Trees of Death, Rather than Trees of Life?

In Round Two of Circle Seven the souls that are being punished are those of The Suicides. Their punishment is to be trapped inside of a twisted, gnarled, thorny tree. The Wood of The Suicides is filled with the souls encased in the trees, and the Harpies that oversee the souls eat at them. The Harpies' destruction of the trees allows the souls to speak, as the souls are only permitted language when bleeding from a wound. In life The Suicides used self-destruction instead of their words to express their feelings and emotions. In Hell, these souls need and rely on destruction to express their emotions and they feel the pain as they bleed from continual destruction. The Suicides not only ruined themselves, but they hurt many friends and family through the actions that they took.

The destruction of one’s own body is a crime insulting God, for he was the one whom gave these people the gift of live. This sin seems to have been interpreted by God as ungratefulness, even though not all the souls had intentionally insulted God. One soul addressed had only taken his life to escape further torture, not out of disrespect for his body and the creator that made him. He says, “My soul, in scorn, and thinking to be free/ of scorn in death, made me at last, though just,/ unjust to myself,” (p.104). The sadness and regret seen in the language used by this soul proves that not all the souls committed suicide out of depression and violence. No matter the reason, this sin is never punished on a case-by-case basis; all suicides result in the admittance into the second round of the seventh circle of Hell. The pain is a way for the trees to do both of two things: to express their emotions verbally and to also appreciate the privilege of speaking, further pressing the souls to regret their actions.

Generally, a tree is a symbol of life. This archetypal symbol is used by Dante to contrast against the types of trees that are seen in the second round of circle seven. Unlike the healthy, green, branchy, and leafy trees that one imagines, these trees were dark and twisted; “Its foliage was not verdant, but nearly gnarled and warped and tangled, bore poison thorns instead of fruit,” (p.102). The dark language Dante uses in this canto expresses the general dark and twisted temperament of these souls. As the archetypal symbol of a tree represents life, these trees represent death and darkness, which ultimately describes the nature of the sins in the circle. Dante uses this symbol to enhance his work; he uses the relatively positive image of a tree to emphasize the darkness of the sin of suicide.

This is related through the idea that the trees here are technically suicides...