Dante's Divine Comedy In The Divine Comedy, Dante uses several symbols to demonstrate life as a literary connection to the Bible, as well as his illusion of an afterlife. He opens his allegory by walking through a dark forest, stating that "the simple path had been lost", speaking of him having lost his way in life. The woods empty of light represent Dante's sins on Earth, while the rays of the sun shining on the mountaintop he encounters signify the goodness of the world and the holy place of paradise, still far from accessible , waiting to be reached. He uses these metaphors to refer to Christianity in the sense of finding one's faith and embarking on a spiritual journey toward God and the cleansing of a person's soul. Dante uses "justice" as a recurring theme in this epic poem, describing the torment of damned souls. in hell in every circle I must endure. This endless torture is systematically inflicted to directly correspond to the sins these souls committed during their time on Earth, contrary to the much-expressed assessment that all sins are equal. Michael Houdmann questioned whether or not Dante's epic poem was biblically accurate, stating: The Bible says nothing about different levels of punishment in hell, nor about different levels of severity of sin. The universal punishment for all who reject Jesus Christ as Savior is to be “cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). When it comes to sin, the Bible says that failing to keep God's law, even in its smallest aspects, makes us guilty of all of it and therefore deserves eternal punishment (James 2:10). The murderer, the liar, and the proud man are all equally guilty in the eyes of God, and all deserve the same basic punishment: the lake of fire... middle of paper... in many ways, from one watch Christian to a book of ancient philosophy or even to a political manifesto. It is a beautiful work of literature that is full of lessons and historical layers, but cannot be taken so seriously as to take it for more than it is. The Divine Comedy will stand the test of time and continue to influence other scholars and inspire others to use their imaginations to embark on their own spiritual journeys. Works Cited The Bible in English Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. Henry W. Longfellow. 3 vol. 1867 Np: Creative Commons, PDF. SparkNotes Publishers. “SparkNote on Inferno.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Internet. October 30, 2013. Houdmann, Michael. “Divine Comedy: Biblically Accurate? » GotQuestions.org. I have questions, ministries, nd Web. October 31. 2013.