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.