Inferno Introduction
 Dude goes to Hell. We repeat: a guy
wandering around in the forest out-
side of Florence meets a dead epic
poet... and then gets an all-expenses
paid, full-blown tour of Hell.
 This is basically a 14th Century Ital-
ian poetry version of getting a VIP
day at Disneyland with Donald Duck
as a guide. Except, you know, re-
place It's A Small World with a river
of boiling blood, Splash Mountain
with a desert nightmare scape com-
plete with fiery rain, and The Matter-
horn with a harrowing scaling of the
legs of Lucifer.
 Hmm. Maybe that Disneyland
metaphor doesn't actually work.
 But you know what metaphors do
work? Answer: all of the metaphors
in Inferno. When Dante and his host-
with-the-most Virgil take a stroll
through the netherworld, he sees that
every sinful action has an equal and
opposite Hellish reaction—if you're
sullen, you spend eternity grubbing
in mud like a catfish. If you're a sui-
cide (if you decided you didn't want
life), boom—no humanoid afterlife
for you: you spend eternity as a tree.
A tree being perpetually bitten by
harpies.
 This poem is insane. And it's also in-
sanely important and eloquent. And
—as if you needed a cherry on top of
this demented literary sundae—it
was totally controversial when it
came out.
 Written in the early fourteenth cen-
tury by Italian politician Dante
Alighieri, the Divine Comedy is a lit-
erary reaction to the bitterly con-
tested politics of medieval Florence.
Florence, the richest of the Italian
city-states and possibly all of Europe
at that time, was divided between
two political parties—the Blacks
(who supported the Pope) and the
Whites (who didn’t). When Pope
Boniface VIII schemed with the
Blacks to seize power over Florence
in a military coup, Dante was exiled.
His hatred of the Pope can be seen
throughout his Divine Comedy.
 You heard right. A trip through the
three layers of Catholic afterlife is
actually about (in part) how much its
author hates the Pope. We told you
this poem was nuts.
 The Divine Comedy is Dante's fic-
tional (shocker, right?) account of
himself traveling through the three
divine realms: Hell, Purgatory, and
Heaven. Not surprisingly, in this
story Dante puts his enemies in Hell
and makes 'em suffer; the Inferno is
heavily populated with corrupt Flo-
rentine politicians characterized as
sinners.
 But more than just a means to get
payback, the Divine Comedy is the
first Italian epic work of poetry that
is not in church Latin but in the ver-
nacular—the language of the com-
mon people—the Florentine dialect
of Italian. So Dante played a major
role in standardizing the Italian lan-
guage, coining new words and
paving the way for major works of
literature written in the vernacular.
 In other words, Dante’s a big kahuna
among poets. And Inferno is widely
believed to be his magnum opus.
Dante: The Divine Comedy
 Because the hero of the Inferno is
also the writer, we have to look at
both aspects of him—Dante the au-
thor and Dante the character. What
we won't look at is the (freaking
awesome) 1997 volcano-disaster
movie Dante's Peak. And don't
worry, we'll keep the two Dante’s
separate for you.
 What is Inferno About and Why
Should I Care?
 We have two layers of why you
should care for you, Shmoopers. (We
could have used nine as a nod to the
nine layers of Hell, but brevity is the
soul of wit, y'all.)
 The first reason you should care is
that this poem is awesomely insane.
It's not often that you come across a
Great Work Of Poetry that is essen-
tially a list of afterword punishments
so sadistic they'd make King Joffrey
blush. Inferno is also a chronicle of
Who Messed Up—it's a gossipy,
star-studded tale of famous people
who sinned... and what kind of
twisted fate they have to suffer for
all eternity.
 Dante's warped Hannibal Lecter-es-
que genius thinks up (and describes
in great detail) afterlife sentences
that include being perpetually stung
by insects, lying around in feces, and
being trapped in burning tombs. And
that's just beginning—those are the
punishments for the lesser sins of be-
ing neutral (!), being gluttonous, and
being heretical.
 You should see what happens to the
government officials who take
bribes.
 So how come Dante is more bitter
than five-day-old coffee? Well, that
brings us to Why You Should Care,
Reason #2 .
 Few people in history have fallen so
hard and so fast as Dante Alighieri.
In the space of a few weeks, our man
Dante went from being a famous
poet and influential citizen in his na-
tive Florence to a desperate political
exile.
 Let’s imagine a far-fetched contem-
porary scenario set in America that
would roughly approximate Dante’s
catastrophe. You’re a famous novel-
ist, and your latest masterpiece won
the Pulitzer Prize. As a young man,
you invented an entirely new way of
writing, which your fawning critics
labeled—no joke—“the sweet new
style.” Because of your awesome
reputation, you’ve become deeply
engaged in government, and as long
as your political party maintains
power, you can depend on having its
tons o' cash and protection.
 But one day, the unthinkable hap-
pens. While you’re on a trip to Eu-
rope to visit some foreign dignitaries,
your political party is completely
wiped out. You’re told that if you re-
turn to America, you’ll be put to
death on the spot. Your house and
bank accounts have been seized, and
your friends have either been killed
or have turned against you. You’re
now forced to move from country to
country, a political refugee living on
welfare.
 Think this could never happen to
you? So did Dante.

 This is about the point where Inferno
begins. That is to say, in the middle.
Far from being simply about revenge
and punishment, Inferno is really
about a man trying to pick himself
up off the ground—battered and
bloodied—and find some kind of
meaning in life.
 Inferno is a story for people at the
end of their rope, or people who can
at least imagine what it would be like
to find themselves there. You don’t
have to be rich or famous to lose ev-
erything. And once you’ve lost your
dignity and your ethical compass,
you can’t get them back again with-
out experiencing some pretty har-
rowing things. (Just maybe not nec-
essarily ones involving serpent-
demons or cannibalized clergymen.)
 Basically, in order to get back on
track, Dante has to understand and,
to some degree, participate in some
of the worst atrocities every commit-
ted by humans. To find God, he has
to start by crawling through Satan’s
intestines.
 But—hey: you'll have to read on to
find out what kind of Clive Barker/
James Wan/Wes Craven-type stuff
goes down in the true bowels of Hell.
How It All Goes Down
 The Inferno follows the wanderings
of the poet Dante as he strays off the
rightful and straight path of moral
truth and gets lost in a dark wood.
And that, folks, is just the beginning.
 Just as three wild animals threaten to
attack him, Dante is rescued by the
ghost of Virgil, a celebrated Roman
poet and also Dante’s idol. When
asked why in hell (pun intended) he
came, Virgil answers that the head
honchos of Heaven—the Virgin
Mary and Santa Lucia—felt sorry for
Dante and asked the deceased love-
of-Dante’s-life, Beatrice, to send
someone down to help him. And
voila! Virgil to the rescue! He’s an
appropriate guide because he’s very
much like Dante, a fellow writer and
famous poet.
 For the rest of the Inferno, Virgil
takes Dante on a guided tour of Hell,
through all its nine circles and back
up into the air of the mortal world.
The first circle of Hell (Limbo), con-
sidered pre-Hell, just contains all of
the unbaptized and good people born
and before the coming of Christ, who
obviously couldn’t be saved by him.
Virgil resides here, along with a
bunch of other Greek and Roman po-
ets.
 In the second circle, lustful sinners
are tossed around by endless storms.
Dante speaks to the soul of
Francesca da Rimini, a woman who
was stuck in a loveless, arranged
marriage and committed adultery
when she fell in love with a dashing
youth named Paolo.
 Dante then awakes in the third circle,
where the Gluttonous sinners suffer
under a cold and filthy rain. Dante
talks to the glutton Ciacco, a famous
Florentine, who prophesies disaster
for Florence. Virgil leads Dante on
to the fourth circle, where the Avari-
cious (greedy people) and Prodigal
(reckless spenders) roll heavy
weights in endless circles. The next
stop on the tour is the fifth circle,
 where the Wrathful and Sullen are
immersed in the muddy river Styx.
While they are crossing the Styx, a
sinner named Filippo Argenti
reaches out to Dante (presumably for
help), but Dante angrily rejects him.
 Now at the gates of a city called Dis,
Virgil takes it upon himself to per-
suade the demon guards to let them
pass. Unexpectedly, he fails. This
means that instead of continuing on
with the journey, Dante and Virgil
must wait for an angel to come down
and force open the gates for them.
After passing the city of Dis, our dy-
namic duo enters the sixth circle,
where the Heretics lay in fiery
tombs. Dante talks to Farinata degli
Uberti, who predicts that Dante will
have difficulty returning to Florence
from exile.
 As they cross from the sixth to the
seventh circle, where the Violent are
punished, Virgil finally begins ex-
plaining the layout of Hell. We soon
learn that all human sins are divided
into three big categories: inconti-
nence (or lacking self-control), vio-
lence, and fraud. Everything Dante
has witnessed so far has fallen under
the first category. The seventh circle
will show all the violent sinners.
Then the final two circles will in-
clude all the sinners of ordinary
fraud and treacherous fraud.
 Finally, Dante and Virgil ready
themselves to cross to the eighth cir-
cle. Dante, at Virgil’s command,
summons the beast Geryon from the
depths with a cord wrapped around
his waist. Virgil stays to talk with the
beast while urging Dante to look at
the last of the Violent sinners. When
Dante comes back, they mount
Geryon and ride the beast during the
descent into the eighth circle.
 The eighth circle contains ten
pouches, each containing different
types of sinners. When Dante and
Virgil reach the third pouch where
simonists (people who use money to
get high positions in the Church) are
buried headfirst in the ground while
their feet roast in flames, Dante
works up the courage to speak to one
of the sinners. The soul of Pope
Nicholas III mistakes Dante (under-
standably, because he can’t see him)
for his successor and Dante’s hated
enemy, Pope Boniface VIII, come to
replace him in punishment.
 As Dante and Virgil traverse the fifth
pouch, in which barrators (or corrupt
politicians) are forked by demons
and plunged into a river of boiling
pitch, Virgil bravely approaches the
ruthless demons and demands safe
passage across the river. When the
sinister demons see that he is sent by
God, the head demon, Malacoda,
tells Virgil that the nearest bridge has
been broken and so assigns ten
demons to escort him to the next
bridge.
 Afraid of the demons, Dante and
Virgil escape by crossing into the
sixth pouch, where the demons can-
not follow. Here, they run into the
hypocrites who are forced to stand
clothed in robes of lead. After talk-
ing to a few of them, Virgil asks for
directions to the next pouch. In the
valley of the sixth pouch, thieves are
continually bitten by serpents whose
venom burns them into ashes. Dante
converses with one of these sinners,
 Vanni Fucci, and discovers that he is
being punished for stealing sacred
relics from the Church. After spiting
Dante and committing blasphemy,
Fucci is dragged away by serpents.
 Our heroes hurry into the eighth
pouch, where fraudulent counselors
are encased in flames. Ulysses, shar-
ing one tongue of flame with
Diomedes, tells his sinful tale to
Dante: once home after his long voy-
age (recounted in the Odyssey),
Ulysses was not content to fulfill his
duties to his family and country. He
longed for adventure so he gathered
up his aging crew and set sail again,
surpassing the boundaries of human
exploration until, in the shadow of
the Mount of Purgatory, he and his
crew perished in a violent whirlpool.
 In the ninth pouch, Dante witnesses
the sowers of scandal and schism be-
ing disemboweled by a demon with a
sword, healed, and punished again—
eternally. Dante is so freaked out by
this sight that he has to cover his ears
to avoid hearing the moans as they
pass into the tenth and last pouch.
 In the tenth pouch, four different
kinds of falsifiers are punished. As
they leave, Virgil points out the sin-
ning giants who are immobilized
around them in punishment. Nimrod
—who was responsible for building
the Tower of Babel—has lost the
ability to speak coherently. His
words are gibberish. Virgil requests
that one of the unbound giants, Anta-
neus, transport them in the palm of
his hand down to the last circle of
Hell. He complies.
 The ninth circle of Hell, where
traitors are punished, contains four
different zones. The first one, called
Caina (after Cain), features traitors to
their kin immersed in ice up to their
necks. In the second zone, Antenora
(where traitors to their homeland suf-
fer the same punishment) Dante is
provoked by Bocca degli Abati and
uncharacteristically threatens him
with violence.
 He moves on to the third zone called
Ptolomea, where traitors against their
guests suffer, immobilized in ice and
their tears frozen against their eyes.
Dante promises to break the ice off
of the eyes of one of them if he tells
him his story. This sinner, Fra Al-
berigo, agrees and Dante learns that
this level of sin is so evil that the sin-
ner's soul is condemned to Hell even
before his body dies on earth.
 In the fourth the final zone, Judecca,
where traitors against their benefac-
tors are punished, Dante witnesses
the king of Hell, the three-headed
Lucifer, giant and frozen at the core.
In his three mouths, Lucifer mechan-
ically chews on the most evil mortal
sinners—Judas, Brutus, and Cassius.
 Now that they've finished their tour,
Virgil tell Dante that it's time to
leave Hell for good. With Dante
clinging to Virgil’s back, the two
climb down Lucifer’s massive body,
which spans the diameter of the en-
tire Earth, and arrive in the southern
hemisphere. Here, Virgil and Dante
follow a path back up to the surface
of the Earth and emerge to see
Heaven’s stars.
 Dante The Author
 Mainly, the difference between au-
thor-Dante and character-Dante is
that author-Dante writes to us from
the future. He can be identified as the
real-life Dante, having already (so he
says) experienced Hell and now re-
flecting on his life-changing—and
probably death-changing—experi-
ence.
 One way we can tell author-Dante
apart from character-Dante is that the
former drops hints about things that
will happen to his character self. And
all of the sinners' prophecies just
happens to come true. Of course,
what’s considered "prophecy" to
character-Dante is history to author-
Dante. Basically, we can look at au-
thor-Dante as a more mature and
slightly jaded version of character-
Dante. After all, he's been through
Hell. Who wouldn't be jaded?
 Whenever discussing his own writ-
ing, author-Dante speaks really
highly of himself. He begins throw-
ing around his weight, comparing
himself to the old masters of poetry
and often finding himself superior.
Dude even has the cajones to say that
he's better at describing serpents than
Ovid
 Of course we have to take into ac-
count that he is talking about his own
poetry and might be slightly biased.
But, skeptical reader, Dante has ev-
ery right to brag. He’s just plain
good at what he does. Not only is he
writing about a larger-than-life topic
which nobody has addressed before
(Hell and the other divine realms),
but he does it in a language that’s de-
cidedly not Church Latin.
 While he throws in all the fancy
tricks that scholars love, he writes on
a level that the common Italian per-
son can understand. In other words,
Dante writes in a conversational
style. Translators often ignore this,
preferring instead the lofty coattails-
and-cumberbund tone of… say…
Virgil.
 Dante The Character
 Let’s just say it: Dante’s kind of a
softie. At least in the first half of the
Inferno. We understand that going
for a stroll in Hell can be traumatic
—Dante passes out from pity twice
in the first six cantos:
 And while one spirit [Francesca] said
these words to me,
 the other [Paolo] wept, so that – be-
cause of pity
– I fainted, as if I had met my
death.
 And then I fell as a dead body falls.
(Inf. V, 139-142)
 And we’ve lost count of how many
times he breaks into tears. But you
have to admit that Dante’s got heart.
Perhaps we can understand his sym-
pathy for the first few sinners like
Francesca or Ciacco. But Ugolino?
He watched his children die and then
possibly ate them.
 Empathy is one of Dante’s greatest
attributes. Compassion is his cup o’
tea and he can see the deep pathos in
each punishment as well as the need-
for-love part of every sinner’s black
soul. In Hell, of course, such a for-
giving viewpoint is bound to go
astray.

 Virgil does make Dante toughen up a
little as they go on. In reality, he
doesn’t have much to do. Dante
picks up the tough guy vibe pretty
quickly:
 And I to him [Filippo Argenti]: "I’ve
come, but I don’t stay;
 but who are you, who have become
so ugly?"
 He answered: "You can see – I’m
one who weeps."
 And I to him: "In weeping and in
grieving,
 accursed spirit, may you long re-
main;
 though you’re disguised by filth, I
know your name."
 Then he stretched both his hands out
toward the boat,
 at which my master quickly shoved
him back,
 saying: "Be off there with the other
dogs!" That done, he threw his arms
around my neck
 and kissed my face and said: "Indig-
nant soul,
 blessed is she who bore you in her
womb!" (Inf. VIII, 34-42)
Dante And Virgil
 He's raging at Filippo Argenti, argu-
ing with Farinata, ranting against
Pope Nicholas III, threatening Bocca
with violence, and even breaking a
promise to Fra Alberigo. After each
round of righteous indignation, Vir-
gil claps Dante on the back and con-
gratulates him for putting yet another
sinner in his place. Thus, Dante is
learning to slam the sinners and
quash his natural sense of pity.
 But wait a second. Doesn’t the act of
calling "rudeness… a courtesy"
sound vaguely familiar? Like
"chang[ing] a no to a yes"? In con-
demning the sinners, Dante may be
participating in the very crimes he
denounces. Like giving into wrath by
pushing Filippo off the boat, and
turning against his fellow Florentine
Bocca just as Bocca betrayed his
troops.
 The big revelation is that Dante is
human, not some holier-than-thou
spirit. He, too, is capable of sin.
When worked up, Dante can lose it
with the most wrathful of the Wrath-
ful and mess with words’ meanings
just like those filthy falsifiers. The
only difference is that Dante is doing
it for the love of God, against people
already judged as evil.
 Whether or not these complications
really make a difference may be a
moot point. But if you’ve noticed,
our hero has gone from a bleeding-
heart Dante to Dante the punisher.
Polar opposites, but both sinful in
their own way; first, Dante’s hasty
pity shows a weakness of judgment
and later, Dante’s damning rhetoric
is kind of hypocritical.
 Our dynamic duo. Virgil and Dante.
And Dante holds an awful lot of ad-
miration for Virgil: he's a total fan-
boy. He expresses this in water im-
 agery—it’s an unusual way to show
love, but hey, he’s a poet. His very
first words to Virgil compare him to
a fountain:
 [Dante]: "And are you then that Vir-
gil, you the fountain
 that freely pours so rich a stream of
speech?"
 I answered him with shame upon my
brow.
 "O light and honor of all other poets,
 may my long study and the intense
love
 that made me search your volume
serve me now.
 You are my master and my author,
you –
 the only one from whom my writing
drew
 the noble style for which I have been
honored." (Inf. I, 79-87)
 He later he calls Virgil "the sea of all
good sense." Dante paints this won-
derful image of knowledge and
learning that can flow from one
source to the other and so is open to
anyone who makes the effort to un-
lock the dam. But all metaphors
aside, both share an earnest mutual
respect.
 The two have a bunch in common.
Both are epic poets. Both come from
the boot-shaped peninsula now
called Italy. Both are very concerned
with the meaning of piety. So they
have lots to talk about. Dante plays
the role of a good student—asking
questions, listening to sinners’ sto-
ries, and imitating Virgil. Virgil acts
the part of the sage professor, while
Dante’s your typical overachiever.
 Except all is not well in the Acad-
emy of Poets. Dante learns at light
speed and Virgil makes the mistake
of… well… failing at the gates of
Dis. So after Canto IX, Dante begins
sassing off to Virgil. It happens in
Canto XI, then again in Canto XXVI,
and also in Canto XXIX. You get the
idea. He’s not rude, but his "Yes,
sensei" attitude is gone. Along with
his parallel development of the habit
of blasting sinners instead of crying
with them, Dante is gaining confi-
dence in the words exchanged with
Virgil. However, Dante’s cockiness
towards his teacher seems to do both
men good, because they slowly grow
more open in calling out each other’s
faults or lapses of judgment.
 By the end, it’s clear that Virgil still
has the greater encyclopedic memory
than Dante, but Dante student has
learned a lot. Might there be reason
to suspect that he surpasses his mas-
ter morally?
 Virgil As Teacher
 Although Virgil’s official job title is
a "guide" for Dante (does he hold a
little flag up so Dante doesn't get lost
from his Hell tour?), we all know
there is more going on. Virgil
quickly goes from tour guide to per-
sonal tutor, liaison, and father figure
to Dante. And Dante gushes over
him in a fanboy-like manner:
 [Dante]: "And are you then that Vir-
gil, you the fountain
 that freely pours so rich a stream of
speech?"
 I answered him with shame upon my
brow.
 "O light and honor of all other poets,
 may my long study and the intense
love
 that made me search your volume
serve me now.
 You are my master and my author,
you
– the only one from whom my
writing drew
 the noble style for which I have been
honored." (Inf. I, 79-87)
 Even so, Virgil does a tremendous
job as the tour guide. In each canto,
he does some straight-up lecturing,
but Virgil does show-and-tell too,
with real-life sinners. He’s quite a
speaker, able to convey to Dante
such huge concepts as the role of
Fortune in the human realm, the in-
ternal structure of Hell, the origin of
the Underworld rivers, the geogra-
phy of the earth, and the Harrowing
of Hell.
 But he’s more than just a lecturer.
Virgil knows when to step back and
let Dante do the dirty work and learn
his lesson the hard way. He doesn’t
stop Dante from arguing with sinners
or sympathizing with them... though
he obviously disapproves of the lat-
ter. He's patient with his naive pupil
and only begins reprimanding him in
the later circles. But he does eventu-
ally get fed up with Dante’s crying
and swooning and orders him to
toughen up.
 Drill Sargent Virgil
 Enter Virgil the taskmaster. No more
Mr. Nice Guy. He rebukes Dante for
daring to pity the magicians and the
sowers of scandal—even when one
of them turns out to be Dante’s
fourth cousin twice-removed.
 To scare some sense into Dante, Vir-
gil seems to provoke every single
"guardian" of Hell they encounter.
Minos? Yep. Charon. Him too. Phle-
gyas? You bet. In fact, he riles up the
Minotaur so much that Dante is
forced to do the Hellish equivalent of
the Pamplona Bull Run. And after
the black comedy encounter with the
demons, Dante has a healthy foun-
tain of fear for tapping into later. At
one point, Virgil even sends Dante
away on his own to talk to some sin-
ners while he deals with Geryon.
And how does Dante do? Patheti-
cally. When the usurers tell him to
scram, Dante raises no argument and
runs back to Virgil. Dante wilts with-
out Virgil’s guidance.
 But Virgil is not hoping for Dante to
get hurt. He does his best to protect
Dante, and he does get them safely
past every guardian of Hell he in-
cites. Virgil also reigns in his proud
boasting when he realizes that he ac-
tually needs some guardians’ help,
from Geryon and Antaeus for exam-
ple, to complete their journey. To his
credit, he also risks his own life (errr,
afterlife?) to make sure Dante es-
capes the demons.
 As stern as Virgil tries to be, we
know that deep down inside, he just
wants to share a beer with Dante
while watching the big game. Virgil
likes Dante, and his affection shows
in their pseudo-familial relationship.
How many times have we heard Vir-
gil call Dante "son," or heard Dante
call Virgil "father"? In those mo-
ments after Dante condemns a sin-
ner, Virgil practically explodes with
pride and we can sense his intense
desire to ruffle Dante’s hair or clap
him on the back.
  Dante is like the son Virgil never
had. This comes to light most appar-
ently in their flight from the two-tim-
ing demons. In lifting Dante to his
chest and carrying him as he sprints
toward safety, Virgil becomes a
mother figure to the terrified Dante.
Hmmm, father and mother? You’re
right in guessing that something big-
ger is going on here. As an unofficial
poet laureate of the Romans, Virgil
is a kind of patron spirit of Italy.
Moreover, as the consummate
speaker and writer of Latin—the an-
cestor language of Italian—Virgil is,
in a sense, the fore-father of Dante’s
native language. The two poets’ kin-
ship traces back to their respective
languages.
