In Inferno by Dante, there is a great deal of symbolism due to the allegorical nature of the work. In this poem, man’s relationship between good and evil, Heaven and Hell, and more are explored with symbolic representations of man’s own iniquities. The circles of Hell are depicted as different areas where people who have committed specific sins are doomed to rest. The second through fifth circles are the resting places for sins of incontinence; these are sins without malice. These are a unique category distinct from the other sins, and they all have very distinct similarities - the most prominent of these are the fact that they all involve the individual valuing something earthly above God, and therefore meriting punishment. The sinners LOVE the things that they do, and that is their downfall, since they cannot escape these things in Hell and are forced to endure their subtle agonies for the rest of eternity. In Dante's eyes, these sins warrant more punishment than others because of this fundamental flaw in character which gives people misguided priorities. These levels of hell and many other symbols are present in Dante’s Inferno.
Some of the most prominent symbols in the work are the circles of Hell, which stand for punishments of God for the terrible things Men do – Dante used these symbols to allow characters to respond to their own sins in an allegorical way, and allow the characters to question their own position on the subject of sin (Cassell, 2012). The second circle of Hell is for those who have suffered the sin of lust. When Dante arrives, he actively abhors these "carnal malefactors" because of their lack of reason, stolen away by passions (V. 38-39). This circle is the first one in which offenders are actively punished. In this circle of Hell, those who have lusted and not repented are thrown about by winds of a powerful storm, helpless and out of control. This was meant to echo the whirlwinds of passion that left them unmoored and lost. There are many important and well-known historical figures who find themselves here, including Helen of Troy, Achilles, Tristan, and others, all of whom were undone by their own sexual appetites. Dante also sees the sympathetic Paolo and Francesca swirling around the winds that punish them; they were killed before they were able to repent for their sins of carnal courtly love. They had committed adultery, and Francesca's husband killed them both, presumably to be punished in the ninth circle as well (Davis, 2012).
The third circle of Hell is for those who have been gluttonous in their earthly lives. This circle is filled to the brim with mud, while Cerberus, the three headed dog, guards the circle. For those who ate and ate to their heart's delight, gluttons are forced to lie like pigs in this ghastly mud. The slush is meant to represent the disgusting nature of gluttony, where indulgence is presumed to be indicative of a lowering of standards. Since gluttons will put any old filth in their mouth, they are subjected to the vilest filth imaginable. The gluttons cannot see their neighbors, and do not care, effectively being solitary for the rest of their lives, sacrificing the company of others for overindulgence in worldly pleasures. In this way, the third circle is much like the second Circle, but here Cerberus awaits, and the gluttons are well and truly alone (Davis, 2012).
The fourth circle is for the miserly and spendthrifts, who squander money and do not help others in need. These people value money above all else, and will do anything to hold onto it or waste it however they like. According to Dante, people's relationship with money needed to be in moderation; people should not unnecessarily hoard money, but neither should they spend it needlessly on unwanted or irresponsible things (Gilson, 2000). In Canto 7 (64-66), Dante reveals that misers and spendthrifts roll stones at each other, crashing against them. These two types of people are opposing forces that still, to some extent, abuse the material and the worldly for their own gain. To that end, they are forced to harm each other at opposite ends of the same circle:
" I saw multitudesto every side of me; their howls were loudwhile, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push.They struck against each other; at that point,each turned around and, wheeling back those weights,cried out: Why do you hoard? Why do you squander?'" (VII. 25-30)
The fifth circle of Hell, the last sin of incontinence, is for wrath. While some people are openly wrathful, and strike out at others, the majority of sufferers of wrath do not hurt others, instead keeping their malice and ill intent hidden beneath the surface, letting it fester and rot inside them. Those who are wrathful are punished by being placed in the marshes of the river Styx, where they bite at each other; those who are sullen or sad are buried underneath the marsh, since their own anger hid beneath the surface in their earthly lives (VII). When Dante meets Filippo Argenti, who had stolen his property, he says to Argenti, "In weeping and in grieving, accursed spirit, may you long remain," recognizing his own sins within the agonies of these others (VIII, 37-38).
The one big thread that these sins have in common is the fact that they are not sins of malice; they do not inflict active harm on others, but are essentially just mistakes in character that need to be addressed or punished (Gallacher, 1989). In the case of lust, someone who is lustful is not behaving as God intends, by having inappropriate thoughts and relations with others not married to them, Someone who is gluttonous loves food to excess, and this can lead to many character flaws such as an unhealthy lifestyle. People who are miserly wish to hold onto money at whatever cost, while spendthrifts simply wish to spend it extravagantly and irresponsibly. Finally, those who hold anger and sadness in their heart are wrathful, and do actively wish harm on others, though they usually do not act on it. All of these behaviors involve carrying some worldly possession or emotion in your heart deeper than you do with God; this places a loyalty towards the earthly world and not the spiritual. Because of this, Dante felt these sins were worse, because people did not think they were doing bad deeds; they thought they could get away with these worldly sins. There are most certainly other circles representative of other types of sins; for example, the seventh circle is reserved for those who are violent: “But fix your eyes below, upon the valley, for now we near the stream of blood, where those who injure others violently, boil” (XII, 46-48). Dante clearly hated the violent, and felt that their actions were against nature; to that end, the river flows with blood and allows nature to punish the wicked (Gilson, 2000).
These are not the only symbols in Dante’s Inferno; there are many, many symbols present, as it is an allegorical world meant to reflect on the nature of mankind. In the third Canto, the Uncommitted chase a black banner for eternity, indicating how meaningless the things they did in life were (since they never did anything meaningful). The beast Geryon, for example, is made of the head of an innocent man and the body of a snake – this is a symbol for the dishonest, fraudulent person who acts innocent on one hand, and yet behaves poorly in reality. The dark forest in the first Canto highlights and symbolizes the fear that he experiences upon entering this new world; “how hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little more” (I, 6-7). The forest is representative of straying from the path of God, which is “true” (I, 12). The symbols serve the story and the emotional state of the characters just as much as they do its social commentary.
Some characters are representative of mankind as well; Virgil symbolizes the reasonable part of man, as he helps to guide Dante through the underworld and keep him sane. At the same time, Virgil is incredibly overconfident, something undermined by his lack of true understanding of the underworld around him (Ryan, 2012). Meanwhile, Beatrice is indicative of spiritual love, as All of these smaller symbols contribute to the greater symbol of Dante’s Inferno, which is the physical and spiritual manifestation of everything evil about mankind – which we must wrestle against both in our own lives and in the afterlife. However, one of the biggest symbols based on characters in the book are the three beats: there is a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf that constantly torment Dante, and they are representative of the sins that plague him personally. The leopard is meant to symbolize fraudulence, while the lion, with its “head held high,” is very prideful (I). The she-wolf is representative of greed and lust, as she is said to “carry every craving in her leanness” (I). These creatures and characters represent the storm of emotions that is occurring in Dante (and in mankind) by making manifest the things we do wrong.
In conclusion, the symbols found in Dante’s Inferno allow the characters to discuss and respond in broader, allegorical ways to the sins that they perform in life, and the fact that sins have consequences. The sins of incontinence are sins of love, to an extent - people love sexual pleasure, love food and drink, love money (either spending or having it) and love their anger and self-pity. These actions are tied to very strong emotions, all of which are thrown back at them in their punishments in their respective circles of Hell. Dante, in depicting the severity of these punishments, wishes to show that these are the most extreme sins of all, since they come not from a place of malice and are therefore more dangerous (Gilson, 2000). They defy man's intended preference of God to anything else, placing worldly things above Him, which warrants this type of extreme punishment.
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