Continuing through the 8th level of Hell, the circle of fraud, Dante enters the 7th bulge, home of the thieves, where he encounters new sinners enduring new levels of suffering. In canto 25, three sinners approach Dante concerned, inquiring if he knows what has become of a sinner named Cianfa. At this moment, however, a six-legged lizard lunges at one of the three sinners, named Agnello, clings to him, and Dante describes the horrifying change that follows as he witnesses the reptile and sinner fuse together, becoming something new and completely different from what either had been before.
The contrapasso of this bulge is that through the metamorphosis of the sinner and reptile, the sinner is stripped of his humanity by mixing with an animal much lesser than he. During life, Agnello was guilty of stealing from others, so in Hell he is being punished by having by having a reptile steal parts of him human traits away from him. The use of reptiles is also significant because reptiles generally represent trickery and deceit, especially because a “forked tongue”, which is a notable trait of reptiles, is often used to describe someone who is lying.…show more content… Additionally, if Dante is a theft for using an idea from a previous writer, then all literature is essentially stealing, whether it is characters, style, or themes. Dante has used multiple characters, beasts, and major themes from previous writers so far in Inferno, but he has repurposed them to fit his text, making writing a form of metamorphosis in itself. The contrapasso of metamorphosis from this passage corresponds with the transformational process of composing literature, making writers, including Dante and even Virgil, guilty of theft, thus placing them in the 7th bulge of Hell as