Virgil And Language
 As much as Dante wants the title of
"world’s greatest poet," Virgil, it
seems, has that honor. If you haven’t
noticed, the author-Dante hits us
over the head with all the linguistic
imagery in which Virgil is steeped.
First and foremost, there’s that big
important passage about Virgil’s
"persuasive word":
 [Virgil quoting Beatrice]: "Go now;
with your persuasive word, with all
 that is required to see that he [Dante]
escapes,
 bring help to him, that I may be con-
soled." (Inf. II, 67-69)
 We know this is a weird concept so
let’s just recap. The phrase in Italian
is "parole ornate" which translates
literally as "decorated word."
Doesn’t that fit Virgil to a T? We’re
talking about the writer of the
Aeneid here, the Latin epic to end all
epics, and Dante’s all-time favorite
book.
 We figure that Virgil spent so much
time writing the Aeneid—invoking
the Muses, speaking in dactylic hex-
ameter, and pulling epic similes out
of the air—that he simply got stuck
speaking that way. With all his apos-
trophes, name-dropping, and unintel-
ligible phrases like "the Fishes glitter
now on the horizon / and all the
Wain is spread out over Caurus,"
Virgil’s words are indeed "deco-
rated."
 Not only that, but Virgil's requests
are often granted. That’s where the
"persuasive" part comes in. Have
you noticed how every time Virgil
talks to someone, he gets what he
wants? He convinces a scared Dante
to come with him to hell (!), he gets
half-horse archers to guide him (in-
stead of shooting him), ditto with the
demons, he wheedles a free ride out
of Geryon, and he sways the murder-
ing giant Antaeus to cup them in his
palms like a little sparrow and lower
them safely to their destination.
That’s some major persuasive power
right there.
 Too Slick For His Own Good?
 Dante does, however, introduce
doubts about the goodness of this
way of talking. Virgil does get
locked out of Dis for a reason. His
"persuasive word" presupposes a
good deal of pride in its speaker.
Let’s face it, in order to talk like Vir-
gil, you’ve got to know you’re hot
stuff. Otherwise you couldn’t go
around calling people "bedraggled
harridan[s] […] with s***-filled
 nails." Which is why he irritates peo-
ple—namely the inhabitants of Dis.
 His rhetoric about having God’s all-
access card, along with his general
pompousness make him a difficult
guy to talk to, much less argue
against. Combine that with the fact
that his speeches are really long (a
drawback of the "persuasive word")
and it’s easier to just nod your head
and leave.
 Another way in which Virgil embod-
ies language is that he speaks for ev-
eryone. He’s Heaven’s mouthpiece.
In Canto II, he recites word-for-word
every order charged to him by the
Virgin Mary, Saint Lucia, and Beat-
rice. Not to mention that in recount-
ing Biblical tales, he adds his author-
ship to God’s. Sometimes, he even
speaks for Dante when our poor poet
is too green around the gills to talk.
We’re constantly reminded that Vir-
gil’s an authority in all things liter-
ary.
 If you’re not convinced yet, consider
the fact that Virgil is always correct-
ing Dante’s speech. When approach-
ing Ciacco, his sole encouragement
to Dante is "your words must be ap-
propriate." There’s also that odd mo-
ment when he stops Dante from talk-
ing to Ulysses just because he’s
Greek. Then, in the very next canto,
he orders Dante to talk to another
guy because he’s Italian. Virgil’s not
content with simply being a great or-
ator, but is determined to turn Dante
into one.
Virgil, The Pagan
 Isn’t it interesting that in a Christian
text, the mentor figure is a pagan?
Virgil’s revelation that he is one of
the inhabitants of Hell, even if it is
only Limbo, makes us pause for a
second. Dante’s guide is a sinner?
Well, as the text goes on, it becomes
apparent that Virgil is far from per-
fect. He’s proud. He’s long-winded.
And sometimes, he’s downright
mean. But, unlike the sinners, Vir-
gil’s faults don’t turn us against him.
Instead, they endear him to us be-
cause his shortcomings are an indica-
tion that he’s only human (albeit
deader than a doornail). Just like
Dante.
 So why Virgil? Why a pagan? Why
not some nice Christian poet? Mil-
ton? Not born yet. Ditto for Donne.
Okay, Dante could’ve probably
found some Christian writer if he’d
really wanted to, but that’s the—he
didn’t want to. He loves everything
that Virgil represents: the Classics,
larger-than-life themes, battles be-
tween good and evil, honor, glory,
culture, and spirituality.
 In case you didn’t know, Virgil’s big
theme in the Aeneid is piety or devo-
tion to one’s god. Indeed Aeneas’
most famous epithet, or poetic nick-
name, is "pious Aeneas." Although
Dante is stoutly Christian, his faith is
informed by the Classical thinkers.
His division of sin into three cate-
gories stems largely from Aristotle’s
Ethics (which Dante quotes in Canto
XI). He also takes a hint from Vir-
gil’s vision of piety, extending his
spirituality to include more than just
honor paid to God, but also honor
shown to one’s family and one’s na-
tion. Just to drive home the point that
Dante reveres the Classics, there are
passages where Dante refers to the
 Christian God as "Jupiter" or "Jove,"
the pagan Roman name for the king
of the gods.
 Virgil is the most prominent figure
of Classicism in the text. But the dia-
logue between Classical and Chris-
tian beliefs is perhaps one of the
most interesting aspects of the In-
ferno. Dante doesn’t delude himself
into thinking he can completely rec-
oncile them... but that doesn’t stop
him from constantly quoting Classi-
cal writers, nor from humbling him-
self before his idol, Virgil.
Lucifer
 The Worst Of The Worst Of The
Worst
 According to Christianity, Lucifer
fell from Heaven because of the sin
of pride. Like Nimrod in Canto
XXXI, Lucifer challenged God’s
supremacy. Unlike Nimrod, he had
everything. He lived in Heaven and
was the most beautiful of God’s an-
gels. And God’s favorite. But that
wasn’t enough. Get the picture?
We’re talking arrogance beyond be-
lief.
 And his punishment fits his crime.
For his pride in moving against God,
he’s now permanently frozen. Ap-
propriately, his pride only worsens
his imprisonment. If he would stop
flapping and chewing for a second
and actually use his brain, he might
figure out that maybe if he stopped
waving about, all that ice would melt
and he could wriggle his way out.
However, stopping his flapping
would mean no longer struggling
against God; it would be an admis-
sion of defeat. He can’t stomach that.
 So Lucifer turns out to be just a fig-
urehead, not really an individual with
a unique character. The biggest, bad-
dest sinner of them all turns out to be
not so bad. (He’s big; we’ll give him
that much.) Or at least, Dante doesn’t
spend a whole lot of time character-
izing him in the way he does Vanni
Fucci or Guido da Montefeltro. As
readers, we don’t hate Lucifer in the
way we despise the pettier sinners.
If you know Dante, you know this isn’t
accidental. The point, then, is that this is
what evil is, and nothing more.Evil’s
most powerful agent is stuck in a lake of
ice, flapping his wings desperately to try
to get out, and his flapping only entraps
him more:
If he [Lucifer] was once as handsome as
he now
is ugly and, despite that, raised his brows
against his Maker, one can understand
how every sorrow has its source in him!
I marveled when I saw that, on his head,
he had three faces: one – in front –
bloodred;
and then another two that, just above
the midpoint of each shoulder, joined the
first…
Beneath each face of his, two wings
spread out,
as broad as suited so immense a bird:
I’ve never seen a ship with sails so wide.
They had no feathers, but were fash-
ioned like
a bat’s; and he was agitating them,
so that three winds made their way out
from him –
and all Cocytus froze before those
winds.
He wept out of six eyes; and down three
chins,
tears gushed together with a bloody
froth.
Within each mouth – he used it like a
grinder –
 with gnashing teeth he tore to bits a
sinner,
 so that he brought much pain to three
at once. (Inf. XXXIV, 34-57)
 Hmm, Lucifer doesn’t sound all that
powerful to us. But that’s the point:
when compared to the goodness of
God, who can express His will in na-
ture, in mankind, and in basically ev-
erything, the evilest guy of them all
can’t even move. Evil can’t hold a
candle to good. The nature of evil is
not action that counters good, but a
void. A simple lack of virtue. It has
no agency, no way to act. That’s how
helpless evil is against good.
 Virgil expresses his contempt for
evil and its powerlessness when he
refuses to spend more than a few
minutes gazing at Lucifer. Virgil
says virtually nothing about Lucifer,
does not ask him to speak, and then
tells Dante it’s time to leave. Virgil’s
behavior suggests that the ultimate
evil isn’t even worth dwelling on
Pope Boniface VIII
 We Bet They Called Him "Bony-
Face" In Elementary School
 Even though Pope Boniface VIII
never physically shows up in the In-
ferno, he's a major figure, both in
Dante’s political life and as a symbol
of sin. Boniface would have served
nicely as Dante’s prime antagonist...
if only our poet been able to include
him in his story. Don’t think that
Dante excluded Boniface from Hell
out of some outpouring of generos-
ity. This Pope not only betrayed
Dante’s beloved White Guelphs, but
had Dante personally exiled. (In case
you were wondering, Ciacco tells
this story in prophecy form in Canto
VI.)
 The only reason Dante didn’t include
him was that at the time of Dante’s
writing, Pope Boniface VIII was still
alive. But such is Dante’s genius that
he can flesh out a character for his
readers without actually having him
once show his face. However, his
name makes a number of appear-
ances. Five, to be exact.
 Boniface’s role as an emblem of de-
ceit begins with the first obscure al-
lusion to him in Canto III. In the cir-
cle of the neutrals, Dante spies a soul
he calls the one "who made the great
refusal." Scholars have conjectured
this character to be Pope Celestine
V, the incumbent pope before Boni-
face (learn more). History tells us
that the only reason Boniface came
 to office was that Celestine suddenly
and unexpectedly resigned. Rumors
flew that Boniface planted doubts
into Celestine’s head in the months
prior to his abdication. If this is true,
as Dante no doubt believes, it
demonstrates an insincere use of lan-
guage. That’s right—a fraudulent
sinner! Since Boniface’s words are
uttered to gain him a position of po-
litical power, that would mean eighth
circle, sixth pouch.
 Simony Says
 The last three mentions of Boniface
(in a simile concerning the pander-
ers, by the Simonist Pope Nicholas
III, and by fraudulent counselor
Guido da Montefeltro) in the Inferno
all point to his questionable practice
of selling indulgences or absolution.
Hmmm, selling the Word? Simony?
This one was slightly more pre-
dictable in that Pope Nicholas III ac-
tually tells us that he’s waiting for
Boniface to replace him in his fiery
hole:
 I stood as does the friar who con-
fesses
 the foul assassin who, fixed fast,
head down,
 calls back the friar, and so delays his
death;
 and he cried out: "Are you already
standing,
 already standing there, o Boniface?
 The book has lied to me by several
years.
 Are you so quickly sated with the
riches
 for which you did not fear to take by
guile
 the Lovely Lady, then to violate
her?"
 And I became like those who stand
as if
 they have been mocked, who cannot
understand
 what has been said to them and can’t
respond. (Inf. XIX, 49-60)
 Because he couldn’t put his nemesis
in Hell just yet, Dante has reserved a
spot for him.
 Have you noticed that Dante tends to
look for clerics in Hell? And to take
special note of their suffering?
(Check out Canto VII for an exam-
ple.) Pope Boniface, then, in spear-
heading the Church, might indeed
function as a symbol for everything
corrupt within Catholicism. Simony,
indulgences, barratry. Name your
sin. Remember that the whole sticky
situation in Florence—the Guelph
vs. Ghibelline, White vs. Black fight
—arose because of disagreements
about the integrity of the Pope.
Inferno Canto I Summary
 The story opens with Dante experi-
encing a mid-life crisis. Kind of.
When describing his mid-life crisis,
he uses ambiguous pronouns, saying
"our life’s way." More on that later.
Basically, he has strayed from his
 path and finds himself lost in a dark
wood. Creepy.
 Yeah, it’s so creepy that "death could
hardly be more severe!" (Yes, excla-
mation point included.) Foreshadow-
ing, anyone?
 Dante is confused about how he got
into such a no-man's land. He was
"full of sleep" when he strayed from
the true path. Now he’s at the bottom
of some hill.
 Dante’s gaze wanders up the hill and
he finds the summit all beautifully lit
up like Christmas lights by the sun, a
real contrast to the dark wood he’s
stuck in. Predictably, his heart lifts at
this sight.
 We learn he’s just endured a "night
of sorrow." In an elaborate metaphor,
Dante compares himself to a ship-
wrecked swimmer who has just
found land and, safe on the beach,
turns back to look at the frightening
waves. In Dante’s fancy language,
he’s just endured "the pass / that
never has let any man survive."
 Wearily, our hero starts climbing the
hill (towards the light), but lo and be-
hold suddenly a sinister beast ap-
pears to block his way. Actually, it’s
just a leopard.
 Dante backs away from the big, bad
leopard. He notices that day has
dawned and that lifts his spirits a lit-
tle.
 Until he’s faced with a ferocious
lion. And then a hungry she-wolf.
 Dante screams and runs back down
the hill.
 At the bottom of the hill, Dante runs
into a ghost. He promptly crumples
into a fetal position and begs for
mercy.
 But this is a gabby ghost. The ghost
starts talking about where he’s from
(Mantua), when he was born (during
Emperor Augustus’ reign), and what
he was (a poet).
 Dante suddenly isn't so scared any-
more. In fact, he recognizes the
ghost.
 It’s the famous Roman poet Virgil,
who is Dante’s inspiration and all-
time favorite idol.
 Dante says something like: "I’ve to-
tally read everything you wrote and
when I write I try to be just like you.
So could you please make that scary
wolf-thingy go away?" (But in more
formal epic-like speak.)
 Virgil is all stern and says, in his
wise listen-to-me-or-else way, that
Dante must take another path be-
cause the she-wolf is always hungry
(she’ll eat you) and always interested
in sex (she’ll fornicate with you).
But never fear, in the end the good
Greyhound will come and kill her
and send her back to Hell and restore
Italy to its rightful glory.
 Translation: the she-wolf is a symbol
of greed, the defining quality of Flo-
rence, at least to Dante. The Grey-
hound symbolizes Italy’s redeemer,
though scholars can’t decide exactly
whom it represents. So, basically, the
Greyhound will come and kill the
greed of Florence and everything
will be good again.
 Virgil’s point? Hey, Dante, you
should entrust your life to me while I
take you on a journey through Hell
and Purgatory and maybe even
Heaven (if you’re worthy).
 Predictably, Dante agrees.
 And so the adventure begins.
Inferno Inferno Canto II Summary
 Like all good conversations, the one
between Dante and Virgil has appar-
ently lasted all day. Seriously. The
sun is setting and Dante mentally
fortifies himself for the upcoming
night. (Picture an internal pep talk,
complete with the you-can-do-it
coaching.)
 To give him courage and virtue and
whatnot, Dante invokes the Muses.
 But he’s still afraid and doubtful of
his own abilities. So he asks Virgil in
a long, convoluted way why he was
chosen for this journey. This in-
cludes comparing himself to "he who
fathered Sylvius" (meaning Aeneas,
from Virgil’s Aeneid) and the "Cho-
sen Vessel" (meaning St. Peter), both
of whom traveled in a divine realm
(Underworld and Heaven). Dante
claims that he’s not nearly as great or
heroic as these figures. So, "why
me?" he asks.
 Virgil understands that Dante’s "soul
has been assailed by cowardice" and
so explains why he (Virgil) was cho-
sen for this task in order to calm
Dante’s fears.
 Virgil’s tells the story of how he
came to be here with Dante. Let's
jump back into that story:
 Virgil's soul is hanging out in Limbo
(more on this later) when a lady with
really pretty eyes appears and asks
him to help out her lost "friend."
(She overheard news of her
"friend’s" trouble in Heaven.) She
says she wants Virgil's help because
he has a silver tongue or "persuasive
word".
 This lady calls herself Beatrice, and
Virgil learns that she’s doing this out
of "Love" (yes, with a capital "L")
for Dante.
 Virgil is curious as to why Beatrice
came all the way down to Hell (from
her boudoir in Heaven) just to tell
him this. Beatrice responds that God
has arranged it so that the misery of
Hell cannot affect her.
 And the orders for Virgil don't come
from just Beatrice. The Virgin Mary
herself is so upset by Dante’s
predicament that she cried buckets
for him and then sent for her very
best friend, St. Lucia, to carry her
message. Beatrice, even though she
loves Dante, cannot possibly do any-
thing for him since she’s a woman
(what's up, sexism), so she brings the
message down to the decidedly male
Virgil.
 She makes a big deal about Virgil’s
wonderful way with words and cries.
 Smitten, Virgil rushes off and finds
Dante just in time to rescue him from
the big, bad wolf.
 Virgil's story ends.
 Dante’s chest swells with gratitude
and he demonstrates his own way
with words by comparing himself to
drooping flowers that straighten out
once touched by sunlight.
 In fact, he’s so pumped up now that
he has a mind-melding moment with
Virgil. Observe: "A single will fills
both of us."
 And with that, our emboldened he-
roes strike out to conquer the world.
Or Hell.
Inferno Inferno Canto III Summary
 Dante and Virgil stop to look in awe
at the Hellgate, on which encourag-
ing words like "ABANDON EVERY
HOPE, [YOU] WHO ENTER
HERE" appear.
 There is more to the inscription,
which describes the origins of Hell—
 how it was made by "Justice," "the
Highest Wisdom," and "Primal
Love."
 Dante tells Virgil he doesn’t under-
stand the inscription.
 Virgil, in his sage way, doesn’t really
answer Dante’s question, but tells
him to be brave. He also describes
Hell’s sinners as people who have
"lost the good of the intellect." (This
is a good place to stick a big bright
sticky note because this is an Impor-
tant Concept.)
 Dante’s first impression of Hell: it’s
noisy. It’s full of "strange utterances,
horrible pronouncements, / accents
of anger, words of suffering, / and
voices shrill and faint, and beating
hands…"
 Horrified, Dante asks Virgil who
these people are that scream so
loudly.
 Virgil explains that they’re neutrals,
people who failed to choose either
good or evil in their lifetimes and so
are condemned to exist in a kind of
ante-Inferno...pre-Hell, if you will.
The "coward angels" are here too—
those that sided with neither God nor
Lucifer in the great battle that cre-
ated the Devil.
 When Dante repeats his question,
Virgil (slightly peeved) answers
shortly:
 These sinners have "no hope in
death" and their entire existence is
driven by envy for any other kind of
existence… even one in the true cir-
cles of Hell. Virgil says this so
quickly and tersely that he implies
that these sinners aren’t even worth
wasting many words over.
 While sightseeing, Dante notices the
neutrals’ punishment: various insects
sting their naked bodies, irritating
them and making them run around in
big circles under a long banner.
Dante is blown away by the sheer
number of them; in other words,
there are a lot of neutrals.
 Among the horde, Dante recognizes
the one "who made […] the great re-
fusal." Scholars have interpreted this
sinner as Pope Celestine V, who ab-
dicated his papal seat just five
months after taking office. This
paved the way for the election of
Pope Boniface VIII, whom Dante
hates with a passion.
 Dante observes a big crowd of peo-
ple gathering on the banks of a big
river and asks Virgil why they seem
so eager to cross the river.
 Our wise man tells Dante to quiet
down; he’ll find out why when they
actually get there. "There" being the
banks of the river Acheron, one of
the five rivers of the Greek Under-
world.
 When they do get there, Virgil
doesn’t even get the chance to ex-
plain before an old man with a long
white beard comes up to them and
basically says, "No chance the two of
you are getting on my boat. Only
dead people allowed." This guy is
Charon, the ferryman that takes peo-
ple across the river.
 Then Virgil gets all up in Charon’s
face and one-ups him with "God sent
us, so let us through." Or something
like that.
 So Charon is forced to ferry them
across, but he’s pouty and sullen
about it.
 Dante, in poet mode, compares all
the dead souls gathering on the river-
banks to falling leaves in autumn and
later to hunting falcons returning to
their masters when called. Dante is
big on metaphors.
  Virgil explains that only sinners ever
have to undertake this crossing.
 All of a sudden, an earthquake hits,
complete with a tornado and a
"blood-red light."
 Dante loses consciousness.
Inferno Inferno Canto IV (the first Circle:
Limbo) Summary
 Dante wakes up to find himself at the
edge of a great dark valley, in which
he cannot see anything. (Yes, they
crossed the Acheron while Dante
was unconscious.)
 Virgil says "Let’s go." But he’s re-
ally pale.
 Dante mistakes Virgil's paleness for
fear and balks. But Virgil explains
that his alabaster complexion does
not indicate fear, but rather sympathy
for his neighbors. Because this is his
home in Hell—Limbo.
 Here, the sinners sigh as well, but
not nearly as loudly or painfully as
the neutrals.
 The inhabitants of this circle of Hell
are those who had no control over
their salvation: they were either not
baptized at birth or born before the
coming of Christ. Thus, they don’t
suffer as much as other sinners; they
only feel the absence of God’s love
as a constant ache. Otherwise, they
frolic in their pretty fields.
 (We know what you’re thinking: this
is Hell? But trust us, it gets much
worse.)
 Saddened by these sinners’ plight,
Dante earnestly asks Virgil whether
or not anyone is allowed to leave this
place (and presumably enter Heaven)
if they are good people.
 Kindly Virgil answers yes; in fact, he
saw it happen. With his own eyes, he
saw Christ enter Limbo and take Old
Testament worthies like Noah,
Moses, Abraham, David, and Rachel
into his all-forgiving arms and trans-
port them up to Heaven. (Trivial Pur-
suit tidbit: this was called the Har-
rowing of Hell.)
 Suddenly, Dante sees a fire break up
the darkness. The fire is the glow of
a luminous castle and men are there.
 To answer Dante’s inevitable ques-
tion, Virgil introduces the men as his
best buddies, fellow poets like
Homer, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan.
 Virgil chats with his friends for a lit-
tle while before they notice Dante
and invite him in. Dante is ecstatic at
being "sixth among such intellects."
 This circle enters the shining palace
and its countless flowering court-
yards and gardens. Inside, they en-
counter a bunch of Greek and Roman
heroes like Hector, Aeneas, Caesar,
Socrates, Plato, and many more.
 When they’ve had their fill of recit-
ing poems, Dante and Virgil take
their leave.
 Every step forward brings them into
darker and darker territory.
Inferno Inferno Canto V (the Second Circle:
the Lustful) Summary
 As they descend into the second cir-
cle of Hell, Dante notes that it’s a lit-
tle smaller than the first circle. (This
is because Hell is shaped like a fun-
nel, with each successive circle
shrinking a little.)
 There, the huge bull-like judge Mi-
nos appears, looming over a great
crowd, out of which each individual
steps forward to have his say.
 Dante explains that Minos judges
where all sinners go by twining his
 tail into coils. The number of coils
determines which circle the sinner
goes into.
 The very ugly Minos pauses his per-
petual dissing of sinners long enough
to warn Dante and Virgil to be care-
ful whom they trust.
 Virgil shoots back with a "God pro-
tects us" line, but we can see right
through him. He’s as scared as
Dante.
 On that note, they come to the edge
of a cliff and see a hurricane-strength
whirlwind buffeting the souls of the
Lustful (promiscuous, impulsive).
 Dante compares them to birds like
starlings, cranes, and doves because
of their helplessness against the wind
and because of the cacophonous
cries they emit.
