Dante's Inferno canto XXI- Tommy Ritz 6th

In canto XXI the poets reach the 5th Bolgia of the 8th circle. Here grafters, or those who bribed, cheated, and used corrupted means to gain political, social, or economical power are punished. The sinner’s punishment is being kept under a ditch full of boiling pitch. Pitch, is the disgusting sticky byproduct of tar. The sinners are surrounded by demons that wield pitch forks, and attack any of the sinners who put their heads above the pitch’s surface. The pitch symbolizes a few things. First off it represents the sticky fingers that the grafters, who ascended to their positions on earth through theft and deceit. Also, the grafters being under the dark colored pitch symbolizes their shady actions being hidden from the eyes of men. The demons can symbolize a few things as well. They probably symbolize how even though the grafters are trying to free themselves from the pitch, aka their sins, their being pushed back in by the demons, aka their corrupt ways. Upon the poets arrival they see a senator from Lucca being thrown into the pitch. Virgil then has Dante hide behind some jagged rocks, as he goes out to the demons to try to negotiate the poet’s safe passage across the Bolgia. Just before the demons stop listening to their leader and give in to their rage and tear Virgil to shreds, Virgil manages to gain safe passage from the leader named Malacoda. He tells the poets about a bridge they can take to go to the 6th Bolgia, and the poets set off to it under the protection of Malacoda who brings a group of demons with him. Upon reaching the bridge the poets discover that it is shatter and uncrossable, but Malacoda tells them of a second bridge a ways away so they set off to it.

1. What does the pitch symbolize?
2. What could the demons symbolize?
3.Why do you think the bridge is shatterd?