During Dante’s journey through hell he received quite an eye opener. Through his journey, he saw the nine levels of hell. After seeing all of hell and the terrible punishments associated with each level, Dante realized that he must live his life now understanding that if he doesn’t live well or live according to God he will find himself in the place he just visited, Hell.
For me, I raised as a Christian, although I don’t follow as much as I should, it did provoke some thought for me. Before reading Dante, I never really thought about Hell in layers and there being different punishments for each one. None the less, it did make me think about how Dante must have felt after seeing all that, I tried to put myself in those shoes. I found myself thinking that, if I had taking that journey I would change a lot of things in my life.
Like you, I too never had thought of Hell as a place that had layers but I think it is actually pretty logical. It made me think about the different levels of sin and if I agree with the the levels or if maybe they should be different.
I agree with you that if I had gone down that path with Virgil I would most certainly change things in my life as well. And I think that’s great because I believe that is the overall goal of the Inferno. To make people think about what it is that makes a sin evil and reinforce the idea that would shouldn’t commit them.