 Virgil, trying to show off, names a
bunch of the souls trapped there:
Semiramis, Dido, Cleopatra, Helen
of Troy, Paris, Tristan…
 Star-struck by such names, Dante
feels sorry for them and calls out to a
couple, wanting to talk to them.
 They approach and the female soul
speaks. She’s really polite and talks
in a highfalutin’ style, as if she’s
stuck in the rhetoric of courtly love.
She thanks Dante for being so kind
as to speak nicely to her, then tells
her story.
 She’s Francesca da Rimini, an Italian
(from Ravenna) and, in terms of
blood, something like a princess.
During her life, she was forced into a
loveless political marriage with a
guy called Gianciotto Malatesta.
 However, she fell in love with her
husband’s younger brother Paolo and
had an affair with him. When Gian-
ciotto discovered their adultery, he
killed them both. (Yes, he’s in a
deeper level of Hell, Francesca tells
us.)
 Dante is so moved by the unfairness
of it all that he starts crying. He
tends to do this a lot. And he asks
how exactly she fell in love.
 Francesca says that one sunny day,
she and Paolo were innocently read-
ing a book. But not just any book.
This one portrayed the knight
Lancelot being hopelessly smitten by
Queen Guinevere. When they get to
the part where Lancelot kisses
Arthur’s queen, Paolo and Francesca
followed suit and shared a passionate
kiss. We know it’s passionate be-
cause "all his body trembled" and on
that day they "read no more."
 Francesca blames the book for her
sin, calling it a Gallehault (the char-
acter in Arthurian legend who en-
courages Lancelot in his forbidden
affair with Guinevere).
 As Francesca concludes her story,
her soul mate Paolo bawls his eyes
out.
 Dante, the deepest fibers of his soul
stirred to the extreme by their tragic
story, passes out, as if dead.
Inferno Inferno Canto VI (the Third Circle:
the Gluttonous) Summary
 Dante awakens and finds himself
surrounded by new sufferers. Thus,
he concludes he’s in a new circle of
Hell.
 Now for a weather report: it’s rain-
ing. Correction: it always rains in the
third circle, where the Gluttonous
dwell. Not pure water, either, but
filthy polluted stinky rain and hail-
stones. The earth itself reeks.
 The sinners here are so traumatized
by this rain that they turn back and
forth, trying unsuccessfully to keep
 some part of their body clean and
dry.
 Above these writhing sinners looms
Cerberus, the gigantic three-headed
guard dog of the Underworld. He
snarls at the pilgrims as they ap-
proach.
 Unfazed, Virgil picks up handfuls of
stinking mud and hurls them straight
into Cerberus’s jaws. The dog actu-
ally eats it and, in the meantime,
grows quiet. Get it? Cerberus is a
glutton too.
 As Dante and Virgil tour this circle
of gluttons, none of the sinners pay
attention to them, except one who
sits up and demands that Dante rec-
ognize him. The sinner knows that
Dante is a Florentine (someone from
Florence).
 Dante, being a poet, gracefully asks
the glutton to remind him of his
name.
 The sinner suddenly isn’t so free
with his words. He introduces him-
self as Ciacco (also a Florentine),
names his sin as gluttony, and then
clams up.
 Dante doesn’t seem at all interested
in Ciacco’s life, saying only that
Ciacco’s suffering moves him to
tears. Then he changes the subject to
the future of Florence.
 So Ciacco goes into prophet mode.
(Of course, what he "foresees" is his-
tory by the time Dante writes the In-
ferno.)
 In very cryptic language, Ciacco
presages political strife between the
Blacks and Whites (see "In A Nut-
shell" for more on this). First the
Whites will win a battle and drive
the Blacks out. But then the Blacks
will return with the help of the hated
Pope Boniface VIII and crush the
Whites, eventually driving many of
them into exile, including Dante.
Ciacco sees the two parties ignoring
reason in favor of "envy, pride, and
avariciousness."
 On that note, Dante continues inter-
rogating Ciacco, naming a bunch of
famous Florentines and asking where
he can find them now. Ciacco an-
swers that they’re all in Hell, so
Dante will see them later.
 To top off his speech, Ciacco re-
quests that Dante make his name fa-
mous in the living world. Then he
falls silent. With that, Ciacco lowers
himself into obscurity.
 Virgil interjects with some prophesy-
ing of his own. He states that Ciacco
will not rise again until Judgment
Day.
 Dante inquires if these sinners’ pun-
ishments will get better or worse af-
ter Judgment Day.
 In his convoluted way, Virgil an-
swers with "worse," because then the
sinners’ bodies will be reunited with
their souls and it won’t be just their
souls that are suffering.
 Our two heroes ponder this sad fact
as they walk towards the next circle.
Along the way, they meet Plutus,
whom we’ll learn more about in the
next canto.
Inferno Inferno Canto VII (the Fourth Cir-
cle: the Avaricious and Prodigal; the Fifth
Circle: the Wrathful and Sullen) Summary
 This canto opens with Plutus crying
out unintelligibly to Satan as Dante
and Virgil sally by. Although Dante
shows signs of fear, Virgil reassures
him that the demon has no power to
stop them.
 When our pilgrims pass Plutus, he
falls to the ground like sails that sud-
 denly lack wind to propel them for-
ward.
 Then he does it again, comparing the
sinners’ movements to the waves
breaking around the mouth of
Charybdis, a famous mythological
whirlpool.
 So what are the sinners actually do-
ing? Pushing heavy wheels of
weights around in a big endless cir-
cle.
 The Avaricious (greedy people) and
Prodigal (reckless spenders) are pun-
ished together, divided up into two
groups, one for each half of the cir-
cle. When they meet at the midpoint
pushing their weights, they cry in-
sults to each other: "’Why do you
hoard?’ ‘Why do you squander?’"
Imagine a square dance where every
time you pass your partner, you
shout, "Why are you so uncoordi-
nated?"
 Dante, with his eagle eyes, notices
that some of the sinners are tonsured
(have shaven heads) and wonders if
they were clergy while alive. He asks
Virgil, who confirms his suspicions.
Another strike against the Church.
 Dante hopes to recognize some faces
amongst these sinners, but Virgil un-
dercuts this wish because "the undis-
cerning life that made them filthy /
now renders them unrecognizable."
In other words, they’re dirty. So dirty
that filth has crusted over their true
identities.
 Virgil, fully atop his soapbox now,
sermonizes that this punishment is
no more than what these sinners de-
serve for squandering and hoarding
what Fortune gave them. Now, all
the gold in the world cannot save
them.
 Dante interrupts the story to go on a
totally unrelated tangent. He asks
Virgil to expound on what Fortune
is.
 Now Virgil is in his element and
gives a long speech, explaining that
Fortune is God’s manager of all ma-
terial goods and that She shifts these
assets between nations and peoples
in ways that man can neither under-
stand nor predict. Even though peo-
ple curse her, She is deaf to their in-
sults and goes about her work bliss-
fully.
 When Virgil has talked himself out,
they move on since it’s getting late.
 Our two heroes find a stream of
black water, which leads down
through ever drearier fields and fi-
nally drains into the nasty swamp of
the Styx. (Which means that black
stream was the river Styx —Under-
world river #2, if you’ve been count-
ing.)
 Now in the fifth circle, Dante wit-
nesses muddy figures of sinners get-
ting sincerely down and dirty. These
mud-fighters are earnestly trying to
rip each other’s throats out. So it
should come as no surprise that these
sinners are the Wrathful.
 Virgil, just as mesmerized as Dante,
adds a helpful tidbit of information:
beneath this lovely sludge is another
group of sinners, the Sullen.
 Resentfully silent in life, the Sullen
now are forced to recite hymns while
submerged in this mud, so that their
words come out only as gurgles.
 Thoroughly disgusted by these
"swallowers of slime," Dante and
Virgil trudge onwards until they
come to the base of a tower.
Inferno Inferno Canto VIII (the river Styx,
the gates of Dis) Summary
 Belatedly, Dante tells us that this
tower—something like a lighthouse
—has been guiding them towards it-
self for a while.
 As they approach it, Dante notices
another flame flickering in the dis-
tance. He asks Virgil why.
 Trying to cultivate his air of mystery,
Virgil tells Dante to look harder.
Dante does and goes "I see it! It’s a
boat!"
 The boatman gruffly stops them. He,
like Charon, has issues with Dante's
alive-ness. By the way, his name is
Phlegyas. Try to say that five times
fast.
 Virgil puts him in his place, Phle-
gyas pouts, and they board the boat,
which promptly sinks a little under
Dante's weight. (Live people are
heavier than dead ones.) Thankfully,
it doesn’t stop them from crossing
the Styx.
 While on the boat, Dante leans down
towards the river and asks one of the
mud-encrusted sinners: "Who are
you, who have become so ugly?" Se-
riously.
 When the sinner gives an ambiguous
answer, Dante becomes infuriated
and curses him. Which is… well…
different from his usual responses to
sinners, like crying or fainting.
 When the sinner reaches out towards
the boat (presumably in a gesture of
longing), Virgil pushes him back into
the river.
 Then in another switch of personal-
ity, Virgil joyously hugs and kisses
Dante.
 Why? Dante is making Virgil proud
by feeling righteously indignant
enough to not sympathize with sin-
ners and instead to rage at them.
 He continues, using his prophesying
skills to predict that before reaching
the far shore, Dante will see a sight
that justifies his insult to the sinner.
 A bunch of muddy sinners attack the
same guy Dante did, crying, "At Fil-
ippo Argenti!" At which point Fil-
ippo goes crazy and starts biting
himself.
 Having filled his meanness quota for
the day, Virgil turns into Mr. Ex-
plain-Everything again, telling Dante
they are approaching the city of Dis.
 Dante catches sight of it on the hori-
zon and is struck by how red every-
thing is.
 Yes, red. Apparently, this comes
from the eternal flame that burns
within the city, signaling that it is
within lower (worse) Hell. So says
Virgil. In other words, you ain’t seen
nothin’ yet.
 When they arrive at the gates of the
city, they find a thousand enraged
sinners trying to bar Dante from get-
ting through. Because of his alive-
ness.
 To recap, we’ve got a thousand an-
gry sinners waving their pitchforks
around and spitting at Dante. So Vir-
gil "makes a sign" to fend them off
and has a private chat with them.
 Dante can’t hear what they’re saying.
Probably because he’s freaked out by
the mad sinners and wants to go
home.
 The citizens of Dis agree to open
their gates, but only for Virgil. The
live guy has to go back.
 Dante freaks out at the thought of
having to go back on his own, so
much so that he tells the reader di-
rectly about his fears.
 Then he begs Virgil to come back
with him if these sinners are so intent
on blocking their way.
  Virgil, his ego puffed up now, scoffs
at Dante’s words and says he’ll take
care of it.
 So while he does the fast talking,
Dante wrings his hands with indeci-
sion.
 And then the crucial moment: the
gates slam shut in Virgil’s face and
he’s forced to make the slow shame-
ful walk back to Dante. Virgil failed?
(Hmm, Important Passage.)
 Virgil rants at the sinners, but reas-
sures Dante that he will win against
them.
 He tells Dante that this has happened
before at the entrance of Hell (when
Christ harrowed Hell) and that an an-
gel is now descending to help them.
Thank goodness.
Inferno Inferno Canto IX (the gate of Dis)
Summary
 At the news, Dante turns even paler
than Virgil, quite an accomplish-
ment, considering Virgil is a ghost.
 In a fatherly way, Virgil tries to reas-
sure Dante. But he is so distressed
that his words—usually smooth and
eloquent—come out choppy and in-
coherent. Virgil is stuttering.
 Dante notices his hero’s broken
phrases and this only deepens his
fear.
 In an indirect way, Dante asks if any-
one from Limbo has ever descended
this far down in Hell before.
 Virgil answers that even though it’s
rare, it has happened. In fact, he has
traveled down to the deepest level of
Hell before, on a mission to recover
a soul for the witch Erichtho. (No,
this doesn’t mean Virgil is evil, but
simply shows that he has an exten-
sive knowledge of Hell and its inhab-
itants. Besides, the mission wasn’t
really evil.)
 Dante's gaze has drifted up one of
Dis’s towers, to take in a horrible
sight: three blood-spattered women
hanging pell-mell from the turrets.
And they have snakes as hair.
 Following his gaze, Virgil reacts
with disgust, identifying the terrify-
ing trio as the Furies. He names each
one for Dante’s benefit: Megaera,
Allecto, and Tisiphone.
 The three ladies scratch their chests
with their talons and threaten Dante,
warning him that Medusa is coming
to turn him into stone.
 Virgil understands this danger be-
cause he reacts by turning Dante
away from the Furies, ordering him
to close his eyes, and even covering
them himself.
 Dante hears the wild rush of some-
thing approaching. Something big
and possibly scary.
 Virgil tells him to open his eyes to
witness Heaven’s messenger.
 Dante sees a figure coming with the
force of a hurricane, scattering thou-
sands of souls before it, yet its only
movement is to thrust the air out of
its way with its hand.
 When this Heavenly Messenger
reaches Dis’s gates, he has only to
wave his wand to open it.
 Then he speaks, admonishing the in-
habitants of Dis for resisting God’s
irresistible will.
 Dante, awestruck, describes his
words as "holy."
 After the wonder has worn off,
Dante and Virgil enter the city to see
more pain and suffering.
 This time, the ground is pockmarked
by open tombs, out of which flames
burn. There are sinners inside those
burning graves, screaming in agony.
  Here in the sixth circle, Virgil ex-
plains that the arch-heretics are pun-
ished. Reading Dante's thoughts,
Virgil tells him that there are many
more suffering here than he might
think.
 On that note, they proceed.
Inferno Inferno Canto X (the Sixth Circle:
the Heretics) Summary
 As they traverse the sixth circle of
the Heretics, the world of burning
dead, Dante asks if he can see any
one of these entombed sinners. Be-
cause if you haven’t noticed, the lids
of the tombs are open.
 What Dante really wants, as Virgil
well knows, is to see if any of his
Florentine friends are here.
 Virgil answers that the tombs will be
open until Judgment Day. He goes
on to explain that everyone here is a
follower of Epicurus (the Greek
philosopher) who claimed that the
soul dies with the body. Obviously,
that was a bad thing to say because it
goes against God’s doctrine and ev-
eryone who believes it winds up in
Hell.
 Suddenly, their conversation is inter-
rupted by a voice that speaks eerily
to Dante. It says that his accent
sounds Tuscan (Dante is in fact from
Tuscany), and the speaker want to
talk with Dante about that.
 Dante grabs onto to Virgil’s sleeve
and whimpers because the voice is
coming from an open tomb.
 Virgil tells him to go back there and
talk to Farinata. He’s made the effort
to stand up in his torturous tomb for
you.
 Virgil pushes the cowering Dante to-
wards the towering Farinata and or-
ders him to answer appropriately.
 Farinata sternly asks Dante who his
ancestors were.
 Dante meekly answers and, follow-
ing Virgil’s instructions, tells every-
thing.
 But despite his efforts, Farinata
frowns. It turns out that there’s bad
blood between his own family and
Dante’s, so much so that Farinata’s
family drove them out.
 Dante retorts that at least his family
returned to fight back, unlike Fari-
nata’s.
 Before Farinata can reply, another
soul rises up and begs Dante to tell
him where his son is.
 Dante eyes him up and down and ap-
parently recognizes him… because
he answers. And, being a poet, he
makes his answer all ambiguous.
 A quick aside for some brief, if com-
plex, family history: This man is
Cavalcante dei Cavalcanti, one of
Dante’s political allies. His son,
Guido, was a famous poet and
Dante’s close friend. Like Dante,
Guido was exiled when the Blacks
took over Florence.
 From Dante’s reply, Cavalcante gets
the idea that his son is dead. When
Dante doesn’t rush to correct him,
the poor soul falls back inside his
tomb in a great show of grief.
 Farinata, who has watched this ex-
change with indifference, resumes
the conversation with Dante as if
nothing has happened. He regrets
that his family proved so cowardly in
comparison to Dante’s but asks why
the Florentines are so mean to his
kin.
 We now interrupt our regularly
scheduled programming to bring you
a minor history lesson: Dante cites
the battle of Montaperti as the cause
of strife between their families. To
 clarify, Farinata was a leader of the tell him everything. The message:
Ghibelline party, the sworn enemy of don’t worry about it.
Dante’s Guelph party. At Monta-  So they keep walking. Virgil chooses
perti, the Ghibellines defeated the to turn to the left, following a path
Guelphs. So there are some hard that goes down into a valley.
feelings.  A rather stinky valley.
 But Farinata defends himself against
Dante’s charges, saying he was not Inferno Inferno Canto XI (the Sixth Circle:
alone in standing against Dante’s the Heretics) Summary
people at Montaperti. But, when all
his Ghibelline friends suggested ran-  The valley's horrible stench is com-
sacking Florence, Farinata alone de- ing from more burning tombs.
fended Dante's hometown.
 Dante and Virgil retreat until they’re
 But something is bothering Dante. behind one of the tombs.
Instead of pursuing this line of
 Dante reads the inscription on the
thought, he asks Farinata to clarify
tomb. It says, "I hold Pope Anasta-
something for him. He asks if the
sius." This was a pope who denied
dead can see the future, but not the
the divinity of Christ.
present.
 Virgil, who apparently has a really
 In his fancy way, Farinata answers
sensitive nose, tells Dante that
yes. He and his fellow sinners can di-
they’re going to sit tight here until
vine the future, but know nothing
their delicate sinuses get used to the
about the present state of human af-
horrible smell.
fairs.
 Dante says they should use this time
 Now, Dante feels bad about lying to
wisely. The irritable Virgil tells him
Cavalcante (since he can’t see the
to shut up, because he’s already
present). He tells Farinata to let Cav-
thought of that.
alcante know that his son Guido is
 Virgil begins explaining the structure
indeed still alive.
of Hell to Dante. We know—we
 Now Virgil is telling Dante to get a
could’ve used this lesson earlier, too.
move on so Dante hurriedly ask his
 Virgil starts with the next circle.
last questions: Who else is in this cir-
That would be the seventh, the circle
cle? Can you name them?
of the Violent. It’s divided into three
 Farinata answers that this circle fea-
smaller rings, to indicate the three
tures such celebrities as King Freder-
types of violence: 1) violence against
ick II, the Ghibelline Cardinal, and
God and nature, 2) violence against
others.
oneself, and 3) violence against
 Virgil, hauling Dante along, asks one’s neighbor.
why he looks so worried. Dante tells
 Those who practice violence against
him about these random other people
their neighbors—like murderers,
that Farinata won’t tell him about.
plunderers, and robbers—reside in
 Virgil, being all authoritative again, the first sub-circle.
informs Dante that one day he will
 Suicidal people inhabit the second
meet an all-seeing divine woman
ring.
(read: Beatrice) that will be able to
  Blasphemers and usurers occupy the
third ring.
 But the most evil category of sin,
Virgil explains, is fraud. And sadly,
this sin is most particular to human
beings.
 So, in the eighth circle reside the sin-
ners whose fraud "cut[s] off / the
bond of love that nature forges."
These include people like hypocrites,
flatterers, sorcerers, falsifiers, si-
monists, thieves, barrators, and pan-
derers, to name just a few.
 But, that’s just ordinary fraud. The
ninth circle contains those sinners
who’ve committed really bad or
treacherous fraud.
 Dante says to master Virgil that he
understands. But what about all those
in the previous circles? Why aren’t
the sinners there punished as harshly
as those in the circles to come? Isn’t
God angry with them too?
 Virgil scolds him for being so stupid.
Seriously. He reminds him of a
beloved book, Aristotle’s Ethics,
which divides sin into three cate-
gories: "incontinence, malice, and
mad bestiality." (By "malice," he
Inferno Inferno Canto XII (the Seventh Cir-
cle, First Ring: the Violent against their
Neighbors) Summary
 Our two heroes descend down a bank
so steep that Dante compares it to the
famous landslides of Marco.
 At the bottom, they catch sight of the
hideous half-man, half-bull creature
that is the Minotaur. It responds to
the sight of them by biting itself.
 Virgil shouts to the Minotaur that
Dante is not his hated enemy and
slayer, Theseus, the "Duke of
Athens," but is only here to watch
means fraud, "incontinence" means
lack of self-control, and by "mad
bestiality," he means violence.)
 The least offensive of these three is
incontinence and that’s what all the
prior circles have contained (lust,
gluttony, avarice, prodigality, wrath,
sullenness—if you’re keeping track).
 Dante, being a model student, now
asks Virgil to revisit the sin of usury
(yes, we missed the first mention
too) and why it’s so bad. Usury is the
practice of charging exorbitant inter-
est rates on loaned money.
 So Virgil starts in with all this mystic
stuff about how man’s labor and art
follow nature and thus are in line
with God’s will. In other words, it is
good and natural for men to labor
and to earn their living off the sweat
from their brows.
 Usurers, in making a living by gener-
ating money unnaturally, violate na-
ture and thereby sin.
 Lesson over. Virgil notices that the
constellations in the sky are chang-
ing. So it’s time to move on.
him suffer. That makes the man-bull
furious and he charges them.
 Dante and Virgil hightail it out of
there, down the embankment.
 Once they’re no longer in danger of
being impaled by longhorns, Virgil
tells Dante how the landslide came
about:
 When Virgil visited this part of Hell
before (on his Erichtho run), he saw
Christ rapture the good men from the
Old Testament out of Hell. At that
moment, "I [Virgil] thought the uni-
 verse felt love" and it was that primal
force that caused the earthquake and
created the rubble strewn path.
 But enough of Virgil’s past; he now
fixes Dante’s attention on the up-
coming river which marks the
boundary of the seventh circle. It is
Phlegethon, full of boiling blood.
 But here comes trouble. Along the
banks of the fiery river race herds of
centaurs, who are half-men, half-
horse creatures all armed with bows
and arrows.
 They surround our pilgrims, threat-
ening them with arrows, but Virgil
speaks out boldly, requesting to see
Chiron (the head centaur) and refus-
ing to speak to anyone else.
 As the two parties cautiously ap-
proach one another, Virgil whispers
various centaurs’ names to Dante, in-
troducing them and their crimes of
violence.
 Chiron approaches with an arrow
drawn and says to his herd, "Have
you noticed / how he who walks be-
hind moves what he touches?" In
other words, Dante actually affects
the environment when he passes
through it… which means he’s alive.
 So Virgil brazenly confirms Chiron’s
suspicions, telling him that both
Dante and he are here on a mission
from God. He reassures the centaurs
that they are not robbers and asks
them to lend him one of their herd to
guide them across the river. Oh, and
to allow Dante to ride on his back.
 Chiron wheels about and chooses
Nessus to guide and defend the two
poets.
 By the way, Nessus’s past crimes in-
cluding raping Deianira (Hercules’s
wife) and indirectly causing Her-
cules’s death. So our heroes entrust
themselves to a half-equine rapist
and murderer. Welcome to Hell.
 Walking along the riverbank, Dante
witnesses the sinners screaming in
the boiling blood. Nessus adds his
commentary, naming the sinners:
Alexander, Dionysus, Ezzolino,
Obizzo.
 At this point, Virgil concedes author-
ity to Nessus and tells Dante to listen
to the centaur as they travel.
 Further along, they come across
some sinners immersed up to their
throats in hot blood. Nessus names
one as Guy de Montfort (who mur-
dered Prince Henry).
 Dante notices that the depth of the
bloody river changes in response to
the nature of each sinner’s violent
deed.
 At a place where the river is only an-
kle-deep, they cross.
 Nessus explains that on this side, the
river eventually grows deeper and
deeper until it completely submerges
the tyrants like Attila, Pyrrhus, Sex-
tus, Rinier of Corneto, and Rinier
Pazzo.
