Food for Thought

I am so glad to be out of hell. The imagery Dante uses to describe the various punishments of souls is haunting at times. From people being turned into trees to others ripping themselves apart, Dante describes a lot of interesting punishments. However, one of Dante’s characters really stuck out to me.

Among the traitors in the ninth circle of Inferno is a man named Count Ugolino. The first look we get at Count Ugolino is him eating another man’s head (p. 337). Why is Ugolino eating the other man’s head? It’s a great story. The man who is the delectable meal was an Archbishop named Ruggieri. Ruggieri betrayed Count Ugolino and caused the imprisonment of him and his four sons in a tower. As if that wasn’t punishment enough, Ugolino and his sons were left imprisoned in the tower to die. Ugolino describes the terrible experience of watching his sons die. Only a day without food had passed when Ugolino’s sons offered their bodies as food for their father. Ugolino describes the gruesome situation: “I bit both hands for grief; and they, who thought I must be longing for some food to eat, suddenly rose and came to me and said ‘Father, for us it would be much less pain if you ate us instead!’” (p. 345 lines 58-63). I can’t imagine how much pain this must have caused Ugolino. His children, his own flesh and blood, were begging him to put them out of their misery, and he couldn’t do it. While the realization that they were going to starve openly upsets his sons, Ugolino describes himself as turning to stone; he doesn’t speak a word to them out of fear of distressing them even more. By the sixth day without food, all four of Ugolino’s sons had died. After two days of mourning the death of his sons, Ugolino says “Then hunger did what sorrow could not do” (p. 345, line 75). There is disagreement on whether this phrase means that Ugolino died from starvation or that he ate the bodies of his sons. I am of the opinion that Ugolino ate his sons bodies due to his punishment in Hell. Ugolino is forced to eat the head of a man for all eternity, thus perpetually reminding him of his sin.

Besides a rather disturbing back story, the reason Ugolino intrigues me so much is that he is supposedly getting his revenge while in hell. Lines 130-132 of Canto 32 records, “Just as Tydeus in his spiteful rage gnawed at the temples of his enemy, so did he (Ugolino) gnaw the brains, the flesh, the skull.” Ugolino is part of the punishment of the man who betrayed him. No other soul in Inferno is described as being able to do the same. Dante seems to throw a little irony into the punishment. Ugolino died of starvation, but in Hell he is perpetually eating a man’s head. However, I think this supposed revenge is part of Ugolino’s punishment. Ugolino is constantly reminded of how his sons died because he is in the presence of the man he blames for their deaths.

Ugolino blames Ruggieri for the death of his sons, and while this may be justified, I have wonder why Ugolino is placed in the circle of Hell with the traitors. Is it because he betrayed someone, perhaps his sons? Is it simply because he is part of the punishment of Ruggieri? Or is it a different reason entirely? Whatever the reason, I think we can agree that Ugolino is still being punished because he is constantly reminded of the death of his sons.

By blaming Ruggieri for the death of his sons, Ugolino is punishing himself. He isn’t letting himself move on to the acceptance stage of grief. Dante takes spiritual sin and makes the punishment physical in ways that cause the reader to reflect on their own actions. I think the punishment of Count Ugolino is a great example of why we should forgive people. If we don’t forgive people, we continue to allow them to hurt us. It is only through Christ that we can truly forgive people and move past any hurt we may have.