To tell a story is to recount events or give an account. In literature, narration becomes a frame within a frame, a story within a story. A character from the outer frame of the book creates a smaller frame in the form of his story. As Dante travels through Hell in his Inferno, he and his guide Virgil hear many damned souls telling stories. Some sinners predict the future, as do the suicide of Canto XIII, the glutton Ciacco of Canto VI and the heretics of Canto X. Others, like the Jovial Brothers and Navaresse Barrater, identify other sinners and explain punishments distinct from theirs. But most of the stories the damned tell are personal confessions. The structure of each confession is generally tripartite, comprising the identification of the sinner, the narration of the occasion of his particular sin, and the description of his punishment. The suicide of Canto XIII, for example, begins his long confession to Dante and Virgil by identifying himself: "I am he who kept the two keys to Frederick's heart and transformed them..." (Canto XIII, lines 58 -59). He then explains how he was driven to suicide. He tells Dante and Virgil that he has become an object of envy for his great influence with the Emperor Frederick. Such envy, says the sinner, "inflamed the minds of all" against him (Canto XIII, line 67), and he committed suicide, believing that he "could flee from disdain by death" (Canto XIII, line 67). circa 71). The Damned Soul then completes the structure of the three-part confession when it gives a vivid description of the punishment of suicides, who become thorn bushes in hell and are eaten by harpies. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay These confession stories serve several functions. The confessions not only identify real historical figures from Hell, but they also highlight some differences between Dante the author and Dante the character. By identifying an individual soul and its sin, each faith gives a specific example of a particular sin. Since the author Dante places historical figures in Hell, their confessions allow him to identify these characters, thus condemning their earthly actions. The author creates the system by which these souls are eternally damned, and even invents the tortures with which these sinners were afflicted, but the character of Dante sometimes feels pity for a soul who confesses, as he does for Francesca in the Canto V: "Francesca, your afflictions I move to tears of sorrow and pity" (Canto V, lines 116-117). Thus, the stories, because they identify the speaking sinner, provide the opportunity to distinguish the character of Dante from Dante the author By exposing the unique punishment of a sin, the confessions provide insight into the structure of Dante's punishment system of Born, for example, in the eighth circle, where. are punished the sewers of schism, explains why he is punished with the head cut off from the body He says: I have made the son and the father enemies... because I have separated those thus united, I bear alas? ?my brain separated from its source, which is in my trunk And thus, in me we see the law of counter-penalty. (Canto XXVIII, lines 136, 139-142) This "law of counter-penalty" allows the punishment to be adapted to the crime. Bertran de Born separated father and son, and so in Hell his body is separated from his head. Most sins committed in Dante's Inferno are punished by a counter-penalty. Suicide victims, for example, must never find or resemble their body because, as the thorn bush explains to Dante and Virgil, "it is not.