Literary Analysis of Dante Alighieri “The Divine Comedy”.

   

The destiny of those dying on one day is that very few – not as many as ten – went straight to Heaven; many remained in Purgatory, and those cast into Hell were as numerous as snowflakes in mid-winter, said the Blessed Anna Maria Taigi, mystic

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri shows Dante's journey to Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), until he reaches Heaven (Paradiso). However, on his journey, he discovered and identified the deadly sinners, their sufferings as their consequences of doing such sins while they were alive. Every sin that human commits show rejection to God for it is an offense to Him and He cannot be in the presence of any sin. That is why if a person keeps committing the sins without repentance, he will feel no mercy at all and will stop believing that God exists in his life as stated in Isaiah 59:2a; “But your iniquities (sin) have made a separation between you and your God.” 

It opened realizations to readers of how bad the aftermath of people’s wrongdoings on Earth, and also how beautiful heaven is, which something people should work on, in a way that people should beautify their soul and not just their physical appearance. The poet wanted to remind the readers to be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually healthy so we could live the eternal life that we wished for; heaven, and not to suffer in both purgatory and hell. 

The depiction of heaven as the transcendent dwelling-place of the living God is joined with that of the place to which believers, through grace, can also ascend, as we see in the Old Testament accounts of Enoch (cf. Gn 5:24) and Elijah (cf. 2 Kgs 2:11). 

Thus heaven becomes an image of life in God. In this sense, Jesus speaks of a "reward in heaven" (Mt 5:12) and urges people to "lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven" (ibid., 6:20; cf. 19:21).

Furthermore, Dante's great stylistic artistry enjoys the kind of power peculiar to a classic, as it is one of literature's boldest undertakings, and knowing that the catholic population is growing worldwide, it just means that the influence of the divine comedy becomes more prominent worldwide aside from the fact that Dante’s Divine Comedy continued to astonish generations of readers; for more than a hundred years it has been a staple in all higher education programs in the Western world, and provide guidance and nourishment to the major poets of our own times. 

 

Dante's journey in the Divine Comedy serves as an allegory of the progress of the individual soul toward God, which leads the readers to be eager to show the poem to be a polyphonic masterpiece. Its pre-figurations and correspondences incorporated all the important political, philosophical, and theological themes in a way that shows the moral and ethical vision of humankind. In addition, Dante was true to the Catholic faith he learned which was reflected in his Divine comedy specifically the introduction of the seven deadly sins and the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, which is also the reflection of Christian/Catholic teachings. Augustine said in The City of God that “temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment” (21:13). It is between the particular and general judgments, then, that the soul is purified of the remaining consequences of sin: 

“I tell you, you will never get out till you have paid the very last copper” (Luke 12:59)