Dante's choice of animal figure

Dante's choice of animal figure.

Through the whole book of Dante's inferno, Dante uses several symbols of animals to
portray sinners in hell. Those figures include frogs, goats, sheep, dogs, and other
animals. Dante makes the animal figures such a big portion of the description of
sinners in order to show that how horrified the hell is and the irony of sinners being
human.

The main idea that refers to using animal figure is cannibalism, which is the way that
human acts in animalistic behavior. Dante uses this technique to draw the figure of
sinners more realistic to readers and make reader have a emotion that those sinners act
like animals in the hell because the treatment was so harsh that they cannot even react
in human way, but like animal.

In line 70, Canto 32,
"Then I saw a thousand faces made doglike by the cold, whence I shudder, and always
shall, at frozen fords."

When Dante walks into Antenora, he saw sinners with only their head up in the frozen
lake. They were freezing to death, just like dogs' behavior when they met with cold environment. We can see the terrible situation in hell made them cannot even behave like human, but like animals.

In line 34 of the same Canto, Dante depicts sinners in this way:
"The grieving shades, livid, were in the ice up to where shame appears, playing in the
tune of the stork with their teeth."

Sinners were so cold that their teeth constantly touches with each other. This sounds
like the tune of storks. This also makes the punishment sounds so horrible that sinners
have to suffer such coldness every single day.

In addition, the humanistic behavior was diminished because Dante thinks these
sinners do not deserve the way to act like human. The sin they committed before life
made them the figures of heartlessness in human rights, country, God, etc. Author
thinks they should act like animals and behaves like animals in order to compare them
with the less-emotional creatures such as goats, frogs, and sheep.

In line 49. Canto 32,
"Board with board clamp never bound so tight; and they like two goats butted together,
such anger overcame them."

Here, Dante compared the brothers to angry goats. This is so ironic because only
animals like goats could be pointed with each other and fight by physical touching with each other. The two brothers were bonded with each other just liked the goats
did.

To summarize all of those quotes and ideas: "sinners in hell should not behave and get
punished as human do." Dante thinks in this way and he successfully puts his
annoyance to those sinners of negatively influencing the commune of Florence and
causing the deprave in society.