Poetic justice, with its raised scale, says no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayWhere in good balance, truth weighs with gold,And a solid pudding against empty praise.-Alexander PopeIn the seventh story of the eighth day in Boccaccio's In The Decameron, the narrator states: "Many of the stories already told there there was a lot of laughter at the pranks the men played on each other, but in no case did we see the victim take revenge." The poetic justice of Boccaccio's version of hell lies in the fact that the tortured becomes the torturer and vice versa. The poetic justice is increased by the fact that during the course of the story the characters of Rinieri and Elena pass from the divine role to that of Satan. This essay will also highlight some points in the story that are very similar to the ideas of Dante's Inferno. Boccaccio immediately proposes a comparison between Helen and Lucifer with his depiction of her "dressed (as our widows are wont to be) in black" and his description of Rinieri's immediate infatuation with her at the very moment he "needed a little diversion" (i.e. idle hands do the devil's work). It should also be noted that Rinieri found Elena, like sin, very seductive and intriguing: "[She] seemed to him the most beautiful and fascinating woman he had ever seen." Rinieri's perception of Elena as beautiful at the beginning of the story is starkly contrasted by Boccaccio's image of her charred and bloodied body later in the story, when Elena is described as "the ugliest thing in the world". This transformation of Elena, from Rinieri's perspective, from a beautiful goddess to an ugly devil is symbolic of humanity's tendency to find certain sinful actions at first beautiful and alluring, and then to be disgusted by the ugliness of the same actions. Boccaccio further shows the error in Rinieri's lust for Elena by writing that Rinieri thought that if he could hold Elena "naked in his arms" he could truly claim "to be in Heaven", when in reality his pursuit of this diabolical woman he takes him to a hellish night. Helen's comparison to the devil continues when Boccaccio describes her as "not keeping her eyes fixed on the ground...[she] quickly singled out those men who showed interest in her." This passage brings to readers' minds the image of the devil in hell looking up at the earth, constantly on the lookout for potential sinners. In contrast, Rinieri is portrayed as an honest figure, somewhat faithful to the beginning of the story. Boccaccio's use of Christmas as the moment of Rinieri's hellish night and his reference to the scholar as "the happiest man in Christendom" are subtle clues that the scholar is an innocent, almost divine figure, about to be deceived by the antichrist, or Lucifer. But Boccaccio lets the reader know that God (as represented by the scholar) will surely prevail in the end when he writes referring to Helen "Ah, what a poor wretch she must have been, dear ladies, to suppose that she could get the better of a scholar!" This passage also implies that God favors the intelligent and that evil is inherent in the ignorant, as represented by the unintelligent and diabolical Helen. On the other hand, it is possible to think of Helen as the divine figure at the beginning of the story; her lover addresses her in a very Augustinian manner as "the true source of my well-being, my rest and my joy, and the refuge of all my desires." When she observes her lover dancing ridiculously to chase away the cold, Elena remarks "Don't you think it's smart of me to make him dance?..