Circle 3 The Gluttons

             In Dante’s Inferno, the gluttonous people are in circle three. Gluttons are the people who eat excessively in life, and who in death are punished by being forced to lie in garbage and slush, while the three headed dog, Cereberus eats them. Dante seems to assert that being a glutton is one of the worst sins, because the punishment is harsher and Circle three is below the circle with the people who are lustful.

  The sin of gluttony is described in Merriam-Webster Dictionary as habitual greed or excess in eating. The notes of Canto IV quote “In life, they made no higher use of the gifts of God than to wallow in food and drink, producers of nothing but garbage and offal” (44). Their punishment is to lie in garbage and slush, while frozen black rain falls on them and Cerberus the dog eats them alive. The punishment for this sin is more intense compared to the other punishments. This shows the reader that Dante views gluttony very seriously. The reader can infer that the reason he puts gluttony below lust is because of his own feelings for Beatrice. 

The imagery of Cerberus, which Dante quotes as “His eyes are red, his beard is greased with phlegm/his belly is swollen, and his hands are claws/ to rip the wretches and flay and mangle them (45),” represents the people that are in this circle of hell. They had swollen bellies from eating too much and ripped their food while eating it.

   For contrapasso, Dante has the gluttons: lying in garbage, because all they did in life was create garbage, being eaten by Cerberus, because they ate too much in life, and lying in the cold slush because the warmth that they got in life was because of eating food, so when they were in hell, they could not find the warmth that they spent their lives eating for.

  By the showing of the dark and very serious punishment of Gluttons, the reader can infer that Dante seems to assert that being a glutton is very bad, and through the punishment of lying in cold, wet garbage and being eaten by Cerberus, the three headed dog, Dante shows readers how serious he is about Gluttony.