Evaluate and improve the rough draft essay titled "Punishments in Dante's Inferno" (see below). Strengthen the thesis, use quotes and summary in appropriate ways,
and make use of commentary to back up your points. Improve the organization to fit
your purpose, and edit the diction, syntax, and style to create a formal tone.

To complete this assignment, you need to add, delete, rearrange, and clarify the text
of the following rough draft:

A kid steals a pack of gum. Obviously, he should be sentenced to
death! Most people want to live in a just world where
punishments fit crimes. The poet Dante wanted that. As a
Christian during the Middle Ages, he held strong beliefs about
fairness. He believed that people who committed big and small
crimes in life would be punished in the afterlife. His beliefs seem
kind of crazy now - sort of like sentencing a kid to death for a
pack of gum - but Dante believed in the messed-up standards of
the Middle Ages. What seemed like justice to him seems like
injustice to us, but he didn't mean it that way. I believe the Inferno
shows dead people getting punished in a variety of awful ways
Dante thought were good.
I think the punishment for people who were either greedy or
stingy in life is one way Dante shows the precise justice of God
from his perspective. The description of the punishment for
heretics is another example of Dante's worldview. They're both
super vivid, but one is kind of funny and the other is creepy. Early
in Canto VII, Dante writes of the "justice of God" for quilty souls in Hell. The justice in this circle of Hell involves an almost funny
punishment. The sinners in this level of Hell do not suffer pain
because they did not cause pain in life. They only have to roll
heavy weights for all eternity: "Here I saw more shades than
saw above, / On one side and the other, with piercing howls, /
Rolling weights shoved forward with their chests. // They
smashed against each other. On the spot, / Each whipped around
and, rolling the weight back, / Yelled, 'Why do you hoard?' or 'Why
do you splurge?"
In Canto XII, he describes a boiling river meant to punish those
who harm their neighbors by violence." We learn right away that
the sinners who have ended up here are "steep[ed) in pain." This
means that they are soaking in the boiling river of blood, which is
a perfect punishment for them. They spilled other people's blood
and caused them great pain. Now they must suffer an even more
bloody pain while they feel bad about what they did in their lives.
Some sinners are stuck in the river up to their heads, but others only have to stick their feet in. Also there's a really creepy part
where guards shoot souls back into the boiling river if they try to
climb out.
As you've seen, the levels of Hell Dante describes in the Inferno
work together to show God's justice, at least according to the
messed-up beliefs of the Middle Ages. Cantos VII and XII are just
two examples of how each punishment in Dante's version of Hell
precisely fits the crime. This direct link between punishment and
crime helps express Dante's view that the Christian god is super
into justice, even though it seems like injustice to anyone with a
brain.