The Inferno is about a journey by Dante through the gates of hell in his bid to get to heaven, where Beatrice is waiting. Although there are nine gates of hell with all having sinners who are divided according to their sins, it is a fictional story that Dante uses to attack his enemies and show their vices. The gates are divided according to what Dante perceived to be the worst and highlights the characters and individuals he met while crossing the gates of hell (Palma and Giuseppe 21). The poem is an indication of some of Dante’s beliefs and, although he was not a true clergyman, he still believed in the church and the teachings. The assertions and an understanding of the issues Dante highlights in the poem can be well contemplated by a further look into his own life.

The family that Dante was born acted as a stepping stone to his political career since it had wealth and had a history of involvement in Florence Politics (Palma and Giuseppe 35). A look at Dante’s earlier life reveals that he had fallen in love with Beatrice before an arranged marriage, and it befits the poem when Virgil is sent by Beatrice to come and help Dante through the gates of hell. The division that had occurred in Florence between the ‘Whites’ who supported the independence of Florence and ‘Blacks’ who were willing to work with the pope caused a split that ended with Dante being exiled (Palma and Giuseppe 70). The political enemies he created during this period since he was a major political power for the ‘Whites’ is what makes up some parts of the people he found in hell. He had a belief in the church, but had a strong opinion that the church and the state should be separated. It is the main reason he writes on religious attributes, but condemns the very people that supported merging of the state and church to be burning in hell citing them as big sinners.

Works Cited

Palma, Michael, and Giuseppe Mazzotta. Inferno: a new verse translation, backgrounds and contexts, criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.

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