What would the world be like if everyone received a fair punishment for their actions? What would such a world be like? Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world, and many times sinners get away with their actions and receive no penalty in return. In literature however, authors can shape the world in any way they want, and mostly they do so by employing a literary technique known as ‘poetic justice’. This means, in other words, that good things happen to the good guys and bad things happen to the bad guys.
The book Dante’s Inferno makes great use of this technique, because in Dante’s version of hell, all sinners receive a just punishment for the actions they committed on Earth. I believe that a clear example of this is portrayed in the fourth pouch of the eight circle, which punishes diviners, astrologers and magicians. “As lower down my sight descended on them, wondrously each one seemed to be distorted from chin to the beginning of the chest; for tow’rds the reins the countenance was turned, and backward it behoved them to advance, as to look forward has been taken from them.” (Canto XX lines 10-15.) These people, who claimed they could see into the future and guide other people’s paths are now ironically bound to walk around with their head turned the other way around on their shoulders, forcing them to walk backwards for all eternity. After allegedly seeing what lay ahead, now they are forced to walk in reverse because “he [they] wished to see too far before [them] behind [they] look, and backward make [their] way.” (Canto XX lines 38-39)
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