Circle Seven Round One

“The scene that opened from the edge of the pit was mountainous, and such a desolation that every eye would shun the sight of it: a ruin like the Slides of Mark near Trent on the bank of the Adige, the result of an earthquake or of some massive fault in the escarpment- for, from the point on the peak where the mountain split to the plain below, the rock is so badly shattered a man at the top might make a rough stair of it. Such was the passage down the steep and there, at the very top, at the edge of the broken cleft, lay spread the Infamy of Crete, the heir of bestiality and the lecherous queen who hid in a wooden cow. And when he saw us, he gnawed his own flesh in a fit of spleen." (Pages 110 and 111).
The tone and diction used by Dante in this passage to describe opening scene to circle seven is extremely important for the reader to really get a grasp of the mortifying scenes that the poets are starting to encounter. The diction used by Dante is extremely effective in getting the lay of the land across to the reader along with the atrocities the poets are immediately subjected to as they enter circle seven. Using descriptive words such as “desolation", "mountainous" and "escarpment", Dante really burns the picture of this part of circle seven into the reader. One imagines how hopeless, arid, and intimidating this landscape is as a result to the diction used in the passage above.  However, the other big player in Dante's description of Circle Seven round one is the tone in the passage. Analyzation and close reading of the text above reveal that Dante uses hopeless and disturbing tones in describing this section of Circle Seven. As the poets come to overlook the setting of Round One, the tone of the text is extremely depressing, saying that it is “such a desolation that every eye would shun the sight of it" and also describes the setting as mountainous, rocky, and shattered. The tone of these words conveys the idea of hopeless intimidation by the landscape to the poets. Along with that, the text's tone soon switches to a graphic and frightening tone as the poets switch their gaze to the Infamy of Crete who, as he saw the poets, “gnawed his own flesh in a fit of spleen". A perfect example to the frightening and graphic tone switch of the text as it switches from hopelessness to disturbingly graphic as the poets witness this man basically eating his own flesh. Through using effective tone and diction in the introduction to Circle Seven, Dante is able to give the reader detailed ideas of the landscape, make connections with the current emotional state of the poets, and give them a preview for the disturbing sights to come in Circle Seven.