Dante – The Writer v The Protagonist

Dante’s Inferno attempts to depict a posthumous topic that due to its relation to humanity cannot be proven correct or false by mankind alone.  It is in this intricacy and lack of understanding of the afterlife that Dante is able to attract readers to his book and allow those who believe similarly in his faith to consider the possibilities of this reality.  Here, Dante is able twist reality into his own manipulations and force the readers to think as he does while avoiding some criticisms of his own creations.  One of the more intriguing aspects of Dante’s Inferno lies in the fact that the author of the story also acts as its lead character.  It is important to realize this fact in analyzing his work.

The separation between the author Dante and the journeyman Dante exists at the beginning of the story, but by the end of the story I believe these two forms of Dante have become the same person altogether which I think is the point of the entire journey.  Dante could not face sin in the form of the three beasts on the mountain and must now learn how to in hell.

In distinguishing between the two Dantes, the author Dante is impartial and strict.  He made hell, in a sense, and sent actual members of his society and those before his own time in these punishments that he himself has construed.  In contrast, Dante the protagonist begins the story consumed with fear, weakness, and compassion.  He is relatable to the audience as one would assume to show compassion to those that have nothing to look forward to but suffering.  However, throughout the story Dante appears to harden to the sin around him.  In the beginning he would faint in the sight of the more trivial of punishments and weeping for the people trapped hopelessly.  But by the end, he began to realize his compassion should be distrusted.  To weep for sin seems counterintuitive to the purpose of hell for which his just God has created.   I believe Dante’s greatest realization of this truth occurs when he pulls the hair out of the traitor Bocca. He himself adds suffering to those that sin and do not comply with him. 

The realization that the protagonist gains, is what the author Dante knew all along.  There is no hope for those that did not seek God and repent.  What is due to them will be given to them.  There will be punishment to those that do wrong and it is worthless to pity it.  The just God, that He is, assigned the correct punishment for the correct sin.  There is no mistake thus there should be no pity.  Sin is an evil that Dante must avoid to reach the top of the mountain, possibly a reference to paradise. (It is important to remember that Virgil is neither God nor a soul of God’s kingdom.  This invalidates his reasoning for rewarding or disapproving of Dante’s pity.  He is led by his own preconceptions and must learn just as Dante in what to believe.)