Suicide In Dante's Inferno

In a dark forest, a lament bursting with sorrow brushes past a poet’s ear. Then another. And another. Soon, regretful whispers are swarming around him and his Guide as the firelight retreats.When Virgil and Dante walk through the Wood of Suicides, they hear an infinite amount of forlorn sighs: When one commits suicide, one has no hope left-they are in despair. Dante is trying to show in Canto XIII that hopelessness is a huge factor of suicidal thoughts and events by using imagery and word choice. If one commits suicide, there is no one left to live for. He uses these devices because they can be both subtle and apparent, allowing him to better control what he shows to the public: After all, if suicide is considered a sin, it would not be wise
This pure, undistilled despair must have caught him off-guard, as none of the hopelessness thus far in his journey had been quite that strong. In order for one to kill oneself, one has to have lost all hope-or else there would be something, no matter how miniscule, to live for. To lose all hope with clear vision, however, would be near impossible: The victim’s view of the world would be clouded with these urges, slowly chipping away at all hope, until none is left. These whispers represent the urges that these trees had before they committed suicide, swarming around Dante and Virgil and everyone else until everything else is drowned out by those. When a lack of hope downs out all hope, despair is born and the light fades from the
If one person is to despair, then many people are to comfort. If the energy of one is not enough, then the support of others will guide a person through depression. Dante definitely wanted there to be some sort of binding comfort hidden within the torture of their punishment: When those souls committed suicide, there was no hope, no one to give them hope. In Hell, they are constantly with millions of other souls that shambled down the same path. With imagery and word choice, he could tuck that comfort into the little corners of darkness in the forest, without letting anyone but those who were searching for that comfort see it. Alas, the path, whether it is of life or of a wood, must end at some point. As the whispers fade and the light is ceasing to fleet, a new layer of Hell begins, but it is full of a different sort of light; the light of a wandering