Augustine's Confessions and Dante Alighieri's Inferno are both stories about lost men on a journey to find salvation and God's grace in heaven. They both have different processes of learning and methods of teaching. They make many mistakes and are affected by various temptations, but they learn from their sins and temptations while gaining maturity and understanding. These stories represent Dante and Augustine's lives' to becoming faithful Christians. .
Augustine became a very influential educator and a passionate spiritual leader. Manichaeanism, "a dualistic religion that resembled early Christianity in emphasizing the life of the mind and the drive toward increasing spiritual purity" became a very intriguing aspect to Augustine. (Augustine, 45.3) He overtook his strong suit in education while becoming a public speaker, teaching grammar, rhetoric, then took over writing honorific speeches for the court in Milan. Finally after accomplishing all of these, he was a dominant spiritual leader for his empire. During Augustine's time was the rise of Christianity and this religion making an impact on the Roman Empire. As we have learned, Augustine is a very educated man. What he understood about the Christian world was that you cannot live a perfect sin free life or sin free contemplation because we were all born sinners who sin everyday. .
The book teaches the readers, especially as Christians, that we can relate to some of the events Augustine goes through whether it is facing sin or temptation, and then learning through these battles while finding maturity and understanding. .
In the first books, the process of learning is very difficult for Augustine because he "disliked learning and hated to be forced to do it." (Augustine, I.7) He would not have learned if he had not been forced to it. He hated useful things. This is found to be very ironic because Augustine's perspective completely changes as he grows older, since he becomes a highly respected and intelligent educator.