Punishment In The Fourth Circle In Dante's Inferno

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As Dante travels deeper into the circle, the punishments gets more brutal. One of the hell that has an equal and fitting punishment the greedy circle. This level holds sinners who only care about wealth and are greedy. Their punishment is to great weights and pushing it with their chests which symbolizes their selfish drive for fortune during lifetime. This where Dante also encounters Plutus who is the guardian of the fourth circle. The sinners are tortured until their identities are unrecognized. This punishment is fair to the greed because they are pushing heavy weights of fortune where when they were alive they did not care about anything except for wealth. Virgil explain to Dante that “Clerks those were who no hairy covering Have on the head, and Popes and Cardinals, In Whom doth Avarice practise its excess” (46-480). Virgil says that in this circle it holds Popes and Cardinals who are greedy. Since many Popes cheat on other people they would fall into this circle. Virgil also explains that “That she might change at times the empty treasures From race to race, from one blood to another, Beyond resistance of all human …show more content…
In this circle this is where true hell really began. This circle holds sinners who betray their husbands and go around sleeping with neighbors or strangers. The sinners are tossed and whirled by the winds, as in life they felt themselves — helpless in the tempests of passion. Although some of the sinners are in here some do not believe that they should be in hell. For instance, Francesca would blame the book for making her sleep with her husband’s brother. She states that "Love, that can quickly seize the gentle heart, took hold of him because of the fair body taken from me – how that was done still wounds me. Love, that releases no beloved from loving, took hold of me so strongly through his beauty that, as you see, it has not left me yet. Love led the two of us unto one
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