 Then Nessus leaves them, turning
around to cross the river again and
go home.
 Inferno Inferno Canto XIII (the Sev-
enth Circle, Second Ring: The Vio-
lent against Themselves) Summary
 So eager are our pilgrims to continue
on their journey that they don’t even
wave goodbye to Nessus, but start
wending their way through the
woods before our horse-friend even
reaches the far bank.
 As they walk, they notice there is
something seriously wrong with the
trees. Hmmm, like they have black
 leaves, instead of green. And that
their branches are gnarled and
knotty, instead of nice and natural
and straight. And instead of bearing
tasty fruits and flowers, these trees
have poisonous briers.
 Dante, using his poet’s knowledge,
recognizes this as the homeland of
the Harpies, those inverted angels
who stink to high Heaven and ha-
rassed Aeneas and company on their
way to Italy. (Note: Another refer-
ence to Virgil's Aeneid).
 Virgil now takes the opportunity to
state the obvious: they’re now in the
second ring of the Seventh circle.
 Right on cue, a slew disembodied
voices start moaning all around
them.
 Freaked out, Dante stops dead in his
tracks.
 Virgil suggests that Dante might dis-
cover the source of these crying
voices if he breaks a branch off a
tree.
 So Dante does as he’s told, at which
point the violated tree goes "Owww!
Why’d you do that, man?" and pro-
ceeds to bleed black blood (no, not
sap) from its wound.
 Ignoring Dante’s gape-mouthed
amazement, the tree goes on to ex-
plain that he (and the rest of the for-
est) used to be men and would’ve ex-
pected greater mercy from a fellow
(former) brother.
 Dante compares the speaking tree to
the sounds that a burning log makes.
You know, hissing sap and all. Of
course, he does this in his head to
keep from offending the tree.
 Meanwhile, Virgil steals Dante’s
spotlight in making a roundabout
apology to the tree that goes some-
thing like, "you poor soul, if only
Dante had believed my words he
wouldn’t have hurt you, but because
he’s slow like that, I had to make
him maim you. It hurt me as much as
it hurt you. I swear."
 Virgil continues, asking the injured
tree to introduce itself and tell its
story so that Dante can make a
proper apology.
 The tree is moved by his "sweet
speech" (another instance of Virgil’s
"persuasive word") and feels com-
pelled to tell his story.
 Turns out this guy was a bigshot in
life. He was Pier della Vigna (though
he never says so), otherwise known
as the private counselor to Emperor
Frederick II, and so trusted by His
Majesty that Pier boasts he had "the
keys / of Frederick’s heart" and
served him faithfully.
 To show he can match Virgil in po-
etic-ness, Pier then turns to personifi-
cation. His downfall, he claims, was
brought about by Envy, which he
personifies as a "whore." In other
words, he was so loved by Frederick
that it made all the other bigwigs
jealous. So they started nasty rumors
about him.
 And Pier, thoroughly disgusted by it
all, killed himself.
 While we’re having our "Wha?" mo-
ment, Pier hurriedly tries to justify
himself, claiming he never betrayed
Frederick. He begs Dante to clear his
reputation once he returns to the liv-
ing world.
 In the awkward silence that follows,
Virgil finally encourages Dante to
speak and ask questions.
 But Dante’s not having any of it.
He’s in I-feel-so-bad-for-him-I-
can’t-speak mode and tells Virgil to
do the question-asking.
 Seizing the opportunity to flaunt his
persuasiveness, Virgil asks Pier to
 tell him two things: 1) how does a
suicide victim become a tree? and 2)
can one ever be freed? He claims
that knowing such things will help
Dante restore Pier’s reputation in the
world above. Which is only a little
fib.
 As Pier answers, it becomes more
and more obvious that he is no
longer a man. For instance, "the
wind become[s] his voice" as he tells
of suicidal souls judged by Minos
and flung into the seventh circle. But
their souls have no proper place and
wherever Fortune flings them is
where they take root and sprout into
trees. As saplings, they are tortured
by the Harpies, who—for all their fa-
mous ferocity—eat leaves.
 The suicides, Pier claims, long for
their fleshly bodies more than any
other sinners. But they cannot have
their bodies back because they will-
ingly gave them up by taking their
own lives.
 Only when Judgment Day comes
will they be reunited with their bod-
ies, but even then their former skins
will only be able to sit atop the
stumps of their trees.
 As they’re waiting for tree-man to go
on, a sudden commotion breaks out.
 Dante, drawing on his endless supply
of metaphors, compares it to the
cracking sounds made by a hunter
and his quarry running through the
woods.
 To the left are two naked men, flee-
ing desperately from a pack of
hounds. (Wow, Dante was right.)
 The quicker one begs for death while
the slower one names his companion
as "Lano" and teases him about be-
ing slower.
 By wasting his breath teasing his
friend, the second man loses his foot-
ing and falls into a thorn bush. Ouch!
 There, the hounds find him and rip
him limb from limb.
 Dante and Virgil approach.
 Ironically, it is not the dismembered
sinner who weeps and speaks, but
the thorn bush, which has had all its
branches broken in the unfortunate
encounter.
 It blames the runner, Jacopo da
Santo Andrea, for its pain.
 Virgil addresses the poor plant, ask-
ing it for its name.
 The thorn bush, instead of answer-
ing, says only that it is a Florentine
and sadly predicts that Florence will
never be at peace (because when
John the Baptist brought Christian-
ity, he replaced the pagan patron of
Florence, Mars, the god of war. Pre-
sumably, Mars wants revenge and so
plagues Florence with never-ending
civil war).
 The thorn bush ends by admitting its
own sin of suicide.
Inferno Inferno Canto XIV (the Seventh Cir-
cle, Third Ring: The Violent against God)
Summary
 Soft-hearted Dante, overcome by the
anonymous thorn bush’s sad story,
shares the suicide’s love of Florence.
He shows his respect by gathering up
all the broken branches and tenderly
placing them back into the thorn
bush.
 Then, Dante and Virgil move on to
the third ring, which is geographi-
cally distinguished from the second
by its flat, decidedly non-forested
plain. It’s sandy. That’s a big deal.
 And this sandy plain is set like a lit-
tle island within the forest.
 Because sand doesn’t seem like such
a bad thing, Dante takes this oppor-
tunity to declare how fearful God’s
punishment really is. Only after that
does he describe the sinners.
 There are huge flocks of naked sin-
ners. They either walk, crouch, or lie
in the sand. Those who can actually
move about are quieter than those
pinioned to the ground. More on this
later.
 It gets worse. Huge flakes of fire rain
down endlessly from the sky. Dante,
in metaphor mode, compares them to
snow falling from the windless sky
onto the Alps and then alludes to
Alexander the Great’s expedition to
India, when his troops were tor-
mented by falling fire. (Never mind
that that makes little sense.)
 This explains why those sinners ly-
ing on the ground are noisier.
They’re in more pain, because the
rain of fire ignites the dry sand on
which they burn. Dante calls the
frantic movements of the sinners’
hands, beating out the flames, a
"dance."
 Dante notices a giant man lying in
the sand and loudly cursing God.
Predictably, he asks Virgil who it is.
 The giant, who has giant ears to go
along with the rest of him, hears
Dante and answers.
 Rather loudly, the giant denies that
Jove (the Roman way of saying God)
will ever be able to take revenge
against him, even if He throws down
all his thunderbolts (Jove’s favorite
pastime) to smite him. This is what
we call blasphemy.
 Virgil, his piety aroused, reprimands
Capaneus (that’s the giant’s name)
and tells him that it is his own arro-
gance that makes him suffer.
 More gently, Virgil tells Dante that
Capaneus is one of the seven kings
who fought against Thebes.
 So Dante won’t burn his tender feet,
Virgil instructs him to walk along the
edge of the sand, closer to the forest
than to the desert.
 They come across a little stream that
flows out of the woods. It seems in-
nocent enough, until Dante notices
that its water is red. (Yes, it’s an-
other incarnation of Phlegethon.)
 Apparently red is a bad color for
Dante because it reminds him of Bu-
licame, a hot spring which provides
the bathwater for Italian prostitutes.
 In his fanciful way, Virgil points out
that this little stream is important.
 Dante begs Virgil for more informa-
tion.
 So Virgil goes into story-telling
mode: Once upon a time, there was a
nice island called Crete ruled by a
nice king. In that land, there was a
mountain called Ida where the god-
dess Rhea once hid her son, Jove,
from his not-so-nice cannibalistic fa-
ther, Saturn.
 Just when it seems like the story’s
getting good, Virgil sidetracks the
tale to focus on the Old Man of
Crete, a huge statue located within
Mount Ida and constructed of many
fine metals (gold, silver, brass, iron)
as well as clay. Its back is turned to-
wards Egypt and it faces Rome.
 (Note: scholars have interpreted the
statue as a symbol of mankind’s de-
generacy. The statue’s left iron leg
represents the strength of the Roman
Empire while its right leg—made of
soft clay— represents the corruption
of the Church. Learn more.)
  Here’s the thrust: every part of the
statue is cracked and from each crack
drips the statue’s tears. (Don’t ask
how a stone figure can cry. We don’t
know either.)
 These tears eventually trickle from
the mountain down through the
depths of the earth and form Hell’s
rivers, the Acheron, Styx,
Phlegethon, and Cocytus (which
Dante will see later).
 At this point, Dante interrupts with a
question. If these rivers originally
flow from the mortal world, why can
we only see them in Hell?
 Virgil’s rather unsatisfactory answer:
Hell’s circles are… well… round.
And as far down as we’ve come, we
still haven’t completed the circle. So
don’t be surprised if you see some-
thing new. Like rivers.
 Dante’s last question: where is the
last famous Underworld river,
Lethe? You didn’t mention it.
 Virgil’s answer: it’s further on. Not
in Hell, but in Purgatory… and be-
cause it’s the river of forgetfulness, it
absolves some worthy sinners of
their memories and allows them to
be reincarnated with a clean slate.
 Now it’s time to move on and Virgil
tells Dante to keep walking along the
riverbank because it doesn’t burn
there.
Inferno Inferno Canto XV (the Seventh Cir-
cle, Third Ring: the Violent against God)
Summary
 In their leisurely walk along the
banks of the Phlegethon, Dante de-
scribes the protective mist that rises
from the river and shields them from
the fiery rain. He compares the misty
shield to dams built by the Flemings
or Paduans to defend their towns
from seasonal floodwaters.
 When they are far from the suicidal
woods, our heroes run into a new
company of sinners walking the
same way. (This group of sinners, by
the way, are sodomites.)
 One of them squints at Dante. Sud-
denly he cries, "This is marvelous!"
 On closer inspection, Dante recog-
nizes the sinner as his former men-
tor, Ser Brunetto Latini.
 Dante begs him to rest for a little
while and talk to him. But Brunetto
refuses. No surprise, since anyone
who stops, even for a moment, is
held behind for a hundred years and
burns in the fiery rain.
 At this point, the riverbank appar-
ently splits into a higher and lower
path, with only the lower one pro-
tected by the mystic misty shield.
 Dante walks along the lower path
while Brunetto is forced to take the
higher one and they talk while walk-
ing in that awkward parallel path.
 Brunetto asks why Dante is here in
Hell if he’s still alive. And also who
his guide is.
 Dante answers that yesterday he got
lost in a dark valley and Virgil here
showed up to help him.
 Brunetto realizes Dante must be
blessed to take this spiritual journey
while alive and regrets not being able
to stay alive long enough to encour-
age Dante in his works.
 He blames the Fiesoles, the natives
whom the Romans conquered, for
failing to understand or appreciate
his and Dante’s intellectual work and
blames them for all the Florentines’
bad traits.
 In his ranting, Brunetto warns Dante
to stay away from the Fiesoles lest
 they either devour him or lure him
into false beliefs.
 Dante wisely changes the subject,
lavishing Brunetto with praise and
saying how much he misses him.
 Dante then shows off everything he
learned from Brunetto. Like A) how
man only gains immortality through
his works (not his soul), B) how
Dante is writing down everything
Brunetto says so that when he meets
Beatrice, she can comment on his
teachings, and C) how he is prepared
for whatever Fortune throws his way.
 At this last comment, Virgil nods
and winks his approval.
 To further his knowledge, Dante asks
Brunetto who else is in this group of
sinners.
 Suddenly Brunetto becomes reluc-
tant to talk. He names only three fel-
low sodomites, Priscian, Francesco
d’Accorso, and Bishop Andrea dei
Mozzi, before finding an excuse to
leave.
 That excuse is "Oh dear, I see new
smoke rising from the sand ahead,
which obviously means some unsa-
vory people are coming. Gotta go!"
 But before he scrams, he asks that
Dante value his most famous work,
the Tesoro (a really popular poem),
through which his name lives on.
 As he departs, Dante compares his
speed with that of racers running the
famous Verona race during Lent.
The prize is a bolt of green cloth.
Brunetto moves so fast that Dante
fancies him winning first prize.
 In other words, Brunetto really wants
to get out of there.
 path to brave the burning one above
Inferno Inferno Canto XVI (the Seventh Cir-
cle, Third Ring: The Violent against God)
Summary
 We’ve finally reached the point
where the Phlegethon falls into a
new circle, quite noisily with the
sound of a "beehive’s hum." But
we’re still going to stay in this circle
for another canto.
 So who are these people Brunetto’s
so eager to avoid? Three quick little
Florentines (also sodomites), all
burnt and scorched from the flaming
rain.
 The speedy trio recognizes Dante by
his clothes as someone from their
"indecent country."
 With one glance, Virgil deems these
Florentines worth speaking to and
tells Dante so.
 But the three Florentines sure behave
weirdly. When they reach our pil-
grims, they link hands and form a
wheel around them.
 One, appealing to Dante’s compas-
sion, asks him to tell them who he is
and why he’s still alive in Hell.
We’re pretty sure Dante is getting
tired of this question too.
 But because he’s such a well-man-
nered gentleman, the speaker first in-
troduces his pals—Guido Guerra,
Tegghiaio Aldobrandi—and himself,
Jacopo Rusticucci.
 (History lesson: Dante recognizes
them as allied Guelphs who tried to
dissuade their fellow Florentines
from fighting at Montaperti.)
 At hearing those beloved names,
Dante contemplates leaving his safe
just to talk to them… but then de-
cides he doesn’t like pain.
 So he satisfies himself by simply
telling them how deeply he feels for
 them and how much he honored
them in life. Then he brags a little,
saying he will bring their names
great fame, but that first he has to go
to the center of Hell.
 But, thankfully, Jacopo just wants to
know if Florence is still a good town
or if it’s been corrupted by bad guys
like Guiglielmo Borsiere, a recent
addition to the sodomite gang.
 Dante’s reply goes something like
"all newcomers are bad, because new
money is bad!"
 The trio stares at him. Then they say
"Okay, thanks" and skedaddle.
 Unfazed, Dante and Virgil frolic
along until they reach the ending
point of Phlegethon, which Dante
monumentally compares to the river
Acquacheta cascading down the
Apennines. In other words, the river
becomes a great big waterfall which
any sane man would not want to
jump down.
 Oh, what to do now? Virgil has an
idea.
 He orders Dante to remove the cord
from around his waist.
 Virgil makes a lasso and throws it
down the ravine.
 Even Dante thinks this is a little
strange. Which, he assumes, means
that something strange will happen.
 What emerges from those dark
depths is so incredible that Dante
calls it a "truth which seems a lie,"
but he swears (and he addresses the
reader directly) that "by the lines / of
this my Comedy," what he sees is
real.
 But all he tells us of this spectacular
event in this canto is that some sort
of monster rises from the depths like
a diver swimming to the water’s sur-
face.

Inferno Inferno Canto XVII (the Seventh
Circle, Third Ring: the Violent against Na-
ture and Art) Summary
 Virgil, at his melodramatic best, her-
alds the monster’s coming: "Behold
the beast… whose stench fills all the
world!"
 And here he is, "that filthy effigy of
fraud," who has the face of a man,
the body of a serpent, two paws, hair
in his armpits, a really gaudy hide all
braided and twisted into knots, and a
pointy tail with a poisonous tip.
 In a pretty funny simile (only made
funny by its anachronism), Dante
compares this monster to Germans
and a beaver. Why? The beast is sit-
ting on the riverbank, his tail dipped
in the water, right on the boundary
between land and water. Like Ger-
many.
 As for the beaver metaphor, appar-
ently medieval biologists thought
beavers caught fish by sticking their
tails in the water and secreting some
oily substance that fish liked.
 Virgil makes the assumption that
Dante wants to meet the ugly thing.
So they walk towards it, being care-
ful not to burn their feet.
 When they reach it, Virgil’s reason-
ing takes another leap. He notices a
few straggling sinners sitting on
some rocks a few feet away. So he
shoos Dante away towards them, en-
couraging him to "experience this
ring in full." Meanwhile (get this),
Virgil plans to negotiate with the
monster to see if it won’t let them
ride it into the next circle. (You do
that, Virgil. We’ll scoot on ahead
with Dante.)
 Dante wanders off (read: runs away)
to the sinners and notices them flick-
 ing their hands at the torturous
flames.
 Our hero doesn’t recognize any of
them on sight, but he does recognize
the little emblazoned pouches they
wear around their necks. The sym-
bols on them are crests of Florentine
families famous for practicing usury.
There’s a blue lion on a gold field, a
white goose on a red field, and a
pregnant blue sow on a white field.
 The guy with the last purse is mean
to Dante. He tells Dante to get lost
because the spot where Dante is
standing is meant for his usurer
friend, Vitaliano. They’re all await-
ing him and this other "sovereign
cavalier" whose family emblem is
three goats.
 Intimidated by them, Dante won’t let
on his annoyance and instead com-
pares them to oxen.
 Instead of staying to converse, Dante
heads back to Virgil. Against all
odds, Virgil has succeeded in gaining
the monster’s trust.
 Virgil orders Dante to climb up on
the beast’s shoulders and sit in front
of him, so that he can protect mortal
Dante from the venomous tail.
 Dante is quaking in his boots, but
he’s not about to admit it to Virgil.
Instead, he feels shame at his fear
(especially when Virgil is showing
none) and clambers on.
 As always, though, Virgil is there for
him and holds on to him as he calls
the monster by name, Geryon, and
instructs it to take off.
 Geryon takes flight in a rather weird
way, scrambling backward until
there’s no more ground beneath him
before spreading his wings.
 Dante, wild with fear, still has the
presence of mind to conjure up a
simile, comparing Geryon’s move-
ments to a boat backing away from
its moorings.
 Now Dante can’t stop with the simi-
les; they keep coming as if from an
unhinged poetic mind. Which is ex-
actly what’s going on. Dante com-
pares his fear to that of Phaethon
(who lost control of his father’s sun
chariot) and Icarus (whose makeshift
wings melted because he flew too
high).
 He makes the mistake of looking
down. But instead of passing out—as
he might’ve done earlier —Dante
simply clings tighter to Geryon’s
back and absorbs all the hideous
sights of sinners suffering.
 Geryon flies downward in ever-de-
creasing circles, movement which
Dante (still in a metaphoric frame of
mind) compares to a trained falcon
falling to the ground in exhaustion
after failing to locate its prey.
 Once they reach the bottom and our
pilgrims scramble off, Geryon disap-
pears.
Inferno Inferno Canto XVIII (the Eighth
Circle, First Pouch: Panderers and Seducers;
the Second Pouch: Flatterers) Summary
 Dante takes his sweet time introduc-
ing the eighth circle of Hell to us.
 This circle has a nickname, Male-
bolge (which translates roughly to
"evil pouches"). It’s surrounded by a
wall of dull iron-colored stone, and
the valley itself is divided into ten
pouches.
 Of course, Dante can’t help but com-
pare the design of the eighth circle to
stuff like a moat protecting a castle
or fortresses seen from a birds-eye
view that are scored with lots of
bridges and ditches.
 As usual, Virgil takes the lead, walk-
ing to the leftmost side while he and
Dante witness the sinners on the
right.
 These nude sinners march in a long
line while they are whipped on every
side by horned demons.
 Dante compares their march to one
he saw the year of Jubilee in which
Pope Boniface VIII (yes, the man
Dante hates) granted indulgences to
those who visited Roman churches.
Predictably, a bunch of guilt-induced
peasants flooded Rome, forcing the
soldiers to herd them across the
bridge in two lines, a gigantic one
headed toward St. Peter’s Cathedral
and the other headed back.
 Dante locks eyes with one of the sin-
ners and realizes he’s seen him be-
fore. The sinner, in response, tries to
hide his face. But it’s no use.
 Bluntly, Dante names him as
Venedico Caccianemico and asks
him what brings him on such a trip to
Hell.
 In answer to Dante’s "plain speech,"
Venedico responds reluctantly. He
admits that he pandered his sister
Ghisolabella into doing sexual favors
for a Marquis. (Just for reference,
"panderer" is a euphemism for
"pimp." So this is the pouch of
pimps.)
 But Venedico defends himself, say-
ing he’s not the only Bolognese
(from the region of Italy called
Bologna) here. He claims there are
many who say "sipa" (the Bolognese
word for "yes") in this circle.
 At this point, a demon steps in to
ram Venedico on the head with a
cudgel. That’s the demon way of
saying, "Shut up! And get a move on
because there are no women for you
to pimp here."
 Dante and Virgil then come across a
rocky ridge, which marks a bound-
ary. The marchers (also harassed by
demons) now return, walking in the
same direction as our pilgrims.
 Virgil points out one majestic look-
ing man among them, Jason of the
Argonauts. He explains that this
handsome man seduced and impreg-
nated Hypsipyle of Lemnos, then
abandoned her in her pregnancy, to
steal the Golden Fleece from
Colchis.
 After this unhappy news, our dy-
namic duo crosses a bridge into the
second pouch where flatterers are
immersed in a ditch of excrement.
 Here, the sinners howl and fight
among themselves. They’re so nasty
that their sighs turn into mold that
grows on their bodies.
 Dante and Virgil just manage to keep
themselves clean by watching from
the very top of the bridge, where
Dante spies someone he thinks he
recognizes. He can’t tell for sure
whether it’s a layman or cleric
 Upset that he’s attracted undue atten-
tion, the sinner screams at Dante,
asking why he has picked him out
among all the filthy people here.
 Dante answers, identifying him as
Alessio Interminei of Lucca.
 At which point, Alessio beats him-
self over the head and admits that he
is here because of the things he used
to say: he is a flatterer.
 Virgil then points out another sinner
—this time a girl. He explains that
she is Thais, a courtesan who gave
excessive thanks to her lover for sex.
And now she scratches herself with
her excrement-filled nails.
 They move on.
Inferno Inferno Canto XIX (the Eighth Cir-
cle, Third Pouch: Simonists) Summary
 Dante opens this canto with an in-
vective against simonists (clerics
who sell absolution and other price-
less heavenly favors for money). He
calls them sinners who "fornicate for
gold and silver!"
 Dante and Virgil are now in the third
pouch.
 So how are the Simonists punished?
In the rocky ground, they are buried
upside-down in holes the size of bap-
tism basins and their feet protrude,
only to be burnt by flames. Eternal
suffocation and immolation.
 Biographical aside: Dante puts a
great deal of emphasis on the liken-
ing of the holes to baptism basins,
and recounts a story where he acci-
dentally broke one in the church of
San Giovanni.
 Moving on… one sinner is subjected
to redder flames than any of the oth-
ers and Dante asks who it is.
 Virgil suggests they go down and
find out. And Dante agrees.
 At the feet (literally) of the sinner in
question, Dante calls out to him—
whoever he is—to name himself.
 How’s this for some interesting im-
agery: in standing next to the in-
verted sinner, Dante (uncon-
sciously?) takes on the role of a friar
at the confession of an assassin.
