An allegory, such as Dante’s The Inferno, is a book or poem told both a symbolic and literal level. In Dante’s The Inferno, the allegorical concept of the symbolic retribution of God’s punishment is present throughout Dante’s journey. Three examples of such punishment are shown in Circles II, III, and VI.
Beginning in Circle II, Dante finds examples of the sinners of incontinence, “…the carnal and lusty/ who betrayed reason to their appetite” (5. 38-39). Throughout life, the Carnals’ passion clouded their reason. Because of this clouding, they were moved only by lust. Dante describes Circle II as “…a place stripped bare of every light” (5. 28). This is symbolic of the Carnals’ clouded reason. The souls are also “[w]hirling and battering” (5. 33) each other because they are caught in a buffet of winds that control their movement. In life, the Carnals’ lust moved them. Their punishment fits the theme of symbolic retribution.
Later, as Dante traveled through Circle III, he finds the Gluttons, who desired only food in excess in life. Circle III is described as a place where “…with neither pause nor change/ the frozen rain of Hell descends in torrents” (6. 8-9). This creates a place filthy and nasty because “[h]uge hailstorms, dirty water, and black snow” (6. 10) rain down to mix with the sludge of garbage that was already mixed with the Gluttons, who are themselves like garbage, in the first place. Since they created nothing but garbage in life, they are as garbage in death. As a final symbol of their gluttony, Cerberus, the three-headed monster, slavers over “the spirits sunk in that foul paste” (6. 15) as the Gluttons had slavered over their food in life. Their punishment is also symbolic, because it puts the Gluttons on the receiving end of what they gave in life.
Finally, in Circle VI, Dante finds the Heretics, who did violence to God by denying immortality. Circle VI is filled with tombs that were “chests of pain” (9. 114) because “…in a ring around each tomb, great fires/ raised every wall to a red heat” (9. 115-116). However, the tombs do have different temperatures “…some more, some less;/ to each depravity its own degree” (9. 128-129).This punishment, a living death, mocks the Heretics’ belief that once they died, their souls would die as well. The lids are not on the tombs; they will not be placed until “…the day/ these souls return here from Jehosaphat” (10. 10-11), the place of the Last Judgment. Even when the lids are closed, God’s punishment of the Heretics will continue, because the Heretics will be permanently placed in their living death. This fits the theme of symbolic retribution.
In
conclusion, all of the Circles, not just in II, III, and VI, God’s punishment
fits Dante’s theme of symbolic retribution. In Circle IV, which is filled with
the Hoarders and Wasters of money, they are weighted down with stones to
symbolize the worthlessness of money. They also attack each other with their
weights. Circle V has the Wrathful and the Sullen. The Sullen murmur under the
surface of the river