In canto 33, Dante remains in the ninth circle. Here, Dante is talking to more sinners, one of which calls himself Count Ugalino, describes himself being starved while locked in a cage with his four sons. There was nothing but a small window in a tower that he named the Hunger Tower. “A cage in which still others will be locked, had, through its opening, already showed me several moons, when I dreamed that bad dream which rent the curtain of the future for me.” (Dante, 33.25) Are the punishments given for each sinner just? Being left to starve to death and enduring the pain of having to go through it with his children is torture, many of the punishments in hell have been torturous. Dante’s torture is his entire journey through the circles into hell.

It seemed to Dante that Ugalino and his sons were torn by sharp fangs, as Ugalino recounts hi and his sons in the Hunger Tower, his sons asking for bread. This upset Ugalino, and “out of my grief, I bit both my hands; and they, who thought I’d done that out of hunger, immediately rose and told me: ‘Father, it would be far less painful for us if you ate of us; for you clothed us in this sad flesh that is for you to strip off.'”..” And they all ended up dying of hunger. Once Ugalino watched all of his children die, he goes blind. He could not eat, and could not bear to the offer his children gave him to eat them, so he also starved to death.

Dante and Virgil passed through the ninth circle, stepping over sinners submerged in ice except for their heads. They are freezing and Dante describes not being able to feel his face when he says “because of cold, my every sense had left its dwelling in my face, just as a callus has no feeling, nonetheless,” Dante is now questioning what is happening to him when he asks Virgil he responds telling him that he will be where he is supposed to be soon. He will soon know why the wind blasts from above. (Dante, 33.106) The sinners now tell Dante that the last place has been assigned just for him. Dante tries to level with the sinner named Fra Alberigo, who murdered guests with fruit he tended to badly, in order to enter the last layer into hell. Dante is about to enter the very last circle into hell, and he is about to discover what his sin was after all.

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