 Hilariously, this sinner mistakes
Dante for his successor in simony,
Pope Boniface VIII, now come to
take his place in Hell. After all, the
sinner has his head buried in
bedrock; he can’t see the guy stand-
ing up there.
 But you’ve got to give the guy some
credit: he realizes that Boniface is a
few years early; in actuality, at the
time of Dante’s writing, Pope Boni-
face was still alive.
 Like anyone else accused of being
their arch-enemy, Dante is shocked
silent.
 To prevent any mischief, Virgil
strictly orders Dante to correct
Nicholas’s mistake and to reveal his
name. Meekly, Dante does so.
 Then, the Pope changes his tone, irri-
tably asking what they want from
him and twitching his feet accord-
ingly.
 He launches into a boastful descrip-
tion of how he once wore the mantle
of the papacy. He attempts to justify
his simony by claiming he was just
trying to fatten the purses of his fam-
ily.
 He explains to them what happens to
simonists once their successors show
up in Hell: they drop further into the
stony ground so that the whole third
pouch (of the eighth circle) is full up
to the bedrock with buried simonists.
 Pope Nicholas prophesies that after
Pope Boniface goes to Hell, he will
be followed by an even more evil
churchman, Pope Clement V, who
will bargain with the French king to
guarantee his election and later
abduct the papacy and spirit it away
from Rome and into Avignon.
 But Dante’s heard enough about how
wicked everyone else is.
 He sassily asks Pope Nicholas how
much Christ charged St. Peter before
giving him control of the keys to the
Kingdom of Heaven. Or how much
the Apostles charged Matthias for
taking Judas’s place amongst the
Apostles after his betrayal. (The an-
swer, of course, is nothing.)
  With this rhetoric of righteous indig-
nation, Dante pronounces Pope
Nicholas’s punishment just.
 Only Dante’s respect for the papacy
or papal office, keeps him from talk-
ing even more smack about si-
monists.
 But he goes on anyway, depicting
Rome (the papal seat) as a whore
who fornicates with kings for money.
This makes the popes into idolaters
just as heinous as the heretics they
condemn.
 Dante even goes so far as to accuse
Constantine for ever funding the
Church after his conversion to Chris-
tianity.
 Pope Nicholas, upon hearing Dante’s
rant, kicks hard—either out of indig-
nation or his guilty conscience.
 Virgil is so pleased with Dante’s
temper that he picks him up in his
arms and carries him like a baby
across the bridge to the fourth pouch.
 Having been set back down again,
Dante must watch his feet because
the way down into the next valley is
very steep.
Inferno Inferno Canto XX (the Eighth Cir-
cle, Fourth Pouch: Diviners, Astrologers,
and Magicians) Summary
 After his unprecedented rage at Pope
Nicholas III, Dante announces his in-
tent to write material for this canto
with a brazen new authority.
 When he looks down into the fourth
pouch, he sees a group of sinners
walking slowly, as if participating in
a holy procession.
 To his amazement (and our horror), a
closer inspection reveals that these
sinners’ heads are turned backwards
on their shoulders so that they’re
forced to walk backwards because
they can't see in front of them. And
in a sadistically comic twist, they cry
while they walk so that their tears
trickle down their buttocks.
 Dante is so horrified by this that he
tells his reader how the tears sprung
to his eyes.
 As Dante breaks down, Virgil turns
on him with scorn. He has no pity for
the sinners.
 He urges Dante to look at the many
sinners here, pointing out famous
ones like Amphiaraus (a king who
foresaw his own defeat and tried to
hide from it), Tiresias (who changed
himself from a man to a woman and
back again), Aruns (who predicted
Caesar’s victory), and the witch
Manto (after whom Virgil’s home-
town Mantua is named).
 Manto is particularly grotesque with
her long hair on her backward-turned
head covering her bare breasts.
 Now Virgil makes a strange side-
track to verify the origins of Mantua.
 He traces the history of Manto, who
lived as child in Thebes but left the
war-torn town after her father died.
She wandered until she came to a
marsh around Lake Benaco and there
she settled. Later, other people real-
ized the brilliance of having an unas-
sailable—if stinky—marsh town and
joined her, founding the town of
Mantua.
 As Virgil finishes his little tale, he
dares Dante to try to discredit him.
 But Dante has no interest in doing
that and instead appeases Virgil by
acknowledging his authority.
 As usual, Dante wants to know the
names of the sinners in this pouch.
 Virgil points out more notable ones,
like Calchas (a minor character from
 his Aeneid), Michael Scot (an as-
trologer), Guido Bonatti (also an as-
trologer), and Asdente (a
shoemaker/soothsayer).
 Virgil decides to move on because
the moon is getting low on the hori-
zon, or—as the medieval Italians like
to say—"Cain with his thorns al-
ready… touches the sea."
Inferno Inferno Canto XXI (the Eighth Cir-
cle, Fifth Pouch: the Barrators) Summary
 Our first impression of this next
pouch is that it’s really dark.
 So dark, in fact, that Dante takes a
good long time comparing it to the
color of the tar manufactured by the
Venetian arsenal and used to fix their
ships.
 As Dante is dutifully trying to make
out what’s happening in that pitch-
black valley, Virgil cries out for him
to be careful.
 When he turns around to look, Dante
almost passes out at the sight of a
black demon racing towards them.
 Lucky for them, the demon doesn’t
see them because he’s busy torment-
ing a sinner draped over his shoul-
der.
 From his speech Dante learns that
this sinner is a barrator (or corrupt
politician) from Lucca.
 The spiny demon throws the barrator
into the river of boiling pitch and
calls the rest of his gang (the Male-
branche—which translates to "Evil-
Claws") to come join him.
 They crowd around to poke and push
him under with their grappling hooks
and pitchforks, just like cooks sub-
merge bits of meat in their soup.
 Virgil very wisely tells Dante to keep
down so that they’re not spotted by
the demons.
 Just when we were beginning to
completely trust Virgil, he screws it
all up by sauntering up to the band of
demons and ordering them to put
their weapons down.
 Like in a bad horror movie, they cor-
ner him and laugh off his request.
They let their leader, Malacoda
("Evil-Tail"), approach him to ask
the one intelligent question they
seem capable of: what is a live man
doing down here?
 Oh boy. Here we go again.
 Virgil pulls out his "will of God"
card and Malacoda agrees not to
harm Dante.
 Virgil then calls the cowering Dante
out of his hiding place in the rocks.
As he scurries to Virgil’s side, he
notes the sinister smiles and lip-lick-
ing and tail-lashing of the demons.
 One proposes stabbing Dante’s butt
with a pitchfork. Everyone else gives
a great hurrah, but Malacoda stops
the party with a sharp order to the of-
fender, Scarmiglione.
 Then he tells Virgil that it’s no use
continuing the way they’re going be-
cause the bridge is broken. He volun-
teers ten of his demon band to ac-
company them to the next unbroken
bridge, as long as they keep to their
task of torturing sinners along the
way.
 Dante is understandably distraught.
He whispers to Virgil that he doesn’t
want demon company to the next
bridge. He trusts Virgil alone.
 What he’s really saying is that he
doesn’t want become lunch.
 But Virgil reassures him; all their
evil gesturing and ill will is for the
sinners, not them.
 As they start walking, the demons
turn into vulgar comedians. Barbar-
iccia, the head demon, sounds the
 signal to set off: he farts loudly or, in Spain), but also the occupation of his
poetic terms, makes "a trumpet of his father (a wastrel or professional
ass." loser), his adopted father (King
Inferno Inferno Canto XXII (the Eighth Cir- Thibault), and his sin (swindling
cle, Fifth Pouch: the Barrators) Summary money). But not his name.
 Having gotten what he wanted, Vir-
gil watches as another demon named
 Dante is so startled by Barbariccia’s
Ciriatto rips the sinner open with a
strange signal that he calls it the
tusk. And then Barbariccia prepares
weirdest one he’s ever heard… more
to stab him. But, interestingly, he
so than the Arentines’ trumpets,
seems to have taken Virgil’s side.
bells, and drums. We concur.
 Still threatening to disembowel the
 He and Virgil head out with their de-
sinner, Barbarricia turns to Virgil
monic guides.
and politely asks him to continue the
 Dante scans the surface of the pitch interrogation. And to hurry up or else
for glimpses of the sinners under- his demon pals might kill the guy.
neath. He compares the various
 So Virgil scrambles for another
limbs sticking out of the pitch to
question: "So… do you have any
quick flashes of dolphins’ backs seen
Italian friends here?"
at sea or frogs’ snouts in a pond.
 Nameless sinner says "yes" and indi-
 Whenever the demons approach with
cates there’s another Italian right
their pitchforks cocked, the sinners
there (points) in the pitch. He wishes
dive under.
to sweet Jesus that he were him.
 Continuing his frog metaphor, Dante
 At this point, Libicocco loses pa-
sees one of the demons, Grafficane,
tience, flourishes his hook, and tears
finally succeed in snaring a sinner,
out a chunk of flesh from the sinner.
whom he compares to a sluggish
 Another demon Draghignazzo looks
frog. And then he promptly contra-
like he’s about to snap too, so Bar-
dicts himself, by comparing the sin-
bariccia tells them to back off.
ner to an otter.
 Cue Virgil, who steps forward to ask
 In a quick aside, Dante pats himself
the identity of the aforementioned
on the back for learning all the
sinner in the pitch. The Navarrese
demons’ names.
sinner, distracted a moment by his
 Grafficane tells his buddy Rubicante
gaping wound, answers that it’s Fra
to sink his talons into the sinner.
Gomita, a clergyman.
 Dante begs Virgil to stop them by
 We learn from him that Fra Gomita
asking stuff about the sinner in ques-
served a bunch of different masters,
tion.
but always managed to pawn some
 So Virgil steps forward and blurts gold from them.
the first the thing that comes to his
 Apparently, he has a friend named
mind: "O sinner, where were you
Don Michele Zanche, a fellow
born?"
swindler.
 Like everyone else in this poem, the
 The nameless sinner is quiet now be-
sinner offers us a lot of information.
cause he sees a demon getting ready
Pretty soon, we not only know his
to maul him. Barbariccia promptly
birthplace (Navarre—now Northern
 shoos the guilty party, Farfarello,
back.
 By this time, the sinner is so scared
that he offers to summon his barrator
friends out of the pitch (by whistling)
if they show him mercy. Hmm… on
earth, we call that betrayal.
 A demon, Cagnazzo, laughs him off,
claiming it’s a trick by which the sin-
ner hopes to escape them. Another
happy demon, Alinchino, threatens
the sinner that if he tries to dive back
into the pitch, they’ll take to wing to
torment him from the air.
 As they’re all cackling evilly, the
sinner does just that; he escapes.
 The demons go "uh oh" and take to
wing, but it’s too late. The sinner has
disappeared beneath the boiling
pitch.
 The demons are furious.
 Calcabrina is so mad he attacks his
fellow demon Alinchino. In typically
incompetent henchmen fashion, they
both fall—entangled—into the pitch,
and promptly get stuck.
 Barbariccia, the head honcho, shakes
his head in disgust and sends the rest
of the party to fish them out.
 Meanwhile, Dante and Virgil take
this opportunity to slip away.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXIII (the Eighth
Circle, Fifth Pouch: the Barrators; Sixth
Pouch: the Hypocrites) Summary
 Our heroes rush away silently.
 Even in his fear, Dante pulls a
metaphor out of the bag, comparing
the demons to Aesop’s fable about a
mouse and a treacherous frog.
 After conveying this juicy little liter-
ary tidbit, Dante voices his fear to
Virgil. He’s scared that the demons
will be angry (which they will be)
and will come after them (that too).
 Dante’s so scared, his hair curls up.
Literally.
 Dante suggests that they hide since
he hears the demons coming.
 Virgil agrees in an overdone poetic
way. He suggests going down that
steep bank over there.
 Just then, the shadow of the ap-
proaching danger looms on the hori-
zon. The demons are coming.
 Virgil snatches Dante up like a
mother rescuing her child from a fire
and runs like nobody’s business to
the edge of cliff. Taking a seat, he
proceeds to slide down with much
flailing and screaming and butt burn-
ing.
 Dante has the presence of mind to
make a metaphor. Virgil’s sliding
down the slope is like water running
on the down cycle of a mill wheel. In
other words, it’s really fast.
 Just as they touch bottom, the
demons appear at the top, roaring
their rage to the world because they
can’t cross the border to the next
pouch.
 That’s that.
 Dante and Virgil find the next group
of sinners, a bunch of men walking
around in circles and dressed in re-
ally tacky gold cloaks. And the
cloaks are really heavy too, because
they’re lined with lead on the inside.
 Dante asks Virgil to keep his eyes
peeled for someone they know.
 A gaudily-dressed sinner overhears,
recognizes Dante’s Tuscan accent,
and shouts at them to stop!
 So Dante and Virgil join the circle of
sinners to talk to the two who are in-
terested.
 The two sinners confer among them-
selves: why is that guy alive and how
 come he doesn’t have to wear these demons lied to him about the broken
fashion atrocities like we do? (Turn bridge.
to Dante.) So… what’s your name?  At which point one of the Friars fires
 Dante answers shortly: Yes, I’m Tus- back with something akin to "You
can and yes, I’m alive. So what else actually trusted them? Don’t you
is new? But who are you? And what know demons are liars?"
kind of punishment is this?  Virgil leaves in a rage, with Dante
 They tell Dante that they’re con- dogging his steps.
demned to walk around (very
slowly) with these ridiculously heavy Inferno Inferno Canto XXIV (the Eighth
cloaks on because they are Jovial Circle, Seventh Pouch: the Thieves) Sum-
Friars (hypocrites) whose selfishness mary
screwed up the region of Gardingo.
 Dante is about to berate them, but
stops because he just noticed some-  Dante opens this canto with an elab-
thing crucified. orate extended simile: in the winter,
a farmer looks out in dismay at the
 It’s another giant, naked sinner who
snow-covered ground (because he
is crucified to the ground, writhing
can’t get anything done in such
and sighing.
weather) but later his worry lightens
 Fra Catalano (apparently one of the
because he sees the snow has melted.
Jovial Friar’s names) tells the gape-
So he goes out to herd his sheep.
mouthed Dante that that’s Caiaphas,
This is compared to Virgil’s initially-
the priest who came up with the idea
worried-but-later-happier reaction
to crucify Jesus alone, instead of all
when they reach the collapsed
the Jews. The crucifixion idea sort of
bridge.
backfired, and he has to bear the pain
 He pushes Dante to get a move on
of any passing traffic running over
and helps him down the rocky bank.
him.
 Dante is grateful he doesn’t have one
 That’s not all. Catalano tells our he-
of those leaded cloaks on because the
roes that the same punishment af-
path is really steep. He tells us, if it
flicts Caiaphas’s family members
wasn’t for Virgil’s support, he
and friends.
would’ve given up.
 Virgil is amazed at the sight of Ca-
 At one point, Dante stops, exhausted.
iaphas.
Virgil calls him out for being lazy
 Then he asks the Friars if there’s a
because, he claims, those who are
way to get out of here without call-
lazy never earn fame in the world
ing the demons back.
and thus are lost to memory when
 Good news. There is indeed a bridge they die.
close by. It’s broken, but that doesn’t
 Inspired, Dante gets up and an-
matter. There’s enough rubble
nounces to Virgil, "I’m buff
heaped on the sides and bottom to
enough." Or something similar. And
make passage possible, if not easy.
so they climb up the far side of the
 So, Virgil has one of those mysteri- bridge.
ously quiet contemplative moments
 Dante keeps talking so that he
and shows his displeasure: the
doesn’t sound weak, and to his sur-
 prise, an unknown voice from the
next pouch answers him.
 They’re at the summit of the bridge
at this point so Dante tries to catch a
look at the speaker, but it’s too dark
to see anything. Dante says they’ll
cross the bridge and then find him.
 So they do and the first thing Dante
sees is that the valley is filled with
swarms of coiling snakes.
 It’s so horrifying that it exceeds, ac-
cording to Dante, all the pestilences
of Libya or Ethiopia.
 And amongst these serpents run a
bunch of sinners, with no hope of
cover.
 The snakes do cruel, nasty things,
like binding the sinners' hands with
their bodies and knotting themselves
around their thighs.
 As soon as they’ve been bitten by
these serpents, the sinners turn into
piles of ash that collect on the
ground. But only momentarily. In the
next moment, they rise to re-form
again, like the mythical phoenix.
 The poor sinner-turned-ash-turned-
sinner again looks about in bewilder-
ment.
 Virgil asks the sinner who he is.
 Oddly, the sinner calls himself a
mule before actually naming himself
as Vanni Fucci and saying he is from
Pistoia.
 Dante interjects here and tells Virgil
to ask him what his sin was. He hints
that he knew Vanni Fucci as a "man
of blood and anger," meaning that he
should be the Fifth Circle.
 Vanni overhears Dante and is
ashamed of himself. He’s more
ashamed at having been caught by
Dante than by his actual sin, which
was stealing holy relics from a
church. He’s a thief.
 Then, he tells Dante not to take too
much joy at seeing him suffer, be-
cause Dante’s beloved Whites are
going to fall.
 Vanni launches into a cryptic
prophecy, which translates as: Pis-
toia will first throw out the Blacks,
but they will strike back with a mili-
tary force (or poetically a "vapor"
from Mars, the god of war) from Val
di Magra and deliver the Whites a
smashing defeat.
 He tells this to Dante to "make [him]
grieve."

Inferno Inferno Canto XXV (the Eighth Cir-
cle, Seventh Pouch: the Thieves) Summary
 As Vanni Fucci finishes speaking, he
throws his fists up in figs against
God—a gesture of blasphemy. There
goes Dante’s respect for him.
 Indeed, Dante claims that now he
considers the torturous serpents his
friends.
 As if in response, one snake coils
around Vanni’s neck to shut him up.
Then his buddies join him in wrap-
ping Vanni up so completely that he
can’t move.
 Dante is so disgusted by Vanni’s be-
havior that he wishes Pistoia
(Vanni’s hometown) would just de-
stroy itself. Even Capaneus’s behav-
ior cannot compare in its atrocity to
Vanni’s.
 As Vanni flees, he is immediately re-
placed by a centaur whose backside
is covered in writhing snakes. But
that’s not all: his human parts, his
head and torso, are tortured by a
mini-dragon who sets his skin
aflame.
 Just as we’re all wondering what this
guy could’ve possibly done to get
 such a horrible punishment, Virgil
tells us. Apparently, the centaur is
called Cacus. Unlike his violent
brothers, Cacus stole cattle from the
herd of Hercules and thus was pun-
ished by having Hercules beat him to
death. (In fact, Dante tells us Her-
cules administered one hundred
blows with his club, but Cacus had
already died by the tenth.)
 As Virgil’s explaining these details,
Cacus passes beneath them and im-
mediately after him follow three
nude souls.
 But Dante is so preoccupied count-
ing Hercules’s blows that he doesn’t
notice them until one cries out, "Who
are you?" It is ambiguous to whom
this question is directed, because it
never gets answered.
 It has only the effect of bringing
Dante and Virgil to attention.
 Dante doesn’t recognize them but
they luck out when one calls the
name of another, asking where
Ciafna is.
 Right on cue, Ciafna leaps out. But
it’s not what we expect; instead of a
human being, it is a serpent with six
legs… so more like giant, vicious
caterpillar.
 Ciafna pounces on the man who
called him, gripping his limbs with
its many legs while savaging the
man’s face with its jaws.
 As if that weren’t scary enough,
predator and prey now begin meld-
ing together, exchanging color and
shape. Dante compares their icky
amorphous shape to that of a newly-
lit paper which is just beginning to
lose its color.
 The two creatures now stare at each
other and wonder aloud at the trans-
formation. Here, we find out that the
man’s name is Agnello.
 Dante continues with a really sicken-
ing description of their union. Their
two heads melt together, their limbs
grow and twist together, and basi-
cally the final product is this
hideous, totally alien figure that is
not quite man but not quite snake ei-
ther.
 Another little serpent flashes by and
attacks one of the two bystanders,
piercing him straight through the
navel.
 But the impaled sinner doesn’t react
at all. In fact, he only yawns.
 They stare at each other, snake and
man. And dramatically, their bodies
begin smoking.
 At this point, Dante is in full poet
mode. He grosses us out. Now he
tells the other famous Classical poets
that they cannot match Dante in de-
scribing snake attacks or magical
transformations.
 Back to the repulsive transformation:
within the smoke, the serpent’s tail
divides into two while the sinner’s
legs merge, the serpent’s skin grows
soft while the sinner’s grows hard;
the serpent sprouts limbs as the sin-
ner loses his; the serpent grows hair
as the sinner’s falls off.
 The transformed serpent then stands
upright and grows a face with ears,
while the man, now prone on the
ground, has his ears absorbed back
into his head.
 Finally, the man’s tongue becomes
forked while the serpent’s becomes
whole. In short, man and serpent
have exchanged forms; one has be-
come the other.
 The man—now a snake—slithers
off, hissing.
 The man—who was a snake—now
speaks. He names the man he at-
tacked (the newly-formed snake) as
 Buoso and takes delight in his suffer-
ing.
 Dante remarks on the freakiness of
the transformations and is so dis-
traught by them that his sight be-
comes blurred.
 But that doesn’t stop him, as they’re
all leaving, from recognizing the
third sinner, the only one who didn’t
undergo a gruesome transformation,
as Puccio Sciancato, another thief.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXVI (the Eighth
Circle, Eighth Pouch: the Fraudulent Coun-
selors) Summary
 Dante’s takes this opportunity to diss
Florence. He does it ironically, say-
ing how "great" the city is because of
those thieves that Dante recognized,
five were Florentines.
 He prophecies that rival cities, like
Prato, will one day battle Florence.
Dante only wants that day to come
faster. No love for his hometown.
 Our dynamic duo makes its way into
the next pouch. And it only gets
harder. This time they have to crawl
on their hands and knees up and
down jagged rocks that serve as a
makeshift staircase into the next val-
ley.
 Because crawling on gravel makes
people (even epic poets) grumpy,
Dante begins griping about the sin-
ners. He says that they should use
their talents (because obviously
thieves and counselors have some
talent) for good, not evil.
 At first sight of the next pouch,
Dante describes it with a metaphor,
comparing it to the swarms of fire-
flies a resting farmer can see hanging
over his crops in the evening. Be-
cause in this pouch, there are a lot of
flames.
 Ready for another metaphor? The
movement of the flames is like that
of Elijah’s chariot, which rose to
Heaven as a star.
 So why are there rising tongues of
flame? Because each individual
flame contains a sinner that moves
when he moves. Cool, right? Also:
really painful.
 Dante is so interested that he leans
dangerously over the bridge to see
the sinners.
 Virgil senses his eagerness and de-
cides to show off his knowledge. He
tells Dante that each flame contains a
sinner.
 Dante already knows this and po-
litely tells Virgil so, but it’s obvious
he’s proud that he outguessed Virgil.
 Instead of dwelling on it, he assumes
the position of ignorant student again
and asks who that double flame is
that is approaching.
 Virgil, the all-knowing, answers him:
Ulysses and Diomedes. He explains
with authority that these two were al-
most single-handedly responsible for
the Trojan horse and the sacking of
the Palladium (Athena’s temple) and
that’s why they’re punished together
in a single flame. This was some-
thing Virgil happened to recount in
his Aeneid.
 Dante begs Virgil to let him talk to
the two sinners. He’s pretty desper-
ate.
 Virgil indulges him. But on one con-
dition, that Dante doesn’t speak. Vir-
gil wants to talk to them and his ex-
cuse is that because they’re Greek,
they might look down on Dante’s
Italian.
