Dante’s character changes from a scared and lost wanderer to a confident and determined individual through his journey in the Inferno.
In the beginning of the poem, Dante is in a desperate state of mind. He is lost and confused, desperately trying to find his way out of Hell. He is scared, which is evident when he runs away from Virgil when they first meet. He doesn’t know what has happened to him or where he is going, so he just follows Virgil because he thinks he can trust him.
As they progress on their journey through Hell, Dante slowly gets more confident and starts to develop his own opinions about things around him. For example, when they meet Francesca da Rimini in Canto 5, Dante feels pity for her because she fell in love with her husband’s younger brother who was married at the time. By the end of their conversation, however, Dante has developed an opinion about how God should judge people based on whether or not they knew what they were doing was wrong: “What seems less blameworthy than such love / Is held more guilty by God’s justice.” (Canto 5)
In fact, the description of Ugolino’s punishment is very vivid and it shows how much Dante has changed since Canto 2 where he was unable to look at the sinners’ punishments because they were so horrible.
