onnote anything remotely to do with violence and the grotesque; however, it fits perfectly here because it gives the reader a rather plain image while Dante prepares to shock the reader with his language of hideousness. He describes a man being split open "right from his chin to where we fart..." The simplicity of the image in no way warrants its use as an analogy for the horrible picture of the man being split apart. The juxtoposition of the barrel with the torn body creates a shock and a pathos because we know the barrel , but we can hardly encompass the horror. He has used the barrel in the same way as he used the examples of bloodshed in the previous sentence. In both cases Dante introduces a comparison only to reject it. It is at this point in the passage that we realize why Dante compared earthly wars with the violence of the ninth abyss before he even gave the reader a glimpse of this violence. By putting this violence at such a grotesque level, he has made the reader form an image in his mind before he describes it. By using the commonplace, Dante forces the reader to resort to memory of things past. Furthermore, Dante is asking the reader to strech his imagination beyond its normal bounds. This effect ends up enhancing the words Dante chooses when he does describe the act in lines 22 to 25. The action of the man being split apart is also fairly significant. Every little detail of the Divine Comedy has been worked out and planned with the utmost precision. The ninth abyss is no exception. The splitting of the men fits into the pattern of the rest of the punishments in the inferno. These men who reside in this pouch are sowers of discord and schism. To sow means to disseminate or spread throughout the land. Schism means division. Thus, the physical punishments literally express the philosophical sin. The most interesting part of this passage comes at the end in the last paragr...
