Satan In Dante's Inferno

Dante introduces Satan in the “Inferno” as the worst sinner of all times, and he relates his complexity with the sins that he committed and his punishment. Satan is described as the angel who rebelled against God, and hence he has wings. The wings of Lucifer are not the wings that an angel would have; instead he has bat-like wings, which demonstrates that now he has the wings the dark creatures as bats have. He is firstly in the story presented as an impure monster that is trapped in ice and unable to escape. “No feathers had they, but as of a bat their fashion was, and he was waving them, so that three winds proceeded forth therefrom” (Canto 34, 50).Dante’s depiction of Satan is different from the common known version of Satan, which is

a demon-like creature that rules hell, not a three-head creature that cries and is being punished in hell.
The expectations of Satan’s role in hell for a typical reader could be, for example, as mentioned, the ruler and who is in charge of hell, who would account to God the sinners’ punishments and situations. Instead, he only resides in one of the nine levels of hell, and indeed is punished as the other sinners. At the bottom of hell is where Dante and Virgil get to meet Satan. “Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed. With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel” (Canto 34, 52). Satan had one head and three faces, a perversion of the Holy Trinity. Each face had two eyes and one mouth. The faces were of different colors, the middle was red, the color of anger, the right face was white blended with yellow, the color of impotence, and the left face was black, the color of ignorance. As an example of contrapasso, each color represents Satan’s characteristics, since he was angry at God, the impotence of not being able to be at the level of God ruled in him over obedience, and he was ignorant to recognize his inferiority under God. He is crying because he laments his actions, since now he is being punished as the other sinners. In the mouths the three worst human sinners of all time; Judas, who betrayed the son of God, and Brutus and Cassius who betrayed Julius Caesar. These men were the worst human sinners in the earth, and now they are being tortured by the worst sinner of all time. Lucifer’s midpoint is presented as the center of earth, where he fell when he was thrown out of heaven. “And he to me: ‘Thou still imaginest thou art beyond the centre where I grasped the hair of the fell worm, who mines the world’ (Canto 34, 106). It could also be interpreted that Lucifer is in the middle of the earth, demonstrating that he unable to escape from the same position because all of the sins of the world and of the inferno itself are surrounding him. He is the worst sinner, and he is placed in the center of the earth because in earth is where the sinners habit, not in heaven, which is separated from the earth. “Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars” (Canto 34, 139). They got out of hell and appeared to be directly in earth.
Dante describes Lucifer in this way in order to expose him as any other sinner that deserves to be punished. He is in a circle as the other sinner, not ruling hell, as how it was expected. He is not privileged as he felt when betraying God. He is the worst sinner of all time, and he is being punished in the worst place in hell.