The Two Faces of a Coin

During the reading, we can see how Dante is divided into the student that followed Virgil and the Dante that is narrating.

Analyzing, I found out that Dante that narrates, has had integrity through the entire trek. For example, we can see he grows nervous and speechless in the forest when he said, “Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter-death is hardly more severe!” (Inferno, Canto I, 4-7). At the same time, we can notice the same insecurity at the end of hell, when in Canto XXXIV lines 22-27 he said, “O reader, do not ask of me how I grew faint and frozen then- I cannot write it: all words would fall short of what it was. I did not die, and I was not alive; think for yourself, if you have any wit, what I became, deprived of life and death.” We can notice that when he first says, “so bitter-death is hardly more severe!” he repeats himself later talking about the state between “life and death” explaining he “did not die, and I was not alive.” Dante kept this side of him very stabilized and with the same ideas and thoughts, because when he was writing the narration he was no longer in his journey. This solid character gives the reader a look into future, so we can see what Dante finally turned into.

However, the student shows us more the personal changes in Dante through the book. One of Dante’s most significant grows was in recognizing the importance of being good, and every time he became less flexible with sinners. “Francesca, your afflictions move me to tears of sorrow and of pity.” (Canto V, 116-117) he said in the second circle to an unfaithful soul, but “O unenlightened creatures” (Canto VII, 70) was his response when he saw the avaricious in the seventh circle. I believe with this clue we can take an educated guess to what the Inferno would be like if it wouldn’t have stopped in the Treacherous.

Knowing the character Dante will turn into, and the pace and stream he is growing into, I have the adequate constrains to believe that prolonging the Inferno would mean that humans and souls have turned into a rotten race. If there are souls that should go under Lucifer, they have to be so poor that even though they have to suffer like any other, and yet their sweat wouldn’t melt down Dante but actually strength in it. I can’t think of a crime that would make Minos tell a soul to go to the circle under Lucifer, though I would make that circle the home of the souls that feed themselves from the pain of others, or the people that only spoke lies.

Maybe after all the centuries after Dante there have been sins that would deserve such punishment, and that would mean that the people have turned into a sour race, but it will also be a green light for others to change.