Three forms of violence find punishment in the Seventh Circle of Hell. In the second ring are those violent to self: “suicides, self-robbers of your world, / or those who gamble all their wealth away / and weep up there when they should have rejoiced” (11.43-45). Spirits who took their own life or livelihood are trapped in the rooted, mute bodies of trees and tormented by harpies. They may only speak when damaged by outside forces, when “from that splintered trunk a mixture poured / of words and blood” (13.43-44).
The trees paint a metaphor for the lives within them. Dante associates self-violence with self-pity and surrender of responsibility. In life these people sinned by being like trees, allowing society to scratch abuse into their bark and rip down their leaves, only weeping afterward at the injustice. In death, they become their sin. Passivity toward self-preservation is punished here with enforced eternal passivity.
Another clause of their punishment states that on Judgement Day the self-violent will return to Earth to drag their bodies into Hell and “all along the mournful / forest, our bodies shall hang forever more, / each one on a thorn of its own alien shade” (13.106-107). In their branches, they hold both the weight of their earthly vessel and bare their guilt for all to see, a physical consequence and visible representation of murdering themselves. First the self-violent must stew in the sin of their life; then they must shoulder the sin of their death.
This model of justice is retributive rather than corrective, and the model entirely loses its justice modifier when applied to crimes against the self. Whatever sense there is in punishing harm to others with harm to the offender falls away when self-harm is punished with more of the same.
Why follow this model of justice, then? The god of Dante’s world is spiteful. Listen to the mumbles of the Slothful: “Sluggish we were / in the sweet air made happy by the sun, / and the smoke of sloth was smoldering in our hearts; / now we lie sluggish here in this black muck!” (8.121-124). The words read as a punitive chant: “We have been ungrateful children; we deserve no dinner!” Dante’s god is above criticism—a playground bully—so he looks upon those who do not fully enjoy his creation and shoves their faces in the mud. This same attitude comes through when the self-violent’s right to their bodies is forfeit because “wrong it is / for a man to have again what he once cast off” (13.104-105).
What would be a petty grudge on Earth is divine justice in Hell.
Hey Maya,
I like how you caught the insight that the model of justice is retributive rather than corrective. I think that model of justice is applied almost everywhere throughout the epic. It evokes a sense of balance, one reaps what they sow right? I also like how you said “passivity toward self-preservation”, I never saw it like that, since it seems humanity is always actively trying to preserve itself, but I guess the self-violent aren’t “active” in that sense. I enjoyed reading your analysis.
Hi Maya,
I found your analysis really enlightening! I thought it was really interesting how Dante considered self-violence a sin. However, his view of self- violence as a form of self-pity and escape from responsibilities and reality, definitely shows me why he would consider it a grave sin. And like Syed, I like how you said that the model of justice is retributive rather than corrective. Dante’s hell eternally reminds the sinners of their sin, which seems like an extreme form of justice when compared to life on Earth. Great work!