The Inferno: Blog 2, Topic 3

In Circle 7, the Violent are punished in three separate rounds depending on the nature of their violent tendencies. Choose one round within Circle 7 and explore an archetypal symbol that Dante uses there to explore the sin. You may, for example, look at the river of blood in Round 1 or the trees in Round 2 or the desert and fire in Round 3. Consider the archetype itself and then how Dante utilizes the symbol to enhance his own work.

Circle 7: Round 2, The Violent Against Themselves
      Circle 7: round 2, is where the souls who committed suicide lie. The souls lie in The Wood of the Suicides. In these woods, the souls are not present in a human sense; they are branches and thorns on the trees. The archetypal symbol Dante uses in round 2 is trees. The souls cannot be present because they destroyed their own substance and therefore, cannot take a human presence.
      Round two holds The Violent Against Themselves; the souls who committed suicides and destroyed their own lives. When Dante arrives to The Wood of the Suicides he hears "cries of lamentation rise and spill on every hand, but saw no souls in pain" (102). This is because the souls are in the form of tree branches. Puzzled, Dante broke off a branch under Virgil's proposition and heard the branch cry "men we were, and now we are changed to sticks; well might your hand have been more merciful were we no more than souls of lice and ticks" (103). When the soul says that they used to be men but now they are sticks, that is their punishment. They are in the form of sticks and can't take a human presence because they destroyed their own life.
      The archetypal symbol used in round 2 is the trees in The Wood of the Suicides. Trees symbolize life and knowledge. Since the trees symbolize life, these souls are represented as trees because they took their own life and are not in human form. The soul says to Dante, "our bodies will dangle to the end of time, each on the thorns of its tormented shade" (105). The souls are going to be the tree branches forever and they can never take back their sin of taking their own life and are denied a human form. Dante utilizes the archetypal symbol of the trees to enhance round 2 because their sin becomes the punishment. The trees mean life but the souls took their own life and therefore have to become trees for the rest of eternity.

In this picture, Virgil told Dante to break off a branch of one of the trees to hear the story of the souls who were changed into this tree form.

I chose this song, World Spins Madly On because the lyrics of the song is "Woke up and wished that I was dead with an aching in my head I lay motionless in bed...I watch the stars from my window sill the whole world is moving and I'm standing still..." This song sounds like someone who doesn't fit in and wants to kill themself. When it says I wished that I was dead, it means that they want to kill themself; they shouldn't though because, we find out in Circle 7, Round 2 that the punishment for suicide is very harsh and you would be turned into a tree branch.