We arrive at the end of the Inferno, where Satan is frozen in a lake of ice. Dante’s Satan is a mechanistic creature, seemingly without agency, personality, or voice. His main function is to sit at the center of Hell, the lowest point in Dante’s hierarchical universe, where the flapping of his six wings freezes the landscape around him, and to allow Dante and Virgil to use his body as a ladder to climb up and out of Hell.

He is, to say the least, not charming, duplicitous, playful, or mocking. The most life-like thing about him are the tears he continually cries. What is the meaning of these tears? Is Satan expressing sorrow or regret, rage, or pain, some other emotion – or is he just cold. In a poem full of memorable characters and self-aggrandizing monologues, why is Evil’s most famous representative a blank – more of an object than a living being. What does this tell us about Dante’s sense of Evil and Goodness, and about the many questions of poetry, rhetoric, representation, and power we have discussed throughout the Inferno? Can we conceive of a Satan who spoke his piece and did not emit at least a touch of rebellious glamour?