 Virgil approaches them, obse-
quiously and politely asking one of
them to describe his death.
 So the bigger of the twinned flames Inferno Inferno Canto XXVII (the Eighth
(because Ulysses was a greater hero Circle, Eighth Pouch: the Fraudulent Coun-
than Diomedes) begins to wag back selors) Summary
and forth like a tongue trying to
speak. Well, in fact, that’s exactly
 Ulysses, in his flaming garb, is
what it is.
silent. Virgil condescends to let him
 Eventually the flame-tip/tongue finds leave.
its voice and tells its story. Here's his
 But he’s immediately replaced by
tale:
another inquisitive tongue of flame.
 Ulysses’ return journey from the Except this one is making a weird
Trojan War (recounted in the sound.
Odyssey) isn't as straightforward as
 So weird that Dante compares it to…
he might have hoped. Instead, be-
a medieval brass bull that someone
cause of a few mishaps, he ends up
constructed as an instrument of tor-
doing a lot more exploring.
ture. As victims were roasted inside,
 He sails past Spain and Morocco and their screams supposedly imitated
even passed the pillars of Hercules, the sounds a bull makes.
which at the time are the boundaries
 So this new flame/sinner sounds like
of the known world.
dying bull. He’s in a lot of pain. So
 Then, to encourage his tired crew, he much so that at first, Dante cannot
gives a grand speech. "Brothers, understand a word he’s saying.
we’ve explored further than any man
 But eventually the words find their
ever has before. And we should con-
way up the flame and to the tongue/
tinue exploring. Because we’re men,
flame tip.
not animals! And we crave knowl-
 This sinner has gotten the impression
edge."
that Virgil’s a nice guy because he
 So with the men rearing to go, they
granted Ulysses permission to leave.
sail out with the wind and with joy in
So now, he implores Virgil to stay
their hearts until they reach (gasp)…
and talk to him and have some pity
the Southern hemisphere. (We know
on a poor creature being roasted
this because suddenly the stars turn
alive.
upside down.)
 The first thing he wants to know is if
 They sail for five days until they see
his hometown, Romagna, is at war or
a really high mountain rising in the
peace.
distance. This is the Mount of Purga-
 Dante is listening attentively (read:
tory. Apparently, God decides "this
dying to answer), when Virgil el-
is far enough" because then a whirl-
bows him and says, "What are you
wind springs up, heads straight for
doing? Talk to the guy. He’s Italian."
the boat, and everyone dies.
 Dante obeys and we find out that Ro-
 Ulysses ends the tale of his death.
magna is still being ravaged.
 Then, Dante goes into all the
specifics about cities within Ro-
magna. Ravenna is still standing.
Forli has defeated the French. Rimini
has fallen to the rule of two evil Ital-
 ians who spend their days plotting
against the world and sinisterly
twisting their mustachios. Faenza
and Imola follow the lead of a flip-
flopping lion ("Lion" being a
metaphor for some Italian leader
we’ve never heard of). And Cesena
is still struggling for its freedom.
 Now down to business: Dante asks
the sinner who he is.
 Because it would be rude to just take
all the information and leave, the sin-
ner replies. He tells Dante he’s only
revealing his identity because Dante
—being in Hell and all that—can’t
possibly tattle on him in the living
world. Hmm, English majors would
call this dramatic irony.
 Enter into sinner’s story: First he was
a soldier and then saw the light, re-
pented of his ways, and became a
friar of the Franciscan order. (Note:
if you were a medieval Italian like
Dante, you’d know this fellow’s
name is Guido da Montefeltro.) He
did this with the goal of absolving
his sins. But then Pope Boniface VIII
ruined everything!
 Here, he gives us some history: as a
young man, he is… ahem… crafty.
In other words, a backstabber, turn-
coat, snitch, and general cheater.
 But then, he sees the error of his
ways and becomes a friar. He even
would’ve made peace with God if it
weren’t for that blasted pope.
 See, Boniface isn’t doing nice Popish
things like curing the sick or baptiz-
ing kittens, but is instead feuding
with Christian families. Namely, the
people who support the previous
pope and see Boniface as illegiti-
mate. Or really mentally sick. (We’re
going to go with the sick interpreta-
tion since Guido describes the
"fevered" Pope seeking his counsel
just as the leper Constantine sought
Sylvester’s advice.)
 So Guido is stuck with the job of
telling the leader of the Christian
faith whether or not to go to war with
this rival family. Here is the deciding
factor: Boniface goes, "Psssst!
Guido! If you side with me, I’ll clear
all your sins from your record. Free
ticket to Heaven!" In other words,
the Pope trades absolution (or for-
giveness of one’s sins) for a friar’s
permission to wage war on an inno-
cent family.
 When Guido dies, Saint Francis (re-
member, he’s in the Franciscan or-
der) appears and he’s all ready to as-
cend with him to the pearly gates
when… drumroll please… a demon
appears. Or "a black cherubim" if
you’re Dante.
 St. Francis is debriefed on Guido’s
evil counsel, the demon snatches
Guido up, Minos judges him fit for
the eighth circle, and voila! Here he
is.
 Back to the present: Guido is so dis-
traught after telling his story that he
leaves.
 Then our heroes leave too, crossing
the bridge into the next pouch.
 Inferno Inferno Canto XXVIII (the
Eighth Circle, Ninth Pouch: the Sow-
ers of Scandal and Schism) Sum-
mary
 Here, in the ninth pouch, Dante’s
words fail him. Words can no longer
capture the sheer volume and degree
of suffering, of all the "blood and
wounds," present here.
 Dante does the next best thing; he
crafts a metaphor. He compares all
the wounded here to the carnage
wrecked in about five different bat-
 tles. All those dead piled up couldn’t
match the horror of this pouch.
 Because it really is gross. The first
sinner Dante sees has literally been
eviscerated, his body slit down the
middle so we can see all his gooey
insides. And to make it worse, the
sinner reaches up with his hands to
open his chest wide for Dante to see.
 This sinner introduces himself as
Mohammed. He points out a fellow
sinner, whose face is chopped in
half. That’s Ali, the man responsible
for splitting the Muslims up into the
rival factions of the Sunnis and Shi-
ites.
 So, says Mohammed, we’re all sow-
ers of dissension here (read: we
make brothers go for each others’
throats) so we’re punished by being
cut in half.
 So the sinners walk in circles until
they reach a point where a big bad
demon with a sword slashes them in
half, then they keep walking and
dripping gore everywhere, eventually
heal, then come back to be hacked
again.
 But then Mohammed asks who
Dante is that he’s allowed not to
have his guts hanging out his body.
 Virgil answers that Dante is still
alive, is on an educational field trip
sanctioned by God, is getting a tour
of Hell.
 Apparently it’s a big deal to the sin-
ners because all their ears perk up
suddenly and a hundred pairs of eyes
scrutinize Dante.
 Mohammed goes on, ignoring
Dante’s stage fright. Since Dante’s
alive, Mohammed wants him to carry
a message to his buddy Fra Dolcino,
telling him to get some food quickly
or else he’ll starve while under siege.
(Dante apparently fails to do this be-
cause Fra Dolcino indeed dies of
starvation.)
 Mohammed leaves.
 Another guy comes up to speak, with
his throat slit and using this wound
like a mouth.
 He recognizes Dante and names him-
self as Pier da Medicina. Pier wants
Dante to spread his fame in the mor-
tal world and also to take a message.
This time it’s to tell two men from
Fano to be very careful or else
they’ll be betrayed by the foul Malat-
estino and be drowned aboard their
very own ship.
 Dante’s feeling lucky today so he
agrees to carry the message if Pier
will point out another famous sinner
to him.
 Pier does so immediately, patting an-
other guy on the head to indicate
"that’s him."
 It’s Curio, the man who convinced
Caesar betray his friend Pompey and
invade the city of Rome, starting a
civil war there. So guess what? His
conniving tongue is cut in half and,
here in Hell, Curio can no longer
speak.
 The next guy who comes along has
had his hands chopped off. Goes by
the name of Mosca and contributed
to the strife between the Guelphs and
Ghibellines.
 Dante, having seen the outcome of
this, tells Mosca that he brought
death to his own family, information
which sends Mosca running away
screaming.
 Now, the most hideous of the
hideous. Dante is so freaked out by
this next guy that only his good con-
science allows him to talk about it.
 Along comes a man, carrying some-
thing in his hands. Oh, it’s his head.
Then headless man carries his head
 like a lantern, and upon reaching
Dante, lifts it up so he can talk.
 He challenges Dante to find anyone
in Hell who suffers greater pain than
he does.
 With his (literally) disembodied
voice, he identifies himself as
Bertran de Born, the notorious man
who turned Prince Henry against his
father, King Henry II.
 Such family strife is so bad that
Dante compares it to Bertran of
Achitophel who turned Absalom and
David against one another.
 Because he divided father from son,
Bertran is forced to carry his own de-
capitated head. He calls this "the law
of counter-penalty," known to Italian
scholars as "contrapasso," (a Hugely
Important Concept) but known best
as the rule of what goes around,
comes around.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXIX (the Eighth
Circle, Tenth Pouch: the Falsifiers of Met-
als) Summary
 After seeing all these lamed,
maimed, and decapitated people,
Dante’s in a weepy mood. Or, as he
puts it, he has "eyes inebriate" which
technically means drunk.
 Virgil doesn’t like tears. He tells
Dante to get it together, especially
since time is running short and this
pouch alone is twenty-two miles
across.
 Dante stands his ground, though.
That was unexpected, seeing how
Dante’s usually subservient to Virgil.
 Dante is forced to keep walking
when Virgil shows no sign of stop-
ping and explains as they go.
 What he saw that made him cry so
much was a soul from his own fam-
ily.
 Virgil is pitiless, telling Dante to for-
get about him. Then he reveals a lit-
tle known fact. As Dante was talking
to Bertran de Born, Virgil noticed
Dante’s kinsmen atop the bridge, a
man named Geri del Bello, pointing
at Dante and screaming curses at
him. After a while, he got tired of be-
ing ignored and skulked away.
 Surprisingly, Dante still defends
Geri. We learn that Geri was vio-
lently killed in a feud between the
Aligheris and the Sachettis. Because
his death has not been avenged, he’s
angry at Dante. But this only makes
Dante feel sorry for him.
 They walk and talk, crossing the
bridge into the last pouch. At the top,
they can see all the sinners but
Dante’s more worried about the
sounds than the sights.
 He claps his hands over his ears to
keep out all the tortured screaming.
 There’s so much clamor from people
in pain that Dante compares the
scene to famous hospitals all over
medieval Italy, because of the stench
as well as the noise. Imagine the
stink emanating from thousands of
festering bodies.
 So Dante and Virgil climb down the
final bank, keeping to the leftmost
path.
 At the bottom, Dante sees the falsi-
fiers that "unerring Justice" punishes.
He compares the site to the myth of
Aegina. To put it succinctly, Aegina
was a pretty nymph who caught
Jupiter’s eye. He raped her. Juno
(Jupiter’s wife) got jealous and in-
fested Aegina’s island with a pesti-
lence that wiped out everyone. Later,
Jupiter felt bad for what he’d done so
 he repopulated the island by turning
all the ants into people.
 The point is that there’s more suffer-
ing here in the ninth pouch of Hell
than there was on Aegina.
 Basically, everyone here is afflicted
with some horrible disease.
 Dante runs across two sinners
propped up against each other. He
compares them to two pans stacked
on top of each other.
 The two sinners are attacking each
other with their claws. Then, because
Dante likes metaphors, he compares
their fighting to a disgruntled stable-
boy left to work the midnight shift
and taking his frustration out on his
horse… by attacking its coat with a
currycomb.
 In case you didn’t get that, he throws
another metaphor at you: the two sin-
ners attack each other just like a
kitchen knife scrapes the scales off a
fish.
 Virgil addresses the two combatants
in his majestic way: "O you who use
your nails to strip yourself…" (Yes,
Virgil has a way of endearing him-
self to his listeners.) He asks them if
there are any Italians here.
 The answer, of course, is yes. These
two are Italian. And they… like ev-
eryone else in Hell… want to know
who he is.
 You know the routine by now. I’m-
leading-this-live-man-down-through-
the-circles-of-Hell-and-no-you-can’t-
hurt-him-so-take-that explanation.
 So this throws the spotlight on
Dante; all the sinners peer at him
with arched eyebrows and Virgil
nudges him forward to make his
speech.
 We’re in familiar territory again.
Dante persuades the sinners to iden-
tify themselves by promising to
make them famous once he gets back
to the living world. Except now he’s
as tired of the same old rut as we are
so he adds an ironic twist: please,
don’t let your "vile and filthy tor-
ment / make you afraid to let me
know your names."
 So the first sinner tells us he cheesed
off the Bishop of Siena by telling his
buddy that he could teach him to fly.
Since this obviously didn’t happen,
the pal got mad. That wasn’t what
got him to Hell. That just got him in
trouble with the Bishop, who then
discovered he practiced alchemy.
That’s what got him burned at the
stake. Which is why Minos’ tail indi-
cated the eighth circle.
 We discover this alchemist’s name is
Griffolino.
 Dante sneers down at Griffolino and
calls the Sienese the vainest people
ever.
 Before Griffolino can protest, an-
other sinner jumps in, agreeing with
Dante and promptly naming off three
more pompous Sienese noblemen.
 Having put himself in Dante’s good
graces, the sinner proceeds to iden-
tify himself rather proudly as Capoc-
chio, an alchemist renowned for cre-
ating credible imitations of precious
metals.
 But the final irony is… Capocchio is
Sienese too.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXX (the Eighth Cir-
cle, Tenth Pouch: the Counterfeiters of Per-
sons, Counterfeiters of Coins, Falsifiers of
Words) Summary
 Because Dante opens this canto with
two mythological references, let’s
have a mini mythology lesson.
 There once was a beautiful Theban
princess named Semele whom
Jupiter impregnated. Finding out,
Jupiter’s wife Juno goes berserk with
jealousy and drives Semele’s
brother-in-law, Athamas, insane.
Athamas sees his wife and children,
thinks they’re lions, and kills one
son. Meanwhile, his wife Ino grabs
the other son and commits double
suicide.
 Mythology lesson #2: After Troy
falls to the Greeks in the Trojan war,
Queen Hecuba of Troy goes wild
with despair after seeing her daugh-
ter Polyxena sacrificed and her son
Polydorus murdered. Her over-
whelming grief causes her to howl
out like a dog.
 Point is, Dante references both these
myths in a double set of epic similes.
Neither Semele’s nor Hecuba’s situa-
tion can be matched in cruelty with
what the next pair of sinners does to
one another.
 The two aforementioned shades run
about raging like wild hogs. One
sprints over to Capocchio and sinks
his teeth into his neck.
 Griffolino, still here from the last
canto, tells Dante that the guy is Gi-
anni Schicchi, whose crime is imper-
sonation. In his friend’s will, Gianni
wrote himself in as someone else just
so that he could inherit his late
friend’s best horse.
 Then Dante asks about another sin-
ner and Griffolino identifies her as
well.
 She’s Myrrha, a princess who fell in
love with her father and imperson-
ated another woman to sleep with
him.
 After these two falsifiers of persons
pass by, Dante turns to survey the
rest.
 He sees a man who’s been twisted
into the shape of a lute, has the flesh
of the face rotting off, and is bloated
by a disease called dropsy. This hor-
ribly deformed sinner can still speak
and identifies himself as Master
Adam.
 Master Adam's punishment is con-
stantly craving a drink of water. He’s
tortured by thoughts of his home-
town’s river, the Arno, flowing past
nice moist green hills. Turns out, this
is the place where he committed his
sin, counterfeiting coins in Romena.
 But Master Adam’s biggest concern
is not getting a drink, but finding
Guido II so he can take his revenge.
He’s heard through Hell’s grapevine
that Guido is already amongst them
and says he’d gladly cross the
eleven-mile diameter of this pouch to
find him. It was Guido who first con-
vinced Master Adam to counterfeit
his coins.
 Dante changes the subject. He asks
who those two sinners are sitting be-
side Master Adam and, oh, whose
bodies happen to be smoking.
 Master Adam yawns and introduces
them to Potiphar’s wife (who falsely
accused Joseph of raping her) and
Sinon of the Greeks, who tricked the
Trojans into taking the Trojan horse
inside their city walls. Both are af-
flicted by a fever so fierce that it
makes their skin smoke. (Note: both
of them are falsifiers of words.)
 Sinon, who hears himself being in-
sulted, reaches out to slap Master
Adam on the belly. Which, remem-
ber, is bloated.
 This gives off a sound like a drum.
 So Master Adam strikes back, slap-
ping Sinon in the face.
 Now begins the verbal abuse: Well,
you told lies at Troy. Oh yeah? Well,
 you made coins that were worthless.
At least I’m only here for one crime.
You jerk! What about the Trojan
horse? May you be plagued your
whole life. Well, may you never get
a drink of water! Well, may your
fever burn you up!
 Everyone, Dante included, is fasci-
nated by this game of one-upman-
ship when Virgil comes and spoils
everything.
 He conks Dante on the head and
warns him to stop watching this ut-
terly shameful and wholly pointless
argument.
 Dante duly hangs his head in shame
and wants to apologize so much that
Virgil takes Dante under his arm,
forgives him, and gently tells him
that such "bickering is base."
 Then they fall asleep.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXXI (the Eighth
Circle, Tenth Pouch: the Falsifiers) Sum-
mary
 Dante decides to talk about Virgil’s
tongue.
 He compares Virgil’s tongue to
Achilles’ lance, which has the power
to heal any wound it inflicts simply
by touching it again. Similarly, Vir-
gil’s tongue and, by extension, his
words, have the power to hurt (as we
just saw), but also the power to heal.
 Having reconciled their love for each
other, they continue up the bank to-
wards the ninth and final circle.
 Trouble is, it’s dark and they can’t
see where they’re going.
 Fortunately they still have a sense of
hearing. Of which fact they’re bru-
tally reminded when they’re deaf-
ened by a bugle’s blast.
 It’s such a scary sound that Dante
compares it to Roland’s horn, which
sounded at the defeat of the uncon-
querable Charlemagne.
 Apparently, horn riffs can cure blind-
ness because Dante suddenly makes
out the shapes of hundreds of high
towers in the distance. Here’s his
thought process: high towers = city.
Let’s ask Virgil exactly what city.
 And in his cryptic way, Virgil says,
"You’ll see clearly once we’re out of
the shadows. So move faster! Now!"
 Then, Virgil has a change of mind
and fesses up. He admits that those
"towers" in the distance aren’t really
buildings, but giants trapped in the
central pit of Hell. But because
they’re so supernaturally tall, their
torsos can be seen here, while their
legs are embedded in the banks of
the final circle.
 Having made this discovery, Dante
suddenly becomes afraid. The closer
he gets to Giant City, the more his
fear grows.
 As one fearsome giant comes into
view, Dante blesses Nature for stop-
ping further procreation of these
creatures (because, in Greek mythol-
ogy, Earth was the giants’ mother)
and for depriving Mars (god of war)
of the very first WMDs.
 From Dante’s perspective, the gi-
ant’s face is as large as St. Peter’s
pine cone (we kid you not), which
really makes no sense unless you ac-
tually know what that is. Turns out,
it’s a giant ornamental pinecone used
to decorate first the Roman Pan-
theon, then St. Peter’s Basilica, and
later the Vatican itself. Point is, the
pine cone is big.
 Back to the description of the giant.
He’s so big that the bank which en-
cases his legs looks like an apron. To
 give us some perspective on how tall
just his torso is, we’re told that not
even three Frieslanders stacked on
top of each other could reach his
head.
 Suddenly, he speaks: "Raphel mai
amecche zabi almi." (No, it makes
no sense in Italian either.)
 Virgil responds with an emphatic
medieval version of "Shut up!"
 Then, since Dante is bewildered at
his master’s meanness, Virgil ex-
plains to him who the giant is: Nim-
rod.
 Nimrod was a king in Babylon, re-
sponsible for the building of the
Tower of Babel, a doomed project
which ended up with God smiting
down the tower, breaking up man’s
single language into thousands of un-
intelligible ones, and then condemn-
ing Nimrod to Hell.
 Virgil continues. For the division of
all men’s languages, leading in turn
to the division of all men into differ-
ent nations and races, Nimrod de-
serves all the punishment he receives
in Hell. This, of course, includes de-
priving him of his own language so
that nobody can understand him.
 Our heroes turn left and continue
down until they come to another gi-
ant, far larger and fiercer than Nim-
rod.
 Dante can’t identify this giant, but
sees only that he’s in restraints. As in
chained and tied and arms bent be-
hind him.
 Our guide Virgil recognizes this gi-
ant as Ephialtes, who challenged the
gods way back when. And obviously
lost. For taking up arms against the
gods, Ephialtes’s arms are now im-
mobilized.
 By now, Dante is tired of Virgil lec-
turing to him and decides to show his
own knowledge of giants. He asks
Virgil when they can see Briareus,
another of the giants who challenged
the gods.
 To which, Virgil answers: "We’ll see
Anteaus soon. Oh, and Anteaus will
take us to the bottom."
 Finally, Virgil addresses Dante’s
question, saying that Briareus is still
far ahead. And really, really scary.
 At his comrade’s name, Ephialtes
shakes himself, trying to get out of
his chains. This causes an earthquake
and now Dante’s really sorry he
mentioned the name.
 They walk on, unharmed, until they
reach Antaeus.
 From Virgil’s fancy address, we
learn where Antaeus lived (the valley
of Bagradas river), what he ate (li-
ons!), and what he’s like (had he
been born in the time of Ephialtes,
the giants would’ve won the war
against the gods).
 But despite all this, Virgil puts their
lives in his hands and asks him po-
litely to deposit them down below.
 And then Virgil offers him some-
thing in return: Dante’s words of
praise. Like everyone else in Hell,
Antaeus wants worldwide fame.
 Apparently, that’s all it takes, be-
cause Antaeus stretches out his
hands eagerly and picks up Virgil.
 Panicking just a little in the grip of a
murderous giant, Virgil shouts to
Dante to come here, so that he
doesn’t lose him.
 Dante approaches slowly because
Antaeus reminds him of the tower of
Garisenda, precariously tilted (like
the tower of Pisa) and about to fall.
 But he resigns himself and the giant
proves surprisingly gentle, lowering
them safely to the bottom.
 Then, he rises, tall as a ship’s mast.
  And so we reach the final circle.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXXII (the Ninth
Circle, First Ring Caina: Traitors to their
Kin, Second Ring Antenora: Traitors to their
Homeland or Party) Summary
 Dante finds that his words fail him
again. He claims his verse does not
have the phonetically harsh, "crude
and scrannel" qualities fit to describe
the evilest regions of Hell. Thus, he
reluctantly writes on as he always
has. All the while, of course, he’s
humbling himself, calling his own
language childish and inadequate.
 To further show his humility, Dante
invokes the Muses for a second time,
praying to them to render his verse
accurate and true.
 As he and Virgil travel down, far be-
low Antaeus’s feet, Dante suddenly
hears a voice ordering him to watch
where he walks, or he might step on
the heads of his fellow brothers. Not
something you’d hear out on your
daily stroll.
 So Dante looks down to find before
him a frozen lake (the river Cocy-
tus), iced over so thickly that it no
longer even seems like water, but
rather like glass.
 The ice is so thick that, according to
Dante, if a mountain were to fall on
it, the edges of the lake wouldn’t so
much as creak.
 Caught fast in ice up to their chins
are the sinners, their teeth chattering
from the cold.
 They look so pathetic that Dante
compares them to the frogs, wholly
submerged in water except for their
muzzles.
 Dante notes that they all keep their
heads bent down, while cursing the
cold.
