Dante's Contrapasso

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As a writer, Dante has to worry about the quality of his content, or his moral message, as well as his storytelling art, or plot. To address both of these concerns, Dante uses a device called the “contrapasso.” “Contrapasso” is a word that describes the relationship between the sin in one’s mortal life and the retribution that one must make in the afterlife. While Dante didn’t invent the concept of punishment in the afterlife, he did much to lay out the specifics of how the moral order of Hell would be organized. You may have noticed that the gravity (or seriousness) of sins becomes more exaggerated as Dante descends deeper into Hell. We could visualize this by organizing Hell as a funnel shape, made up of many rings. By assigning specific
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