Discussion Questions

Virgil sets the she-wolf, who after eating is hungrier, against the veltro, which will not feed on earth or metal, but on wisdom, love and virtue. What does this opposition say about what each one desires?

Beatrice says that only what has the power to do harm to others should be feared, and Virgil says that cowardice makes a man see a beast in a shadow. Which of Dante's fears, in these first two cantos, does the poem treat as well founded, and which as shadow?

The Ignavi are rejected by heaven, so that it is not made less beautiful, and by deep Hell, so that the damned have no glory from them. What does the punishment of those who were neither rebellious nor faithful say about the way the poem measures guilt?

In Limbo there is no weeping, only sighs, and Dante is received by the poets as the sixth among them. What feeling does the canto ask of the reader before these souls, and in which verses is it indicated?

Francesca makes Love the subject of the sentences that explain her fall, and Dante, in answering, speaks of thoughts and desire. What difference does it make, in the scene, who the subject is?

Ciacco asks Dante to remind the living of him when he returns to the world, and in canto III the world grants no fame to the Ignavi. What place does the poem give to the desire to be remembered, in Ciacco and in the Ignavi?

Virgil presents Fortune as a minister set by God and reviled by those who should praise her, and says she does not hear. What does the explanation do with Dante's question about the justice of God?

Dante asks Virgil for the spectacle of Argenti's punishment and is granted it, and soon after fears being left before the gates of Dis. What relation does the canto establish between what Dante wishes on another and what he feels when the punishment is his own?

Virgil knows the way to the bottom because he has traveled it once, but he does not pass the gate of Dis without the help of an envoy from heaven. What, in this scene, does the guide's reason know about Hell, and what can it not do on its own?

Farinata does not stir when Cavalcante falls on his back. What does each of the two want to know from Dante, and what does that show about what still lives in each soul?

The condemned of this canto see the future and lose the present. What part of their punishment does that failing explain, and in which scene of the canto is it seen most clearly?

Virgil explains Hell by two criteria, force and fraud, and places fraud below. Why does the poem treat as worse the sin that spills no blood?

The canto's discourse lists violence and fraud, but the heretics of the previous canto appear nowhere in it. What criterion in Virgil's own speech would place them within the walls of Dis?

Virgil stops the Minotaur by reminding him of Theseus, and convinces the centaurs by saying that Dante comes out of necessity, not pleasure. Why does one argument serve one guard, and the other serve the other?

Pier delle Vigne swears that he never broke faith with his lord, and confesses that he killed himself out of disdain. How does the poem fit into the same speech both the innocence he claims and the act that put him in the wood?

Dante cannot ask the suicides anything, so great is his pain, and Virgil asks in his place. What changes in what the poet knows, and in what the reader knows, through this change in who asks the questions?

Capaneus goes on being what he was in life, and Pier delle Vigne was turned into a trunk. What does the contrapasso say about each of them when the two cases are compared?

Dante treats Brunetto with reverence and places him in the circle of the violent against nature. How does the canto sustain, at the same time, Dante's tenderness for his master and the poem's judgment on him?

Rusticucci, Guido Guerra, and Tegghiaio want to know about Florence and ask that people be told of them. What does Dante's answer say about the city, and how do the three receive it?

The usurers are recognized only by the purse with the coat of arms, and none has a name. What do the condemned of the other cantos of this part ask of Dante, and why do these have nothing left to ask?

Venedico confesses to having handed Ghisolabella over to the marquis and then points out the other Bolognese who fill the ditch. What does the poem gain by letting a sinner's shame turn into an accusation against his city?

Dante makes the harshest accusation of the poem against the popes in front of a condemned pope, and Virgil approves it with an embrace. Why does the poet put it in the mouth of the pilgrim, and not in Virgil's?

Virgil rebukes Dante for weeping before the soothsayers, but the poet himself asked the reader to think how he could have dry eyes. What does the poem gain by having the pilgrim err first, so that Virgil corrects him afterward?

The Malebranche quarrel, mock, and give the signal of departure with their bodies. Why does Dante make the fifth ditch the most comic place in the canticle, and not the most frightening?

The Navarrese deceives the demons with a promise that Cagnazzo sees through as a trick right away. Why does Alichino accept the wager anyway?

Virgil carries Dante as a mother carries her son and, minutes later, is corrected by a friar who has heard in Bologna of the devil's lie. What do the two scenes, seen together, show about what Dante can expect from his guide?

Vanni Fucci, whom Dante knew as a man of blood and anger, confesses a theft from the sacristy and says that it hurts more to have been seen than to have died. What does that shame show about the punishment of the seventh ditch?

Dante warns the reader that what he tells is hard to believe, and challenges Lucan and Ovid to be silent. Why does the poet choose the ditch of thieves to put his own invention in the foreground?

Virgil tells Dante that Ulysses and Diomedes are in the eighth ditch for the horse, for Achilles and the Palladium, and it is the voyage that Ulysses recounts when he is asked where he died. What relationship does the canto leave between the fraud for which he is there and the voyage he narrates?

At what point in the conversation with the pope does Guido decide to give the counsel, and what does the text say leads him to decide?

