Imperfect Punishments
Imagine a place where tyrants stand up to their ears in boiling blood, the gluttonous experience monsoons of human filth, and those who commit sins of the flesh are blown about like pieces of paper in a never-ending wind storm. Welcome to Dante's Inferno, his perspective on the appropriate punishments for those who are destined to hell for all eternity. Dante attempts to make the punishments fit the crimes, but because it is Dante dealing out the tortures and not God, the punishments will never be perfect because by nature, man is an imperfect creature. Only God is capable of being above reproach and of metering out a just punishment. While Dante's treatment towards the tyrants is fitting, his views on the inhabitants of the Ante Inferno and Limbo seem to be backwards and these poor people are doomed to suffer misguided punishments. Therefore, despite Dante's best attempts to justly punish each sinner, he makes a few mistakes because he is not God and Dante is unable to unbiasedly judge each sinner.
Illustration of Dante's Inferno, Map of Lower Hell
Low resolution scan of engraving with caption by G...
Gustave Doré's illustration to Dante's Inferno. P...If you were to attempt a journey through Hell, the first unlucky hellions you would encounter are the inhabitants of the Ante Inferno. The residents of this "not quite heaven, not quite hell" domain were placed here because while living, they chose to neither side with God nor with the Devil. By choosing neither good nor evil, these people sinned because they never chose to live by a set of Christian ideals. The punishment for these sinners is to constantly chase a white flag. The color of the flag symbolizes the blank and empty life the sinners led because they did not choose to follow God. The sinners are also bitten by wasps because in real life, they were never forced into any type of moral...