The first part of The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri, The Inferno, explores Dante’s interpretation of Hell through his ranking of sins and corresponding punishments. Dante utilizes contrapasso, or symbolic retribution, in order to correlate punishments to each sin, as many punishments clearly reflect the corresponding sin and its nature. Half the sinners present in circle five of Dante’s Hell are those who were wrathful in life. For all of eternity, the wrathful brawl with one another uncontrollably in the dirty swamp of the river Styx. The use of symbolic retribution is conspicuous as the sin committed becomes the eternal punishment itself. The sinners are permitted to be wrathful as they were in life, however it is full of pain as each sinner is constantly beat horribly by the others populating the circle. …show more content…
In the first round of circle seven, those who were violent against others wade in the Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood. Each sinner is allotted to be in a certain depth of the river, corresponding to how severely they committed the sin in life. The extremely sinful, such as Attila the Hun, reside in the river almost completely covered in the boiling blood. These sinners may rise out of the blood if they please, but centaurs on the bank of the river pluck any sinner that does with arrows. The symbolic retribution present for this sin is straight forward; those who created mass bloodshed in life forever boil in the blood that they