Post 2: Prompt 3

Circle 7: Round 1

Dante enters circle 7 of hell and meets the Minotaur and below the river of boiling blood. Here, the violent against neighbors are punished as wallowed in blood during their lives as great war-makers, cruel tyrants, and highwaymen, they are immersed in the boiling blood forever. Dante uses the punishment of those in round 1 just as they did in life to a more harsh and intense level. Essentially, in hell, Dante has written of the sinners punishment to an extreme level where everyone gets a taste of their own medicine.

The archetype symbol is mush related to the contrapasso. Because they wallowed in blood during their lives, they are immersed in the boiling blood forever. Dante used the river of boiling blood as an archetype symbol to portray the literal and agonizing punishments of hell. The person's sins in life get them into deep trouble in hell. Dante uses this to enhance his ideas and show the importance of how the souls are punished depending on their guilt. Though the creatures and punishment are unrealistic, this is hell and Dante has portrayed the punishments to a very literal and extensive way. The Minotaurs are symbolic of human beasts and human tendencies especially when sinning. Those who were violent against neighbors now have to experience the violence in themselves. Circle 7 is all about violence against someone, or something. Dante uses the punishment in each round to dish out the violence to those who sinned.

Post 1: Prompt 3

Dante and Virgil run across many sequences of events in their travel through the circles of hell. In circle three, the Gluttons, Dante and Virgil come to the part of hell that holds those who made no higher use of the gifts of god than to eat and drink and produce nothing but waste. Because they chose to live their lives like this, they are now punished to live here through all eternity as garbage, themselves. They are buried in fetid slush, while Cerberus, the three-headed dog, slavers over them. The punishment embodies the law of contrapasso as they are getting dished what they deserved from life. If they chose to waste all of God’s gifts while wallowing in food and drink, they choose their punishment to be treated as waste because of everything they wasted in life. “In life they made no higher use of the gifts of God than to wallow in food and drink…”(Canto VI Notes).

I think the description Dante gives of this part of hell really paints the picture of how those who sinned with gluttony are suffering. “I am in the third circle of the torments. Here to all time was neither pause nor charge the frozen rain of hell descends in torrents” (Canto VI). The slush represents the garbage they are buried in and the slavering of Cerberus represents the slavering they did over food.

Dante is clearly on an emotional roller coaster ride as he travels through the circles of hell. He is having a hard time handling the punishments given for the sins. In this particular circle, not only does Dante feel sympathy for them, but he also fears for them. He now understands contrapasso and how what you do in life literally and symbolically affects you in death. It seems to me that Dante might be regretting any sin ever committed in his lifetime, because he sure knows he does not want to end up in hell.