Analysis of Dantes Divine Comedy - Book Report/Review Example

One of the things that stand out in his depiction is the way that he names specific people at each level of the afterlife that he visits. These people were very popular at the time and well-respected by many. By including them, Dante was warning his readers that just because a person was liked or did good things did not necessarily mean that he or she was worthy of heaven in the sight of God. This is made clear in Canto IV where Dante and Virgil meet the great Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Lucan.

These philosophers are in the first level of hell which is really more like purgatory. Because they were born before the birth of Christianity, they did not have the opportunity to recognize Christ as their Lord and Savior so they live in a state of Limbo. When alive, they dedicated their lives to wisdom and thought rather than religion and did not have the foresight that the patriarchs of the Old Testament had in embracing the faith that one day He would come. As a result, their afterlife is a world in which reason provides some illumination, but the atmosphere is mostly dark without God’s light.

However, the souls are comfortable and content in being able to share human ideas and thoughts with other great thinkers. This is made clear when Virgil tells him that a person “in power crowned” came to Hell and took away all the Old Patriarchs who believed that the Messiah would come even though they died before he appeared. Thus it doesn’t even matter if you have lived the kind of life prescribed in the Bible, you still can’t get into heaven unless you were willing to have faith.