Dante's Inferno is not only a catalog of evil, but also serves as Dante's outlet for his political frustrations. Dante creates a Hell in which the punishments adapt to the nature and level of wickedness of the sin. By cataloging the punishments in this way, Dante shows the reader what he thinks is the order of sins, following rigid doctrinal Christian values. The moral system in Hell does not prioritize human happiness or harmony on Earth, but God's will in Heaven. Along the way Dante uses his descent into the Underworld to show the sins of his political rivals and those who have transgressed the State in the past. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Dante makes a correlation between a person's sin on Earth and the soul's punishment in Hell. The Lustful, shocked by passion in life, are caught in a violent storm and dragged here and there for eternity. The Wrathful attack each other for the hatred and conflict they created while alive. Gluttons are forced to eat excrement, due to their lack of control. This simple idea is used to illuminate one of Dante's main themes: God's wisdom and perfect justice. In Canto III, the gates of Hell bear an inscription explicitly stating that God was moved to create Hell by justice. The purpose of Hell is to punish sin, and the punishments illustrate the divine perfection that the sinner violates. At the beginning of the Inferno, Dante creates tension between God's justice and his imaginary self's sympathy for tormented souls. Therefore, the poem shows God's infinite wisdom in punishing the sins of tormented souls. The fact that Dante takes pity on the suffering of the damned demonstrates his early incomprehension. As the story unfolds, Virgil's comments to Dante cause him to become less inclined to pity sinners. The appropriateness of God's punishments is significant in Dante's moral message and the structure of Hell. Although these punishments may seem harsh, when the poem is viewed in its entirety it becomes clear that the punishments are designed to create a balance with sin. The punishments of sinners are constructed to allegorically refer to the sins committed while they were alive. Because the notion of balance shapes God's chosen punishments, his justice is mechanical, strictly objective, and impersonal; there are no extenuating circumstances in Hell. The structure of Hell serves to reinforce this relationship: as Dante travels deeper into Hell, the sins become more evil. Sometimes, this structure can be questioned, for example because it considers murder (sixth circle) less evil than fraud (eighth circle). Dante must therefore consider violence less evil than fraud; fraud is the greatest opposition to God's will. God requires that people treat each other with the same love that He extends to all others. Although violence is an act directed against the love of God, fraud constitutes a perversion of that love. A fraudulent person proclaims love by knowingly committing a sin against it. Throughout the Inferno, Dante states a political belief that the church and state should be separate but equal powers on Earth. While the church governs a man's spirit, the state should govern that man's actions, thus creating a chaste and obedient person. If Christ is the perfect leader of the spirit and Caesar is the perfect leader of the state, then by showing Lucifer chewing up Judas, the spiritual traitor par excellence, and Cassius and Brutus, the.