How does the Contrapasso Fits

The punishments of the dammed in The Inferno have a special meaning, because they explain in the form of an allegory how the sinners had to suffer for the faults they committed in their lives. The author uses these forms of physical pain to represent how the dammed had to pay for their sins. They where punish in such a way, because they have chosen to, and not because God had ordered. The contrapasso has a very important function in this poem, because it reflects how Dante manipulated the sins of the dammed in order to create punishments that fit exactly for the faults they committed.

Most types of sufferings are quite strange, but they have a very precise way of explaining what their sinners made in order to get those punishments. In this essay we are going to fully examine three forms of contrapasso.

The first type of suffering is held by the sin against oneself, or in other words the person that has committed suicide. It is located in the seven circle of Hell; better known as the circle of violence and bestial brutality. Specifically in the second ring, which “a pathless of woods, where the harpies sit and shriek among the withered trees, which enclose the souls of the suici

des” (Sayers, notes Canto XIII).The trees are the new bodies of these souls; they have to live forever in that static position, and the harpies are constantly eating their lives. The harpies are brutal animals; they are a mixture of birds with human faces. They cause pain to the souls that committed suicide by ripped of their leaves and eating them. Here the image of Pier delle Vigne appears in the poem. Throughout his life he was a very noble and loyal man. “He was at the height of his power in 1247, but two years later he was accused of treachery, and was thrown into prison and blinded, and soon after he committed suicide” (Hollander, p. 252). The mode of retribution is very rich in essence here, because the souls serve a fit punishment for their actions. When they were alive, they choose to separate their souls from the bodies with their own hands. That is why now they have a paralyzed body; in which they have to suffer forever. They have a desperate desire of taking their lives away, but they cannot move, so they have to live and bleed all the eternity. The harpies just make the punishment more severe. The souls “are deprived of even the semblance of the human form. […] They are the image of the self-hatred, which dries up the very sap of energy” (Sayers, notes Canto XIII). The way the trees bleed is very important, because they evoke the constant pain that these souls suffer, but it is not enough to kill them. Maybe Dante decided to choose the form of a tree as the just cage for a person that had committed suicide, because they live for long period of times. In fact, after two hundred years they become petrified, but they still stand firmly.

The last kind of retribution that is going to be presented is the one held by the hypocrites. They are situated in the circle of the fraudulent, specifically in the sixth bowge. Their punishment is to wear cloaks made of gold on the outside and lead in the inside. “The image of Hypocrisy, prese

Some topics in this essay:
Canto XIII, Canto XIIIThe, Maybe Dante, Fits Punishment, Jason Medea, Inferno Dante, past lives, sayers notes, sayers notes canto, notes canto, wear cloaks, committed suicide, circle hell circle, notes canto xiii, tool allegory, sinners committed, canto xiii, fortune tellers, person committed, person committed suicide,