The Tone of Canto Twenty-Five

In the Inferno, written by Dante Alighieri, Dante endures a long journey, mentally and physically though Hell, in search of salvation. In canto twenty-five, Dante shows the idea that man’s struggle towards salvation is a constant one through imagery, conflict, and diction. He shows this idea of struggling for salvation by creating an explicit tone of warning when vividly describing the different transformations of the Florentine poets in imaginative detail, informing Dante to not defy God by giving into the thieves.

The tone of warning is created through imagery. The passage, “Point by point, the reptile’s cloven tail grew to the form of what the sinner lost; one skin began to soften, one to scale. The armpits swallowed the arms, and the short shank of the reptile’s forefeet simultaneously lengthened by as much as the man’s arms shrank. Its hind feet twisted round themselves and grew the member man conceals; meanwhile the wretch from his one member generated two. The smoke swelled up about them all the while; it tanned one skin and bleached the other; it stripped the hair from the man and grew it on the reptile,” (206 lines 106-117) describes the transformation between the human form of Buoso and a reptile from the pit of serpents. The image helps create a tone of warning because it uses words such as “swallowed”, “swelled”, and “stripped” to show a strong image of an unnatural idea of two beings switching places. Since this transformation is unlikely to happen in life, it is seen as a warning to Dante to stay away from the thieves and focus on his journey to salvation. In the passage, “For suddenly, as I watched, I saw a lizard come darting forward on six great taloned feet and fasten itself to a sinner from the crotch to the gizzard. Its middle feet sank into the sweat and grime of the wretch’s paunch, its forefeet clamped his arms, its teeth bit through both cheeks. At the same time its hind feet fastened on the sinner’s thighs: its tail thrust...