Question

Explain the term contrapasso. To what does this term refer? What purposes does it serve within the text of Inferno? Your answer should be at least 250 words.

Answer 1

A derived from a Latin word Contra and patior (contrapasso) which means suffer the opposite. In Dante’s Inferno, contrapasso refers the punishment of soul and it is also a process of contrasting and reassembling the sin itself. It purpose in the setting is most likely good but the sinners lacked of Christ light in life so that why they cannot go to God in death. There is punishment, and there is no hope.  Because they used their bodies and left behind reason, sense and logic for their lustful pursuits, they are swept away into painful eternal torment through their bodies.  The sinners against God (blasphemers- lay down) art (usurers- curled ball) and nature (sodomites- run around) are exposed to varying degrees of fire between the slow rain of fire and the burning sands; all of these sins are unnatural and sterile, so is fire-rain. Since the heretics denied the immortality of the soul, they are punished in an eternal fiery grave, the suicides are haphazardly thrown for placement as trees- can only speak when broken and bleeding and are picked at by Harpies. . Since the sinners created nothing but waste in their lives, they are now steeped in waste in death.