As Virgil leads Dante through the layers of Hell, they come across evildoers who are trapped in the personification of their own sinful personalities. Their tortures are extreme versions of their sins on earth. Dante imparts his own moral standards to the reader by portraying a hierarchy of evil that corresponds with his disapproval of the sin. As the pair of observers descends farther and farther into the pits of Hell, the punishments they see grow less and less bearable. While the evil in the first layers of Hell is simple, sometimes invoking pity in Dante, the lower levels of Hell punish souls for more complex and condemnable sins. It would be interesting to see a system of political justice based upon Dante's values. Punishment fits the crime.

The most forgivable sins in Dante's mind are found in the first few levels of Hell. The first layers of...