. Dante made it so the worst crimes were ones that had personally aff...