In "The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno," Dante often uses love and romance as a theme to convey his message of Hell in The Inferno. The Inferno is epic that is about a telling of Dante through his Journey throughout Hell while being guided by Virgil. In the poem, Hell is shown as nine circles of suffering depending on what you did and serves as different levels of punishment and along in this journey, Dante understands the soul towards God along with the Inferno describing the nine circles of hell being Lucifer, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, heresy, violence, fraud, and treasury as he explores hell and meets different people along the way.
Love plays a important aspect in "The Inferno" because without it, Dante wouldn't have been able to complete his journey without his guide who was sent by Beatrice. By Beatrice sending Virgil, it would mean that she still loves Dante and that she would still want Dante to be safe. The text states, "Love and wisdom will make straight his way" (Dante 1.22-23). God also represents love as he represents pure and good, which is why Dante adventures Hell on Good Friday.
Along his Journey he also meets Dido who committed suicide because of her love for Aeneas which consequently put her in a deeper part of Hell because she committed suicide which is like throwing a gift back in God's face and the gift being life because you are destroying God's creation. There are different types of love that Dante shows but Dante also expresses a selfish type of love in the third circle of Hell of Gluttony and in the fourth circle of Greed. The sinners in the third circle are put in a icy rain by themselves so that it symbolizes the people being "cold-hearted" and "selfish" and the sinners in the fourth circle are people who were materialistic, greedy and cared more about their possessions that they owned than giving to other people who were in need.
