Dante makes out the sins of Circle three to be a gross and disgusting by his punishments for them and the diction he uses to describe the place the sinners are in. Gluttony was the sin committed and the sinners were basking in a place described by Dante with: "Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow/ pour from the dismal air to putrefy/ the putrid slush that waits for them below" (66). The repetition of the word "putrid" shows that Dante thought of the setting as symbolic of their sin, which was gross.
Gluttony was considered by Dante to be over eating or drinking. The punishments were that the sinner lay in waste, were eaten by a large dog named Cerberus, and the air was cold. All of these unpleasant effects added to the putrid idea of the sin. The contrapasso of laying in waste was that in their lifetime they produced a lot of waste and so now in Hell they will have to lay in it for eternity. The sinners ate or drank far too much in life so now Cerberus, a three-headed dog that was would eat them. Cerberus was introduced with: "Here monstrous Cerberus, the ravening beast,/howls through his triple throats like a mad dog" (66). Eating and drinking can be associated with warmth. The sinners found warmth and content from eating and drinking and then didn't know when to stop. Now in Hell they would suffer with only cold air, no longer will they have the warmth they found in life.
Overall, gluttony was made out to be a very gross sin by Dante when he used the words putrid, dirty, dismal, black, and stinking in the passage he described the setting in. Clearly Dante felt gluttony was a grimy sin that deserved a grimy punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment