Virgil In Canto 24

As Virgil and Dante descend into the seventh pocket of the Eighth Circle of Hell, they arrive at a collapsed bridge that forces Virgil and Dante to navigate through a steep slope littered with crags and rocks. On the way up the rigorous terrain, Dante loses his breath, becomes fatigued, and flops to the ground. Virgil scolds Dante's indolence, and urges him onward, stating that a long and steep climb still awaits him. Once they arrive in the Seventh Pocket, Dante and Virgil come across an arch which forms a wide span across the pocket. Dante moves to the edge of the cliff, to gaze downward into the deep abyss but is unable to see anything. He asks Virgil to take him deeper so that he may understand the sounds he hears coming from beneath. Virgil
Johnny Fucci was the bastard son of Fuccio de' Lazzari, and a militant leader of the Blacks in Pistoia. His infamy as a man of rage was widespread. Around 1923, the treasury of San Iacopo in the church of San Zeno at Pistoia was robbed. The person was unjustly accused of the theft was Rampino Fresi. Later, the truth was discovered about Vanni's deeds, and one of his conspirators named Vain Della Mona, was sentenced to death (Musa 296). We meet Johnny Fucci in the final phase of the canto, as Dante once more follows the recurring theme throughout Inferno of transitioning from myth to history. However, psychologically and linguistically, canto 24 presents a complete contrast to the beginning cantos. Where the damned and frustrated sinner both submits to and profits from their encounter with Virgil and Dante, Johnny Fucci sets himself in violent opposition to that order (Kirkpatrick 405). Most of the shades whom Dante and Virgil have encountered have been ones who still cling to, or have some connection to, the outside surface of Earth. Despite this, Johnny Fucci wishes to erase the memory of his life from the Earth's surface, and even expresses his anger of Dante and Virgil witnessing his punishment openly. In place of the delicate reciprocations of emotion and conversation between
Dante uses the simile to illustrate the changes of expressions of Virgil's face. He invokes the weathering changes that occur on a winter day as frost prevents a man from his work, on which his survival depends on then, as the sun appears, allows him to finally go to work with his flock of lambs. Dante uses this simile to mirror the expressions of Virgil's face in previous cantos: first, Virgil's frosty disapproval of the lies of the devils of hell's gates; then a more encouraging expression which he first showed to Dante during their first encounter in canto 1. The simile spans an extensive fifteen lines, and its rhetorical level is extremely elevated. The simile is also pastoral in tone, not only focusing on the daily regiment of the “poor sod,” but also referring to the inner fluctuations and shifts of doubt and anxiety between Dante and Virgil