Hell Proper Rhetorical Analysis

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Recommended: Poetry and the theme of love

There are many discussions about the use of the number "three" and its various symbolic uses. But seldom is there any discussion of the number "two." However, looking at the beginning of Hell Proper and the ending of Hell Proper would demonstrate two contrasting pairs forever bound together.

Canto V, therefore, enters Hell Proper, which may be said to begin with the second circle, because here Minos is seated as the judge to determine where the sinners before him are sent for punishment. Thus, Hell Proper begins with Canto V and the punishment of Francesca and Paolo.

In contrast, Hell Proper closes with another pair — Count Ugolino and Ruggieri — locked in an embrace, with Ugolino gnawing on the brainpan of Ruggieri. Even though the final …show more content…

Love, love, love — so begins the three tercets describing her love for Paolo. Her speech has enormous, moving sincerity and beauty to it. "He loved me and I loved him!" And that is all. Never does she stoop to something so vulgar as to defend her love by saying something so mundane as: "Yes, but they tricked me, they betrayed me, I thought I was marrying the handsome Paolo with his beautiful body; instead, it was his ugly hunch-back vicious brother." This would not be her nature. She does not dwell on her betrayal because her essence is defined by her love and her essence is that of pure womanhood ("l'essere gentile e puro") — soft, pure, modest and tender — and in Hell, she retains those qualities that inspired Paolo's …show more content…

Francesca loved Paolo at first sight, loves him now, and will never cease to love him. Likewise, Ugolino hated Ruggieri in life, viciously hates him now, and no amount of hate and suffering will ever satisfy his desire for more and more hate.

Dante's genius is further seen in the fact that while Ugolino is in Hell for being a traitor, he is, instead, presented not as a traitor but as one who has been betrayed. The horror of his action is mitigated by the sufferings of a father. This is the law of retaliation: Ruggieri becomes the savage feast for the man who died of starvation along with his four sons. The horrifying image of Ugolino's savage repast is always before us — from the moment that Ugolino lifts his head from the "skull and other parts of the brain" and cleans his mouth by wiping off the "brain" matter, using his neighbor's hair as a napkin.

He, then, recites his tender narration of the horror of watching his four sons die one by one of starvation. Thus Ugolino hates violently because he loved his sons so intensely. His hatred is so great because his love was infinite, and his grief is so desperate because nothing can assuage him. As he finishes his story, he returns immediately to the gnawing of the brains and the crackling of the bones beneath

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