Guido tells his own story only after concluding that no one will return to repeat it. What, in the way he presents himself (man of arms, friar, fox), might change if he knew someone was listening?

Mahomet, Pier da Medicina and Mosca speak to Dante to send word or to be remembered. What does each one ask for, and what does that difference say about what each still wants?

Dante adds "death to your lineage" to Mosca's speech. What does that gesture show about the pilgrim, compared with what he feels before the condemned in earlier cantos, such as Francesca in Canto V?

Geri del Bello passes without speaking to Dante, and Dante interprets the silence. What does Dante conclude from this silence, and what does the poem let him do with that conclusion?

The ditch of forgers is described through diseases (scabies, leprosy, fever, thirst) and not through wounds from weapons, as the previous ditch was. What does the choice of diseases suggest about what Dante thinks the forger does with what he falsifies?

Master Adam says he would not trade the sight of Guido, Alessandro or their brother, who led him to coin, for Fonte Branda. What does that desire say about whom he holds responsible for what he did, and about what he feels for having counterfeited?

Virgil reproaches Dante for taking pleasure in the quarrel and soon forgives him. What, in Dante's shame, does the guide recognize as sufficient, and what does he still ask of him?

Virgil asks Antaeus to take them to the bottom and uses two arguments to persuade him. What are they, and what does each assume Antaeus desires?

Dante says that Nature did well to stop creating giants, and he does not regret the elephants and the whales. What difference does the poet see between the strength of an elephant and that of a giant?

Bocca refuses Dante's offer of fame and says he wants the opposite. What does that refusal show about what the shades of earlier cantos, such as Ciacco in Canto VI and Brunetto in Canto XV, asked of Dante?

When Dante pulls Bocca's hair, Virgil waits without saying anything; in the quarrel between Master Adam and Sinon, he reproved him. What difference does the text show between the two scenes?

Ugolino does not weep while the children weep, and bites his hands only when he sees his own face in four faces. What does each of these gestures say about what he feels, and about what he wants the children to understand?

After the imprecation against Pisa, Dante says that even if Ugolino had a reputation as a traitor, the children were innocent. What does that qualification do to the story Ugolino has just told?

Dante promises to free Alberigo's eyes and does not do so, and the poem calls this courtesy. Why does the poet choose that name for the gesture?

Dante says he cannot describe what he felt when he saw Lucifer and tells the reader to imagine it. Why does the narrator, who has described everything up to here, refuse to describe that moment?

Judas, Brutus and Cassius are in the same punishment. What does the poem choose to show of each one, and what does that say about the criterion for who is deepest?

The exit from Hell passes through Lucifer's body, and the descent turns into an ascent in the middle of it. What effect does the poet achieve by making the exit depend on the body of the worst of all?

Dante falls like a dead body on hearing Francesca, who blames Love and never says "I" (Canto V), and three cantos later says he would like to see Filippo Argenti sunk in the mud, which Virgil praises (Canto VIII). Is the pity of Canto V a virtue of the pilgrim, a weakness that the poem corrects, or both at once?

In Canto XI, Virgil orders Hell by a criterion that is not the pain caused but the use of intelligence: fraud weighs more than violence, and the traitor falls below the murderer (Canto XI). What does that choice say about what the poem considers proper to man, and why does the speech not say where heresy belongs, the heresy Dante has just crossed?

Farinata rises from the tomb as one who scorns Hell (Canto X), Brunetto Latini receives Dante's gratitude as a student (Canto XV), and Ulysses has the most admired speech of the cantica (Canto XXVI). The poem gives greatness to those it condemns. Does that weaken the condemnation, or is it precisely for that reason that it is not a decorative punishment?

Ciacco, Farinata, Brunetto and Vanni Fucci each announce, in their own way, what will happen to Florence and to Dante (Canto VI, Canto X, Canto XV, Canto XXIV). What does the poem gain by placing living politics within the afterlife, and what does it lose when the author's settling of accounts with his own city becomes eternal judgment?

Ulysses is placed among the fraudulent counselors because of the wooden horse, the discovery of Achilles hidden among Deidamia's companions, and the theft of the Palladium, and yet the scene the poem gives him is the last voyage, which is Dante's invention (Canto XXVI). Is the voyage the sin, the punishment, or the reason he is remembered?

Guido da Montefeltro receives from the pope (whom tradition reads as Boniface VIII) absolution before the sin, and a devil undoes it with a rule of logic: one does not absolve whoever does not repent, and one cannot repent and will at the same time (Canto XXVII). What does the episode say about the possibility of buying grace, and about who bears the guilt of a counsel given to one who has already promised to forgive him?

The poem asks the reader to feel pity for Ugolino and, in the same canto, has Dante refuse Friar Alberigo what he promised, with the phrase that it was courtesy to be a villain to him (Canto XXXIII). How should the reader understand two opposite gestures, commotion and harshness, in the same place in the poem?

To leave Hell, Virgil and Dante descend through Lucifer's body and, at the center of the Earth, the descent turns into an ascent (Canto XXXIV). What sense does it make for the poem to have the exit pass through the worst of all, instead of opening another door, and what does this say about the relation between evil and the journey?