 As Dante is sightseeing, he notices
two sinners whose heads are so close
together that their hair intermingles.
 But Dante is not quite so shy and
asks them directly who they are.
 The two must bend their necks back
to look up at Dante. But just when
we expect them to speak, we find
that they’ve been crying and that the
cold has frozen their mouths shut. In-
stead of speaking, they only butt
heads.
 Another sinner speaks up and help-
fully identifies the twins as the
Bisenzio brothers, who killed each
other over politics.
 The speaker condemns them as the
souls most worthy for this punish-
ment in Caina, even more so than
Mordred (who betrayed his father,
King Arthur), Foccaccia (no not the
bread, but a guy who killed his
cousin), and Sassol Mascheroni (who
also killed a relative, but more im-
portantly has a big head that blocks
the speaker’s view).
 Then, after naming everyone else’s
crimes, the speaker identifies himself
as Camiscione dei Pazzi, a Ghi-
belline famous for killing a kinsman
for political power. He attempts to
make his crime seem less heinous by
highlighting the evil of his kinsman’s
sin.
 These are but a few of the sinners
whom Dante sees; there are thou-
sands, made "doglike" or bestial by
the harsh cold.
 As our heroes continue onwards,
Dante—either accidentally or by des-
tiny—kicks a sinners’ head smack
dab in the face.
 Immediately, the sinner starts curs-
ing and saying, "Why’d you kick me
so hard? Are you here to revenge
Montaperti?"
 Our patient Dante politely asks Vir-
gil to stop for moment while he
clears up a misunderstanding.
 He then goes on to roughly ask the
cursing sinner who he is.
 Instead of answering, the sinner
replies with a mirroring question,
asking who Dante is that he thinks he
can just go around kicking poor peo-
ple, as if he were alive.
 Predictably, Dante answers haughtily
"I am alive and, even better, I can
give you lasting fame in the mortal
world."
 But, unpredictably, the sinner wants
nothing of the kind; he only wants to
be left alone, instead of bearing this
pointless flattery.
 Suddenly, Dante snaps. Just loses it.
He grabs the sinner by the nape of
the neck and screams at him to iden-
tify himself or else Dante will keep
pulling until he’s lost all his hair.
 But in vain. The sinner is not im-
pressed or intimidated.
 So Dante actually goes through with
his threat, pulling out the sinner’s
hair in handfuls and making the poor
guy scream in pain until another irri-
table sinner shouts for Bocca to shut
his trap. (Ah, now we know his
name.)
 Dante threatens the sullen sinner,
saying that because he has been so
uncooperative, Dante will slander his
reputation up in the living world.
 Bocca (degli Abati) still doesn’t care.
Only he wants Dante to mention the
shame of his fellow sinners—Buoso
da Duera, Beccheria, Gianni dei Sol-
danieri, Ganelon, and Tebaldello—
all traitors to their country or party.
 After they leave the indefatigable
Bocca, Dante comes across a truly
gruesome sight: two sinners sub-
merged close together, so close that
one’s head rears over the other’s, ac-
tually chewing it.
 Dante, with a touch of black humor,
describes the upper head as the lower
one’s hat, and its chewing as that of
a person eating his daily bread.
 In still another simile, Dante com-
pares the sinner’s gnawing to that of
Tydeus’s mad fit when he bit his en-
emy Menalippus’s skull after killing
him.
 Curious as always, Dante asks the
sinner to explain why he’s eating an-
other person. As incentive, Dante
promises to bring word of him back
to the mortal realm so long as his
tongue doesn’t dry up and the sin-
ner’s tale reveals that he’s right for
chewing on another person.
 Let the challenge begin.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXXIII (the Ninth
Circle, Second Ring Antenora: Traitors to
the Homeland or Party, Third Ring
Ptolomea: Traitors against their Guests)
Summary
 The hungry sinner raises his mouth
from the bleeding skull, wipes his
lips on his victim’s hair, and begins
to speak.
 He says that reliving his story causes
him pain. But if it’ll shed light on the
truly nasty nature of his betrayer,
he’ll be happy to talk. And cry. At
the same time.
 He tells Dante he doesn’t know who
Dante is, but according to his accent,
he sounds Florentine.
 Finally, he starts his story. His name,
by the way, is Count Ugolino—
which already sounds like a sinister
name—and his meal here is named
Archbishop Ruggieri.
 We find out Ugolino isn’t a very
good storyteller because he ruins the
ending before even beginning. So it
seems this Archbishop tricked him
into something and later killed him.
According to Ugolino, this is com-
mon knowledge.
 But what people don’t know is just
how cruel and premeditated his mur-
der was.
 Here's Ugolino's story:
 As a magistrate of Pisa, Ugolino is
forced into some tough decisions.
One of them is ceding three of Pisa’s
fortresses to hostile neighboring
cities, a move which many consider
a betrayal.
 Later, political reasons force Ugolino
to be exiled from Pisa. Then the trap
is set and the two-timing Archbishop
Ruggieri invites Ugolino back into
the city, and then betrays him.
 Ugolino is locked away in a Pisan
tower (no, not the leaning one) called
the Eagles’ Tower, but— after his
death—known by the nickname of
the Hunger Tower.
 Well, our Count is locked away there
for "several moons" when he has a
dream. And because dreams sud-
denly become important when you’re
scared and hungry, this is what hap-
pens:
 Archbishop Ruggieri appears as a
lord and master of the hunt, riding
with his allies Gualandi, Sismondi,
and Lanfranchi (all Ghibelline fami-
lies) and hunting down a lone wolf
and his poor pups from a Pisan
mountain with a bunch of hounds.
After only a short flight, both father
and son wolves are attacked by the
hounds. The wolves represent
Ugolino and his sons.
 When Ugolino wakes up in the
morning, he hears his sons (yes, who
are there with him) crying in their
sleep and begging for some bread.
 Here, Ugolino stops his story to ask
for Dante’s pity, telling him he
should already be crying at his sad
plight.
 Back to the story. As the day goes
on, the boys expect the food that is
usually brought to them.
 But instead of food comes the sound
of people nailing up the doors of the
tower.
 Upon hearing his doom, Ugolino
turns silently to his sons. He’s curi-
ously quiet; he doesn’t cry, doesn’t
say a word, and inside he "turned to
stone."
 But his four sons cry and little
Anselm asks his father what’s
wrong. But Ugolino doesn’t answer
and he refuses to speak or weep the
whole day and night.
 When the first ray of the new dawn
touches him, Ugolino sees his sorry
self reflected in his sons’ gazes. He
can’t take it anymore and snaps; he
starts biting his hands out of grief.
 His sons mistake his behavior for
hunger and tell him, heartbreakingly,
that it would be better if their good
father ate them instead. Their reason-
ing? "You clothed us, father, in our
miserable flesh [a.k.a. gave birth to
us], so you should be able to strip us
down too."
 At this, Ugolino grows calm and
falls silent for the next two days. No-
tice that he doesn't say anything to
comfort his kids.
 On the fourth day, Gaddo (a son)
throws himself at his father’s feet,
begging for help. Then he dies.
 Throughout the next two days, the
remaining three sons resign them-
selves to the same fate, and Ugolino
goes blind. But he’s still silent.
 Finally, after all his sons are dead, he
gropes around blindly. In the mo-
ment of truth, he breaks his silence,
calling after his sons. They’re dead.
 He ends his story with a really cryp-
tic line: "then fasting had more force
than grief." Which could mean that
a) he kept not eating despite his grief
or b) he ate his dead sons.
 Back in the present: Ugolino goes
wild with grief and bites down on
Ruggieri’s skull again.
 Dante is as horrified as we are, but
he expresses it rather differently. He
curses Pisa, wishing that the neigh-
boring islands of Caprara and Gorg-
ona would dam up the river Arno so
that all Pisan citizens would drown.
 So goes his thought process: even if
Ugolino were guilty enough to de-
serve death by starvation, his sons
were innocent. It’s so unfair..
 They move on, passing into the third
ring, where they find sinners, not
bent in the ice, but lying flat on it.
It’s so cold there that they are not
even allowed to weep because their
tears immediately freeze into a sort
of "crystal visor" over their eyes.
 Dante, too, is feeling the effects of
the cold; he’s going numb.
 But, against all odds, he feels a wind
against his skin. Strange. So he asks
Virgil about it. (Note: medieval
thinkers assume that the heat of the
sun causes wind, so in this cold dark
place, Dante wouldn’t expect any
wind.)
 Virgil, in his maddeningly mysteri-
ous way, answers that Dante will
soon see for himself the source of
this wind.
 Suddenly, one of the sinners cries
out to them. He mistakes them for
fellow sinners and implores them to
remove the veil of frozen tears from
his face, so he can have a moment of
relief before his tears begin freezing
again.
 To which Dante replies that he’ll
grant him this boon in exchange for
the sinner’s name and story. Interest-
ingly, Dante promises to do this on
pain of banishing himself to Hell.
Ooh.
 So the sinner starts: his name is Fra
Alberigo and he claims to have nur-
tured fruits in a bad garden, for
which he’s now being punished. No,
that doesn’t mean he’s a terrible hor-
ticulturist, but is symbolic for his
crime. Alberigo invited his relatives
over for dinner, then had them assas-
sinated. The assassins’ signal? Fruit.
 Alberigo claims that his punishment
is too severe for his crime.
 But Dante’s doing some math in his
head and because things don’t add
up, he asks Alberigo if he’s already
dead. What an interesting question.
 Alberigo answers that he doesn’t
know. Because Ptolomea (this place)
is special: it has the power to take a
soul to Hell (via a demon) before the
sinner has even died.
 To illustrate his point, Alberigo
points out the sinner behind him, a
guy named Branca Doria.
 Dante accuses Alberigo of lying be-
cause he knows that Branca Doria is
still living.
 But Alberigo insists that Branca’s
been his neighbor for while, even be-
 fore the other sinners Dante saw ear-
lier arrived in Hell.
 Here's the big question: how can a
soul be in one place and the body in
another? Here’s how it works, ac-
cording to Alberigo: once a traitor
commits a crime against his guest, a
demon from Ptolomea possesses the
sinner’s live body on earth and hurls
the sinner’s soul down to Hell. So a
demon-possessed Branca is still liv-
ing on earth.
 Now, Alberigo calls in his favor,
asking Dante to relieve his eyes. But
Dante refuses. Even after promising
to do so on pain of eternal condem-
nation.
 Dante is even proud of his refusal,
calling it a "courtesy" to the sinner.
 He proceeds to curse the Genoese
(because apparently both Alberigo
and Branca were from Genoa) as a
people so corrupt that their souls can
be in Hell while they’re still living.
Inferno Inferno Canto XXXIV (the Ninth
Circle, Fourth Ring Judecca: Traitors against
their Benefactors) Summary
 "Vexilla Regis prodeunt inferni"
opens the final canto. It's Latin and
means "the banners of the King of
Hell draw closer."
 Appropriately, these words are spo-
ken by Virgil, who—as you know—
is Roman and speaks Latin.
 He tells Dante to keep his eyes
peeled for the big cahuna, Lucifer
himself.
 So our hero strains his eyes through
the darkness to glimpse something
like a whirling windmill in the dis-
tance. It’s whirling because of that
infernal wind. Remember that? Now,
it’s so strong that Dante has to use
Virgil as a windbreaker.
 In this final region of Hell, all the
sinners are completely submerged in
ice. Dante can see them frozen in all
their funny positions beneath him.
 Virgil, deciding to milk Dante’s awe
for all it’s worth, stops to announce
that this is Dis. And Dante will have
to be brave.
 Dante now turns to his reader and
tells us how he froze with fear, to the
point where he almost couldn’t write.
 He tries to convey what it feels like
to be there: "I did not die, and I was
not alive."
 He now witnesses Lucifer in all his
glory. "Glory" meaning size. Lucifer
is BIG. So big that Dante claims he
himself is closer in size to a giant
than a giant is to Lucifer. Big beyond
imagination.
 Dante wonders how Lucifer could
possibly have been beautiful once…
because he’s nauseatingly ugly now.
 Observe: Lucifer has three heads—
one blood red, one yellow, one
black. Underneath each head flap, a
pair of enormous bat-like wings.
Bingo! This is the source of the
freezing wind.
 Out of his six eyes, Lucifer is crying.
His tears fall into his three mouths
which are chewing a bloody pulp.
 Lucifer’s favorite snack? Sinners.
Namely traitors to their benefactors.
In the central mouth is a man claw-
ing at the air in his agony because his
back is completely stripped of skin.
 Virgil interjects that this is Judas Is-
cariot, the man who betrayed Jesus.
 Virgil continues: the man in the
black mouth is Brutus, who betrayed
Julius Caesar.
 Brutus writhes in pain but keeps
silent.
 The last sinner being eaten is Cas-
sius, who also betrayed Caesar.
 It’s time to go. That’s it, folks, says
Virgil. He seems in quite a hurry to
leave.
 But it’s not easy to leave Hell. It re-
quires Dante to jump on Virgil’s
back and hold on for dear life as Vir-
gil times his jump, leaps onto Lu-
cifer, and rappels down using the
devil’s hairy hide as ropes.
 When they reach Lucifer’s unmen-
tionables, Virgil switches it up. In-
stead of climbing down, he turns
around and begins to climb up Lu-
cifer’s legs.
 Dante freaks out because he thinks
Virgil’s lost his mind and is taking
them back to Hell.
 But Virgil, panting, reassures him.
They are indeed leaving the Inferno.
 Because Virgil isn’t in great shape,
he drops Dante off on a rocky
crevice for a moment. As he’s catch-
ing his breath.
 Dante leans out to look back up to-
ward Lucifer’s torso, but the world
has turned upside down; instead of
Lucifer’s chest, he sees Lucifer’s
legs.
 Virgil irritably snaps at Dante to get
up and get going because they’ve got
a long way to go and it’s getting late.
They start walking.
 As they go, Dante finally asks the
question that’s on all of our minds.
What just happened? Why are we
suddenly upside-down but actually
right-side up? And what time is it?
 Virgil, rolling his eyes at Dante’s
questions, explains that they’re no
longer in the northern hemisphere.
When they passed Lucifer’s privates,
gravity reversed itself (so Virgil had
to turn around to keep going the
same direction), and now they are
right under Jerusalem, where Christ
died.
 (Note: medieval thinkers thought that
Lucifer’s body spanned the diameter
of the earth.)
 Virgil goes on to explain the time of
day, which also was switched
around. When in the northern hemi-
sphere it’s morning, it’s evening in
the southern hemisphere. So it’s now
dawn here.
 Virgil just gives us information we
might need later: here, in the south-
ern hemisphere, there’s nothing but
ocean. You know why, Dante? Be-
cause when Lucifer fell from
Heaven, he fell into the southern
hemisphere before lodging inside the
earth. All the land there got so scared
of him that they all picked up their
landy legs and ran to the northern
hemisphere, leaving only water be-
hind.
 Dante has stopped listening in favor
of exploring his surroundings.
 He finds that he and Virgil are in a
cave with a burbling stream in it (the
Lethe). To his delight, the slope is
nice and easy.
 So our dynamic duo heroically fol-
lows this stream back to the surface
of the world, not stopping to rest.
 They emerge under God’s great sky
to see the stars.
 Having literally gone to Hell and
back, Inferno ends.
Inferno Themes
 Primitivity
 In Inferno, the most basic and most
forgivable category of sin is inconti-
nence, or a lack of self-control. The
incontinent sinners constantly in-
dulge their impulses... whether its
ice-cream or sex .
 The core of the incontinents’ wrong-
doing lies in their failure to use their
God-given minds to judge their ac-
tions as good or evil. Because they
don't think and act on their feelings,
the incontinent sinners deny their hu-
man civility. This is why Dante often
paints them using animal imagery. In
the sinners’ defense, however, incon-
tinence is instinctive and primitive;
lust, hunger, and wrath are universal
urges, felt by all human beings.
 Inferno Theme of Man and the Natu-
ral World
 In Inferno, Nature’s author is God
himself and anything described as
natural has to honor the Divine. So,
the most unnatural scenes occur in
the circles of heresy and violence,
where familiar or pastoral landscapes
become distorted in some huge way.
 The violent, especially those who
have sinned against nature, demon-
strate this best—in the image of re-
production. Usurers gain from the
unnaturally speedy accumulation of
money, which requires no coupling
but simply produces more and more
in and of itself. Heretics, in denying
man’s immortal soul, reject one of
the basic truths. Heresy and violence
are considered worse sins than in-
continence.Lies and Deceit
 Inferno Theme of Lies and Deceit
 While Inferno's author denounces
fraud as contradicting the truth, his
contempt for it runs way deeper than
that. The root of fraud is linguistic
sin and because man’s unique gift is
language, human beings seem partic-
ularly susceptible to fraud.
 As one of the major unifying bonds
in society—uniting individuals and
facilitating communication—lan-
guage holds a high status in Dante’s
eyes. The fraudulent, by corrupting
language, threaten to compromise
the cohesiveness of society. Unlike
incontinence and violence, which af-
fect only the agent or his victim,
fraud has the ability to deceive whole
communities of people—even insti-
tutions like the Church and entire
cities like Florence.
inferno Theme of Justice
 In Dante’s Inferno, justice is not
merely cruel and unusual punishment
designed to elicit cheap shock from
onlookers (although it does that,
too). Inferno portrays God’s justice
as springing from primal love, and
thus is conditioned with compassion,
however difficult it may be to recog-
nize. Still, the point of justice is that
transgressors must get their just
desserts.
 Dante ensures this happens using the
concept of contrapasso, which trans-
lates literally as "counter-penalty."
Here, sinners are punished according
to the nature of their sin, so that their
punishment fits their crime. Some
sinners literally become the embodi-
ment of their sins while others be-
come victims in the afterlife of the
crimes they committed while living.
Inferno Theme of Language and Communi-
cation
  Language is king in Inferno... so it
sucks even more to be punished by,
say, having to blow bubbles of mud
for all eternity. A product of the ra-
tional mind, language is considered
by Dante to be a medium shared by
all men that serves to unite them. As
a uniquely human attribute, language
—like man—is never defined as in-
herently good or inherently evil. In-
deed, its moral standing is deter-
mined by the way in which it is used.
Readers are never shown a defini-
tively correct and moral speech.
Inferno Theme of Wisdom and Knowledge
 As the only species of all God’s chil-
dren bestowed with a rational mind,
humanity (woo-hoo, humanity!)—
according to Dante—is obligated to
properly use its God-given gift re-
sponsibly. Dante calls this duty the
"good of the intellect." All man’s
works then should in some way be
devoted to honoring nature or wor-
shipping God.
 Indeed, Inferno could be viewed as
such a work, stemming from his own
philosophy. Any works that deny
God’s infallibility, pervert nature’s
trends, or attempt to surpass man’s
limits, are sinful. Man’s use of lan-
guage is particularly subject to this
"good of the intellect" ethos, since
language is one of the primary ex-
pressions of man’s mind.
 Inferno Theme of Compassion and
Forgiveness
 Dante considers the quality of com-
passion—defined as having pity for
another man’s suffering—an essen-
tial human trait. Sometimes Dante’s
compassion for the sinners’ plights
reaches such a depth that Dante him-
self seems to suffer with them.
 Compassion in the Inferno often
comes across as weakness and im-
proper sympathy for an evildoer. But
it is one of Dante’s most effective
ways of creating a connection with
the reader, appealing to his or her
sense of pathos and ideas about hu-
man decency. In Hell, however,
compassion can indeed mislead men
into wrongly sympathizing with true
villains. As the protagonist’s journey
continues, he learns to harden his
heart and to distinguish between var-
ious levels of sin.
Inferno Theme of Love
 Although love isn't frequently men-
tioned in the text of the Inferno, it is
always in the back of the reader’s
mind. Love’s single most surprising
appearance comes at the threshold of
Hell, where Dante learns that this
place of punishment has been created
from "Primal Love." Wait—what?
 As Dante meets sinner after sinner
and hears their pitiable stories, read-
ers are encouraged to question—
along with Dante—how a loving
God could impose such pain on
seemingly decent people. With his
often sympathetic portrayals of sin-
ners, Dante directly challenges the
notion that Hell could have been cre-
ated out of love. On a more mundane
level, love—like language and mat-
ter—is considered one of the funda-
mental bonds that tie individuals to-
gether. When this bond is broken,
 many people can be affected and led
into sin.
Inferno Theme of Time
 In Inferno, Hell is all about stasis, or
an unchanging permanent state, on a
number of levels. First, the very
structure of Hell—a series of con-
centric circles—gives an impression
of inescapability, since circles have
no ends or edges and one can only
continue tracing their arcs in a futile
attempt to find a way out.
 Secondly, sinners cling to their sinis-
ter ways and refuse to repent. In their
refusal to change, they condemn
themselves to an unending stream of
punishment. When the protagonist fi-
nally does escape Hell and emerges
on earth’s surface, the position of the
sun in the sky seems not to have
changed at all... giving the impres-
sion that no time has passed since he
went to Hell and back.
Inferno Theme of Respect and Reputation
 In the Inferno, sinners in Hell are to-
tally preoccupied with achieving
fame and commemoration among the
living. The question of how a man is
remembered after his death is a topic
of serious discussion. The logic goes
that if one’s memory fades or is for-
gotten amongst the living, one truly
dies (maybe even from Hell).
 Despite their crimes—or because of
them?—the sinners are willing to ex-
change virtually anything for the
protagonist’s agreement to carry
news of their good names back to the
living. Like every creature, man
fears death, even after his body has
expired.
 The Massive Allegory
 Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
 A Hell Of An Allegory
 Let’s face it, you can’t really discuss
Hell and all its inhabitants—not to
mention about a million twisted pun-
ishments—without illuminating
something about the society that pro-
duces such evildoers. Sure, each in-
dividual sadistic comeuppance for
each individual sinner speaks alle-
gorical volumes... but it ain't nothing
compared to the Big Daddy of all al-
legories... the whole idea of going to
Hell itself.
 So Dante’s personal crisis and jour-
ney through Hell could represent ev-
ery man’s moments of weakness and
his descents into sin. This is apparent
from the very beginning. The dark
woods and night might symbolize
man’s sin while the path—which
Dante has lost—is the virtuous
man’s way of life.
 The dawn brings hope and the hill
crowned with sunlight, which Dante
strives to ascend, is the way to God.
That his way is obstructed by the
three beasts means that Dante is not
yet worthy to proceed to Heaven.
 Sorry, Dante. Instead of going to
Heaven, you get to pass through a
truly terrifying gate which literally
spells out the whole Hell-deal in
block letters:
 THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO
THE SUFFERING CITY,
 THROUGH ME THE WAY TO
THE ETERNAL PAIN,
 THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT
RUNS AMONG THE LOST.
 JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH
ARTIFICER;
 MY MAKER WAS DIVINE AU-
THORITY,
 THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND
THE PRIMAL LOVE.
 BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT
ETERNAL THINGS
 ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO
ENTER HERE.
 These words – their aspect was ob-
scure – I read
 inscribed above a gateway… (Inf.
III, 1-11)
 Then you’ve got Hell itself, which is
basically a microcosm of society.
Here, you’ve got all sects of human-
ity—laymen, clergy, lovers, wagers
of war, politicians, scholars, you
name it. And they’ve all got their lit-
tle sections of Hell. Except that all
their little flaws are visible to every-
one.
 How exactly does this work? A nifty
little trick called contrapasso, which
is basically the sin version of New-
ton's Third Law—for each sin there
is an equal and opposite punishment:
 [Bertran de Born]: "Because I sev-
ered those so
 joined, I carry – alas – my brain dis-
severed from its source,
 which is within my trunk. And thus,
in me
 one sees the law of counter-penalty."
