Dante's Inferno

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Dante’s Inferno is one of the three parts of his Divine Comedy. The Inferno is divided into thirty-four cantos, each containing a description of a specific region of hell. Sinners in each area are punished for different sins. Sinners of lust suffer in upper hell, sinners of violence in middle hell, and the sinners of fraud in the lowest part of hell. The sufferings of these people are portrayed through Dante’s eyes as he descends lower and lower into hell with Virgil, his helper. The punishment for each sinner corresponds to the sin that they committed. Most of these sins were those of the seven deadly sins. The deadly sins have been around since the time of the Greek civilization. The deadly sins were brought into life by a Greek monastic theologian, named Evagrius of Pontus. In fact, there were originally eight sins first thought up by Evagrius. They were, in order of increasing seriousness: gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vinglory, and pride. Later in time, in the late sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great, reduced the list to seven sins transforming vinglory into pride and acedia into sadness and finally adding envy. Pope Gregory the Great listed the sins as follows: Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, and Lust. Is the human race guilty of theses seven deadly sins? The answer is an astounding yes we do commit theses sins on a daily bases. With much knowledge and a lot of resources the idea of the seven deadly sins can be assessed and found in Dante’s Inferno. The Inferno begins on Good Friday in the year 1300. The poet, 35 years old, has reached middle age according to the standards of the time. He is lost in a deep wood, and unable to find the straight path and harried by allegorical depictions of sin and temptation. Realizing that he is facing ruin, Dante contemplates suicide, but he is rescued by the spirit of the poet Virgil who

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