The pilgrim Dante's journey teaches him that the source of all the chaos and misery is disorded desire. If everyone, including himself, loved as they should love, they would love God more than they loved themselves and their passions. To harmonize with the will of God requires us to overcome our passions and our ego, to make room for the transforming love of God. Out of the ashes of his destruction, Dante the poet erected a monument to redemption--his own and everyone else's; he could not have done it any other way. To clear the pathway to paradise, Dante had to heave his own considerable ego out of the way. 

The poet's personal story does not have a conventional happy ending. Dante died in exile, never returning to his hometown. But as we will discover on the road ahead, Dante's story ends not with happiness in the ordinary sense but with something much better: joy. 

Rod Dreher, How Dante Can Save Your Life, pp. 39-40