(Inf. XXVIII, 139-142)
 This is essentially the only difference
between the real world and Hell:
people become their sins and suffer
by them. And it doesn't get more al-
legorical than that. Check it out:
 [Virgil]: "Wedged in the slime, they
say: "We had been sullen
 in the sweet air that’s gladdened by
the sun;
 we bore the mist of sluggishness in
us:
 now we are bitter in the blackened
mud."
 This hymn they have to gurgle in
their gullets,
 because they cannot speak it in full
words." (Inf. VII, 121-126)
 Yep—if you're sullen you'll become
sullenness personified (hanging out
gargling nasty mud). If you're lustful,
you'll fly around in a frenzied man-
ner reminiscent of the frenzy that
probably caused you to "fly around"
behind your significant other's back.
The list goes on.
 That Dante survives Hell, learns
from it, and emerges unscathed
(read: climbs up into the light) means
that he has proven some sort of
worth. This is Dante's PSA: if you're
worthy, you'll forgo the whole Hell
experience. But if you're a sinner...
well: hope you like ice, fiery rain,
and rivers of boiling blood.
The Three Beasts
 Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
 Leopards And Lions And She-
Wolves, Oh My!
 As if the leopard, lion, and she-wolf
that menace Dante in his quest to get
to the sunlight aren't scary enough,
each represents a different type of
 sin. Yup: not only are these animals
bloodthirsty, they're jam-packed
symbols of sin.
 Let's check out these beastly beast-
ies:
 And almost where the hillside starts
to rise –
 look there! – a leopard, very quick
and lithe,
 a leopard covered with a spotted
hide.
 He did not disappear from sight, but
stayed;
 indeed, he so impeded my ascent
 that I had often to turn back again…
 …and the gentle season
 gave me good cause for hopefulness
on seeing
 that beast before me with his speck-
led skin;
 but hope was hardly able to prevent
 the fear I felt when I beheld a lion.
 His head held high and ravenous
with hunger –
 even the air around him seemed to
shudder –
 this lion seemed to make his way
against me.
 And then a she-wolf showed herself;
she seemed
 to carry every craving in her lean-
ness;
 she had already brought despair to
many. (Inf. I, 31-51)
 Traditional interpretations have
stated that the leopard is a symbol of
fraudulence, the lion is a symbol of
pride, and the she-wolf is a symbol
of avarice or greed. The leopard has
few physical characteristics suggest-
ing its interpretation as fraudulence,
but the prideful lion (which, inciden-
tally, run in packs called—you got it,
you've seen The Lion King—prides)
has his "head held high."
 The she-wolf is described most fully.
She "carr[ies] every craving in her
leanness," meaning she is painfully
skinny. Which explains why she rep-
resents avarice or greed. She’s got
nothing... and she wants it all.
 But even more interesting is Virgil’s
explanation that a Greyhound will
eventually come to kill the she-wolf
and "restore low-lying Italy." This
seems to imply that greed afflicts the
whole boot-shaped peninsula.
 Well, we know that this is true for
Florence, given the city’s illustrious
textile and banking industry and the
political squabbling taking place
there at the time. However, nobody
can agree about who the Greyhound
represents... although everyone can
agree it's probably not a Greyhound
Bus.
 This means that it's up to you,
Shmoopers. Can you crack the Grey-
hound code?
Analysis: Narrator Point of View
 Who is the narrator, can she or he
read minds, and, more importantly,
can we trust her or him?
 First Person (Central Narrator):
Dante
 In our "Character Analysis" of
Dante, we’ve discussed how it’s im-
portant to distinguish between au-
thor-Dante and character-Dante.
Here’s why: Our narrator is primar-
ily character-Dante because he’s the
 one documenting his feelings as he
experiences Hell.
 But his observations are often in-
formed by the historic knowledge of
author-Dante, who has already lived
these events. Example: when talking
to Brunetto Latini, Dante lets slip
that he wants to show his work to
Beatrice. Which won’t happen until
Purgatorio. Cliffhanger!
Genre
 Epic Poetry
 The Inferno is in verse. It rhymes.
And has a meter (a fancy meter
called terza rima). Do you need any
more convincing that Inferno is a
poem?
 As for the "epic" part, Dante is talk-
ing about a man's choice between
good and evil and showing us the
eternal agony of those who pick
Door #2. For you skeptics out there,
you know it’s an epic when you see
big long epic similes every fifth line.
Take into account the fact that Dante
is guided by Virgil, the epic poet of
Rome, and you’ve got yourself an
epic poem.
 Oh yeah, and Dante invokes the
Muses. When you have Muse-invo-
cation, you know you're dealing with
an 100% Grade-A Prime epic.
 Analysis: Tone
 Take a story's temperature by study-
ing its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical?
Snarky? Playful?
 Highly Emotional, Sometimes Sym-
pathetic, Sometimes Condemnatory
 Fair warning: Dante is on more of an
emotional roller coaster than a two-
year-old that just ate a bag of Chips
Ahoy.
 Dante cares super-deeply about the
moral thought processes of mankind,
having personally suffered as a result
of others’ sin. He was exiled from
his hometown. We know the inten-
sity of his feelings is often obscured
by his fancy style, but you can’t have
crying and fainting and damning
from the first-person narrator without
running a pretty high emotional
fever.
 The "sympathetic" part comes out in
the portrayal of the so-called "noble
sinners"—souls like Francesca, Fari-
nata, Brunetto Latini, and Ulysses—
who speak very little about their ac-
tual sins. Their stories are designed
to make readers ask why they are in
Hell and, often, Dante’s reaction is
the same, plus some weeping and
swooning for good measure.
 However, Dante is particularly piti-
less with the fraudulent sinners.
When you have lines like,
 Simon Magus!...Ra-
pacious ones, who
take the things of
God, / that ought to be
the brides of Right-
eousness, / and make
them fornicate for
gold and silver! / The
time has come to let
 the trumpet sound /
for you… (XIX.2-6)
 ... you’ve got some serious damning
going on. Notice that these lines
have no quotes around them in the
original text, meaning that it is not
character-Dante who speaks them,
but our omniscient tone-setting au-
thor-Dante.
Writing Style
 Formal, Elevated
 There's very little that's easy n' ac-
cessible about Dante's style. You
might want to read a terse Heming-
way short story after you finish In-
ferno as a kind of palate cleanser...
kind of like drinking a glass of cold
milk after you finish a slice of triple-
chocolate-raspberry cake.
Plot Analysis
 But, much like a slice of triple-
chocolate-raspberry cake, Dante's
language is pretty dang delicious.
 When we say it's "formal," we mean
that Dante adheres to a very rigid lit-
erary form. In this case, epic conven-
tions include tons of invocations to
the Muses, epithets, apostrophes,
epic similes, divine creatures, and a
character list longer than all seasons
of Game of Thrones put together.
 The "elevated" part indicates that the
text is difficult. Sentences tend to be
extremely long and chock full of
prepositional phases. This type of
language tends to describe some
larger-than-life topic—say, man’s
eternal damnation—and to address it
in a very serious, occasionally stuffy
way.
 Just take a look at this gem:
 [Virgil]: "Wedged in the slime, they
say: "We had been sullen
 in the sweet air that’s gladdened by
the sun;
 we bore the mist of sluggishness in
us:
 now we are bitter in the blackened
mud."
 This hymn they have to gurgle in
their gullets,
 because they cannot speak it in full
words." (Inf. VII, 121-126)
 Yikes, right? But take it slowly, line
by brilliant line, and you'll realize
how crazy-beautiful even descrip-
tions of sinners "wedged in slime"
can be.
 Most good stories start with a funda-
mental list of ingredients: the initial
situation, conflict, complication, cli-
max, suspense, denouement, and
conclusion. Great writers sometimes
shake up the recipe and add some
spice.
 Initial Situation
 Dante has been losing his way. He
needs to tour Hell so he can get back
on the righteous path. (Inferno in its
entirety.)
 Dante needs help in a bad way be-
cause he is lost in a dark wood, sym-
bolizing his corrupt moral state. As
we learn later in the Comedy, Beat-
rice—the love of Dante's life—has
died and this is part of the reason he
is plunged into despair. He has sunk
 so deep into sin that he has attracted
the attention of the Virgin Mary her-
self, whose compassion leads her to
try to save Dante. We know this is
the initial situation because Dante is
in the darkest part of his life In Hell,
Dante learns to harden his heart to
the suffering souls and learns to con-
demn them for the sinners they are.
Conflict
 Could all of Dante's meanness to the
sinners be a result of his sin of pride?
Proceed with purgation. (Purgatorio
Cantos I-XXX)
 Having survived Hell, Dante comes
face to face with his first real con-
flict: he has committed the sin of
pride. Remember all his holier-than-
thou rhetoric against Florence and
her sinners in Inferno? That comes
partly from his pride. Thus, Dante
suffers with the Prideful on the First
Terrace, pulling his own symbolic
share of weight. Though he doesn't
purge his soul of pride, he recognizes
the sin in himself and the need to ad-
dress it. For the rest of his purgato-
rial journey, Dante remembers his
sin and constantly makes tortured
references to it.
 Complication
 Virgil disappears. Beatrice scolds
Dante. Dante hangs his head. (Purga-
torio Canto XXXI)
 Dante has learned to trust Virgil, so
when he disappears Dante feels as if
he has lost a father. As readers, we
know that pagan Virgil cannot possi-
bly set foot in the holy Earthly Par-
adise, the former Garden of Eden.
 To further complicate things, Beat-
rice has little mercy for Dante,
quickly putting him through an emo-
tionally harrowing confession in
preparation for his dunking in the
Lethe. Her accusations are all the
more painful because they prove that
Dante swerved from the true course
even after witnessing the goodness
of Beatrice. Dante is properly
ashamed. As readers, we fear for
Dante here, unsure whether he is
worthy enough to continue on his
journey.
Climax
 Beatrice deems Dante worthy of pro-
ceeding into Heaven. She gives him
his poetic mission. (Purgatorio Can-
tos XXXII-XXXIII)
 After undergoing Beatrice's terrify-
ing inquisition, Dante is deemed
worthy to continue with his journey.
Before heading to the river Lethe,
Beatrice conveys God's message to
Dante that his mission will be to ob-
serve all the happenings from this
point forward, record them as accu-
rately as he can, and bring this con-
fessional back to Earth in the form of
a poem.
 We recognize this as the climax be-
cause all of Dante's suffering and
learning is given a direction and rea-
son. That Beatrice, his love, bestows
it means even more to him because it
brings his personal and spiritual life
into harmony.
Suspense
 Dante ascends through Paradise to
the Eighth Heaven of the Fixed
Stars. He witnesses the re-ascent of
Christ and Mary. There, he's grilled
on his theological knowledge by St.
Peter, St. James, and St. John. (Par-
adiso Cantos I-XXIII)
  Having passed into the heavens,
Dante goes along happily, learning
theology until he confronts another
test—much like the confession Beat-
rice put him through. Here, though,
the stakes are much higher. These
questions on Biblical theory test
whether or not Dante is worthy of
entering the Empyrean, where all the
blessed souls reside. The three saints
question Dante on his knowledge of
the Three Theological Virtues: Faith,
Hope, and Charity.
Denouement
 Dante answers all three inquisitors to
their satisfaction and is allowed into
the Primum Mobile. He learns an-
gelology and ascends into the
Empyrean to see the Celestial Rose.
Beatrice disappears. (Paradiso Can-
tos XXIV-XXXI)
 Dante has proven himself worthy.
Woo-hoo. He ascends into the Ninth
Heaven of the Primum Mobile and
eventually into the highest realm of
Heaven, Empyrean itself. His obser-
vation of the two hosts— the angels
and the blessed souls—is interrupted
when he finds that Beatrice has dis-
appeared.
 As readers, we say "Whew! He's
made it!" and it seems as though ev-
erything is happily winding down for
Dante, but suddenly (when some-
thing as unexpected happens as Beat-
rice disappearance), we're left
scratching our heads and wondering
what will happen next.
Conclusion
 St. Bernard replaces Beatrice and
prays to the Virgin Mary to God on
Dante's behalf. While he prays, so
does Dante. He sees the Holy Trin-
ity, then is granted the vision of God
himself. Triumph! But we can't see
what he sees. (Paradiso Cantos
XXXII-XXXIII)
 Beatrice's disappearance echoes Vir-
gil's disappearance in Purgatorio
XXX, and is the ultimate test of
Dante's faith: he loses his love yet
again. But not really; she's up with
the blessed and smiles down on him.
She even joins in the sung prayer to
Mary on Dante's behalf.
 St. Bernard's purpose quickly be-
comes clear. Nobody can see God
without going through Mary first. As
Mary's devotee, he prays to her on
Dante's behalf. When Dante is
granted the gift of seeing God, the
implication is that he is blinded by
the burst of light that ensues. We
can't see what follows.
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis
 Christopher Booker is a scholar who
wrote that every story falls into one
of seven basic plot structures: Over-
coming the Monster, Rags to Riches,
the Quest, Voyage and Return, Com-
edy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop
explores which of these structures
fits this story like Cinderella’s slip-
per.
 Plot Type : Voyage and Return
 "Fall" into the other world
 "Abandon every hope, ye who enter
here."
 Dante has a rather special case of
midlife crisis. He’s lost in the woods.
Which is, of course, allegorical. He
has lost the true path to God and now
wanders in a dark wood. The phan-
tom Virgil pops out of nowhere with
 the answer. A trek through the after-
life will help Dante find his righteous
path again.
 We’ll start with Hell. When Dante
balks at the word "Hell," Virgil lures
him on by mentioning that Dante’s
long-lost girlfriend Beatrice sent
him. They head into Hell.
 Initial Fascination
 The fascinating lives of sinners...
 Virgil has a great deal of tolerance
for witnessing others’ pain. Dante,
while more affected by the sinners’
agony, is most interested in their sto-
ries. Especially when they pertain to
Florence. He sympathizes with a
number of sinners before finally be-
ginning to see their evil in the fifth
circle.
Frustration Stage
 Delay at Dis
 The pilgrims’ progress comes to a
screeching halt when the grumpy cit-
izens of Dis shut their city gates in
Virgil’s face. They threaten to strike
a bargain with him, allowing him
through their walls if he will send
Dante back alone. Dante quakes in
his boots. Virgil stutters in surprise
at his failure. To top it all off, the
fearsome Furies await Medusa’s
coming so they can turn Dante into
stone. Fortunately for him, the heav-
enly messenger gets there first. But
the seed of fear has been planted.
Nightmare Stage
Three Act Plot Analysis
 Demons want to kill Virgil and
Dante
 The nightmare stage begins with
Geryon, the living incarnation of
fraud. As the pilgrims travel through
the eighth circle, Dante finds no end
to human deception. Language, too,
starts to break down, rendering
meaning-making difficult. Dante’s
fear peaks in the fifth bolgia when he
and Virgil (rather stupidly) entrust
themselves to the care of the Male-
branche demons. They end up in a
horror movie chase, barely escaping
with their lives. To make matters
worse, our pilgrims have to be low-
ered down into the last circle of Hell
within an evil giant’s hand.
 Thrilling Escape and Return
 Climbing down (or up?) Lucifer’s
body
 "Thrilling" is a relative term. In
truth, there’s nothing exciting about
Lucifer, the highly-hyped prince of
darkness. After all the sinister stories
and graphic punishments we’ve seen,
Lucifer is an anticlimax… basically
he’s the giant air-conditioner of Hell.
He doesn’t even say anything, proba-
bly because he’s too busy chewing
on the three most odious traitors in
Hell.
 Dante and Virgil look at him for a
second, then grasp the hairs of his
enormous legs, and rappel down. A
quick gravity shift, a short trek up,
and our heroes emerge unscathed
back on the surface of the Earth. Be-
cause it’s morning here and also was
morning when Dante started, it
seems as though no time has passed;
the whole experience is dream-like.
 For a three-act plot analysis, put on
your screenwriter’s hat. Moviemak-
ers know the formula well: at the end
of Act One, the main character is
 drawn in completely to a conflict.
During Act Two, she is farthest away
from her goals. At the end of Act
Three, the story is resolved.
 Act I
 Dante is rescued by Virgil within the
dark wood. They enter Hell. In the
first five circles, Dante shows an ex-
cess of compassion for the inconti-
nent sinners. Towards the end, Dante
rebukes Filippo Argenti, much to
Virgil’s delight. At the city of Dis,
Virgil’s "persuasive word" fails for
the first time and the pilgrims must
be rescued by a heavenly messenger.
 Act II
 Dante and Virgil journey through the
circles of heresy and violence. Virgil
explains the structure of Hell and the
three categories of sin. Dante shows
a great deal of sympathy for the sin-
ners—especially Brunetto Latini and
Pier della Vigna. Virgil explains the
origin of the five rivers of the Under-
world. This section ends with Virgil
summoning Geryon from the depths
and scaring the hell out of Dante
when they ride him down into the
eighth circle.
 Act III
 Dante and Virgil move through the
Eighth and Ninth circles. Through-
Exactly how steamy is this story?
out, Dante shows less and less sym-
pathy for the fraudulent sinners, es-
pecially Pope Nicholas III, Vanni
Fucci, the barrators, and Fra Al-
berigo. Virgil convinces a giant to
take them into the ninth circle. They
witness Lucifer, who turns out to be
anticlimactic. And finally, they re-
turn to the surface of the earth, where
a new dawn awaits them.
 Trivia
 Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of
Knowledge
 Dante was twelve years old when he
first met Beatrice. He immediately
fell in love. His close friend, Guido,
ended up marrying her. (Source)
 Dante’s party of White Guelphs were
attacked while he was out on a per-
sonal errand for Pope Boniface VIII.
This resulted in the Blacks taking
control of Florence, Boniface betray-
ing Dante, and exiling him from Flo-
rence. (Source)
 Dante’s Divine Comedy survives
only in copies. The original has been
lost. (Source)
 The Divine Comedy became popular
within Dante’s lifetime. (Source)
 Dante was literate in Latin but chose
to write the Divine Comedy in the
vernacular, a Florentine dialect of
Italian. (Source
 PG-13
 People aren’t actually having sex in
Hell, though they’re certainly there
for doin' it. There are, however, sto-
ries of sex. In fact, the whole first
circle is devoted to the lustful.
 In the eighth circle, first pouch,
you’ve got panderers or, in plain
English, pimps. You've got Thais, a
harlot who resides with the flatterers.
The most disturbing one is Myrrha, a
 falsifier of other persons. She was
"falsely taking another’s shape upon
herself" to "love […] her father past
the limits of just love." Incest. You
get the point.
 People aren’t having sex in Hell—
that would kind of defeat the purpose
—but their sexual behaviors have
gotten them into deep trouble.
 Allusions
 When authors refer to other great
works, people, and events, it’s usu-
ally not accidental. Put on your su-
per-sleuth hat and figure out why.
 Classical Writers
 Virgil is Dante’s guide, first mention
(Inf. I, 79)…
 Homer (Inf. IV, 88)
 Aristotle, Ethics (Inf. XI, 80)
 Aristotle, Physics (Inf. XI, 101)
 Aesop (Inf. XXIII, 4-7)
 Mythological Characters
 Charon (Inf. III, 94-99)
 Aeneas (Inf. IV, 122)
 Minos (Inf. V, 4-15)
 Cerberus (Inf. VI, 15-18)
 Plutus (Inf. VII, 1-12)
 Phlegyas (Inf. VIII, 19-24) – from
Virgil’s Aeneid
 Furies (Inf. IX, 38-48)
 Medusa (Inf. IX, 52-54)
 Minotaur (Inf. XII, 12-25)
 Chiron (Inf. XII, 72) – a centaur
 Nessus (Inf. XII, 67-69) – a centaur
 Capaneus (Inf. XIV, 63-69)
 Old Man of Crete (Inf. XIV, 94-111)
 Geryon (Inf. XVII, 97)
 Manto (Inf. XX, 52-93)
 Ulysses (Inf. XXVI, 55-63)
 Sinon (Inf. XXX, 98-99)
 Antaeus (Inf. XXXI, 113-114)Dis
(Inf. VIII, 67-75) – epithet for Clas-
sical UnderworldLancelot (Inf. V,
128-129) – a knight in Arthurian leg-
end
 Gallehault (Inf. V, 137) – a knight in
Arthurian legend
 Biblical References
 Genesis (Inf. XI, 107)
 Saint Lucia (Inf. II, 97-102)
 Simon Magus (Inf. XIX, 1)
 Saint Peter (Inf. XIX, 90-96)
 Mohammed (Inf. XXVIII, 31)
 Nimrod (Inf. XXXI, 67-81)
 Lucifer (Inf. XXXIV, 28-57)
 Historical Figures
 Francesca da Rimini (Inf. V, 116)
 Ciacco (Inf. VI, 52-54)
 Filippo "Argenti" (Inf. VIII, 61) –
"Argenti," meaning "silver" in Ital-
ian, was a nickname given to him be-
cause he shod his horse with silver
horseshoes
 Epicurus (Inf. X, 14-15)
 Farinata degli Uberti (Inf. X, 32)
 Pier della Vigna (Inf. XIII, 33-69) –
not actually named in text, but schol-
ars have identified him; also in end-
notes
 Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto (Inf. XV,
119)
 Pope Nicholas III (Inf. XIX, 67-72) –
not actually named in text, but schol-
ars have identified him; also in end-
notes
 Pope Boniface VIII (Inf. XIX, 53),
(Inf. XXVII, 85-105)
 Catalano (Inf. XXIII, 103-109)
 Loderingo (Inf. XXIII, 103-109)
 Vanni Fucci (Inf. XXIV, 124-126)
 Guido da Montefeltro (Inf. XXVII,
67-111) – not actually named in text,
 but scholars have identified him; also
in endnotes
 Bertran de Born (Inf. XXVIII, 134-
135)
 Geri del Bello (Inf. XXIX, 27)
 Capocchio (Inf. XXIX, 136-137)
 Gianni Schicchi (Inf. XXX, 32)
 Master Adam (Inf. XXX, 61-90)
 Bocca degli Abati (Inf. XXXII, 106)
 Count Ugolino (Inf. XXXIII, 13-75)
 Fra Alberigo (Inf. XXXIII, 118-120)
 Branca Doria (Inf. XXXIII, 137-147)
the same, plus some weeping and
swooning for good measure.
 However, Dante is particularly piti-
less with the fraudulent sinners.
When you have lines like,
 Simon Magus!...Rapacious ones,
who take the things of God, / that
ought to be the brides of Righteous-
ness, / and make them fornicate for
gold and silver! / The time has come
to let the trumpet sound / for you…
(XIX.2-6)

 ... you’ve got some serious damning

Tone
 Highly Emotional, Sometimes Sym-
pathetic, Sometimes Condemnatory
 Fair warning: Dante is on more of an
emotional roller coaster than a two-
year-old that just ate a bag of Chips
Ahoy.
going on. Notice that these lines
have no quotes around them in the
original text, meaning that it is not
character-Dante who speaks them,
but our omniscient tone-setting au-
thor-Dante.

 Dante cares super-deeply about the

moral thought processes of mankind,
having personally suffered as a result
of others’ sin. He was exiled from
his hometown. We know the inten-
sity of his feelings is often obscured
by his fancy style, but you can’t have
crying and fainting and damning
from the first-person narrator without
running a pretty high emotional
fever.

 The "sympathetic" part comes out in

the portrayal of the so-called "noble
sinners"—souls like Francesca, Fari-
nata, Brunetto Latini, and Ulysses—
who speak very little about their ac-
tual sins. Their stories are designed
to make readers ask why they are in
Hell and, often, Dante’s reaction is