QUESTION 3. 
Dante is circle nine discusses ice many times used for the punishment of the sinners. In the three rounds the souls are mostly completely submerged in the ice lake.  The sin is the Treachery against those whom they were bound by special ties, against the ties of hospitality, and against their masters.  The ice is representative of their cold hearts and souls and the lack of love or warmth they showed towards these groups of people.  The sinners denied all love from God and the nature human warmth and compassion.  Due to the ignoring of God's love, they are forced to be living in the cold and rejected His Sun of warmth and comfort.  Also because they betrayed all ties with humans and denied the relationships, they were secured in the ice and unable to escape. In his poem, Frost writes, "I think I know enough of hate/ to say that for destruction ice/ is also great/ and would suffice." Frost says this because although fire is dangerous and painful, the amount of hate in the world is much greater and that sooner or later peoples hate will overcome them, making the world a hateful and resentful place resulting with human suffering and violence. In each round, the sinners were further and further down and trapped in the ice, concluding with the last ones completely submerged in the ice unable to communicate.  Dante describes the last rounds punishment, "I stood now where the souls of the last class/ (with fear my verses tell it) were covered wholly;/ they shone below the ice like straws in glass" (283).  This is the explanation Dante gives about the Treacherous to their masters and he explains how he could clearly see the distorted bodies of the sinners through the enclosed ice.


Each symbol of either fire and ice relate to Dante's Hell because they all symbolize the punishment and the severity of the sin.  For example, fire represents God's wrath which is seen in circle seven, round three with the plain of burning sand, rain of fire with the sin of the blasphemers and sodomites. Dante uses fire to exemplify the disappointment and anger that those sinners brought him. Dante writes, "O endless wrath of God: how utterly/ thou shouldst become a terror to all men/ who read the frightful truths revealed to me!" (128). This gives an explanation of the horrible wrath of God the sinners receive and the regrets of their sin. To the treacherous to their masters, they are completely under the ice because they never showed any love towards God making them "cold hearted" or "soulless" leaving them distorted and mute.  


All of Dante's symbols tie his Hell together because they relate to all the different sins in life and their punishments. Without all of the fire, water, ice, meadows, etc. the Divine Comedy wouldn't be interesting and different from the others. These added an element of curiosity and change to the different circles and the symbols were meant to get worse and worse, which they did.  It started off with the meadows and the rivers, then the fire of wrath, and last the ice of complete doom.  

3) In Circle 7, the Violent are punished in three separate rounds depending on the nature of their violent tendencies. Choose one round within Circle 7 and explore an archetypal symbol that Dante uses there to explore the sin. You may, for example, look at the river of blood in Round 1 or the trees in Round 2 or the desert and fire in Round 3. Consider the archetype itself and then how Dante utilizes the symbol to enhance his own work.


In Circle 7, round 2, Dante uses the thorny leaved trees to convey his opinion and view on the particular group of sinners. The sin of this circle are the suicides and for their punishment, the souls are eternally trapped in almost deceased trees and are picked at by the Harpies, which ruins their leaves and branches and make them bleed out.  While the blood is pouring out from the trees, the souls have a chance to speak and communicate with Dante and Virgil. Due to their sin, they are rejected all human form and only allowed to converse while in extreme pain caused by the Harpies. Dante explains his state of mind in the woods, "Words and blood together, gout by gout./ Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holding/ and stood transfixed by fear..." (120).  Dante writes about how the blood and the speaking of the souls connect because without the blood, they would not be capable of communication.  He also exemplifies his state of mind and his fear of the blood and the talking trees. These trees are archetypes of the sinners because in life they were harmful to themselves and that is how they "spoke" or expressed their emotions, so in death the are only permitted to feel emotion through the pain of bleeding out and being physically hurt. When Dante breaks off a branch from one of the trees he is surprised by what happened, "And after blood had darkened all the bowl/ of the wound, it cried again: "Why do you tear me?"/ Is there no pity left in any soul?" (120).  His one tree exclaims the pain it is enduring and suffering the horrid pain of the limb being broken off.  This verse describes the punishment that these souls are undergoing and the sorrowful and hopeless nature of these sinners. 


The symbol of the trees in the Wood of the Suicides enhance Dante's work by adding imagery and creating a mental image of his circle and setting of the woods.  Dante writes, "Its foliage was not verdant, but nearly black./ The unhealthy branches, gnarled and warped and tangled,/ bore poison thorns instead of fruit" (119).  Dante describes the woods in detail and he characterizes the trees as being tangled, warped and gnarled.  These words create a scene of dark, destroyed, and dead like trees, in which encases the souls.  The representation of the trees as the sinners or the body of the sinners is important because it removes them from an identity because in life they took their own existence away so in death, they are seem as they were in life, insignificant and "dead".   Trees usually represent life and the circle of life with nature, but in this circle the trees are trapping the "life" or souls inside of them.  The tree hold the souls who denied life were denied it in Hell as well.  This makes the tree an archetypal character of life and the irony of how the "life" is trapping the "life".

Third Circle: Gluttons

Circle Three describes the sin of gluttony and the corresponding punishment for that sin.  Instead of accepting the gifts of God during their lives, gluttons indulged themselves with food and drink.  As a result of their sin, gluttons endured the harsh punishment of being half buried in cold fetid slush with slushy snow raining upon them.  Dante describes their circle as follows, "Everything about this Circle suggests a gigantic garbage dump.  The souls of/ the damned lie in the icy paste, swollen and obscene..." (65).  This represents what the gluttons were like in their life.  By eating and drinking an inordinate amount, they made no contribution of value to the world.   The gluttons did not have a positive influence or impact on others, but rather were excessive consumers.  Consequently, they were viewed as trash or garbage to society.  The cold temperature of the slush that surrounded the gluttons in their circle was significant because it was the opposite of the temperature they felt while eating and drinking during their lives. In Hell, gluttons were eternally punished because they would never have the gratification of experiencing that warmth again. Another part of their punishment was constantly being picked at and eaten by Cerberus, the three-headed dog, just as they had so often picked at and eaten food and drink while alive.  Cerberus' swollen belly resembled the gluttons' obesity.  Although gluttons did not have Cerberus' red eyes, dirty beard, and claw hands, these features were symbolic of the disgust with which Dante viewed them.  As Dante wrote, "Cerberus, the ravenous three-headed dog of Hell, stands guard over them, ripping and tearing them with his claws and teeth" (65).  The violent way in which Cerberus treated the gluttons echoes the destructive manner the gluttons used to devour their food and drink.

Dante expresses disgust towards the gluttons and their circle because this part of Hell is dirty and extremely unpleasant. "Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow/ pour from the dismal air to putrefy/ the putrid slush that waits for them below" (66).  Circle Three was full of torment and gloom.  Dante makes it obvious that he considers gluttons to be garbage and believes they should be punished harshly because of their lack of importance or value to civilization. He described and created a Hell for gluttons that was horrible and miserable, punishing them by being permanently stuck in a storm of pungent slush, essentially a huge garbage dump. By envisioning and depicting the glutton's Hell as he does, Dante indicated that gluttons were as insignificant as the garbage that they consumed.