Cantos 13-20

"In the bright life above," I answered him,
"I came into a valley and lost my way,
Before my age had reached its ripening time--

I turned my back on the place but yesterday.
He appeared to me at dawn, when I had turned
To go back down, and this path is the way

By which he leads me home."

-Canto XV (43-49)

This passage is essential to understanding Dante's purpose for taking such a frightful journey. When he was lost in the woods, he descended farther and farther into dismay until he began to contemplate suicide, and Beatrice, not wanted Dante to meet such a fate, sent Virgil to guide him through Hell. Through this journey, Dante is able to see what would lie ahead for him if he takes his own life. The explanation of Dante's adventure is almost dream-like, he learns lessons along the way, and of course there is the obvious absurdity in the work's plot. Dante comes in contact with those souls who are doomed to spend eternity in Hell because they have committed the sin of suicide. After observing what fate Dante would meet, he must reconsider his suicidal thoughts. Also, the reader must contemplate why Virgil was chosen as Dante's guide. For one they have poetry in common. Dante would surely feel more comfortably being led on his poetic journey by a fellow poet. Also, Dante looks up to Virgil. He has taken much inspiration from Virgil's works, and sees him as an authoritarian figure, and therefore more easy to follow.

Reader (God grant you the benefit of this book)
Try to imagine, yourself, how I could have kept
Tears of my own from falling for the sake

Of our human image so grotesquely reshaped,
Contorted so the eyes' tears fell to wet
The buttocks at the cleft. Truly I wept,

-Canto XX (19-24)

In the twentieth canto, Dante changes his style of narration. When before he was simply describing what was happening to him, and around him, he now addresses the reader. This shift may indicate that this particular scene is exceptionally important, either to Dante, or Dante finds it important for all humans. He describes the fate of those who have attempted to tell the future, the fortune tellers of the time. Their heads have been turned backwards, so they may never again see towards the future. It is curious that of all the tortured souls he has come in contact with, these are the first he has shown any outward sympathy for. The others he simply observed and perhaps spoke to a few of their sins and punishment, but he never displayed any kind of pity or sadness; but, for those that live with their head's turned around, he weeps. Why does Dante feel such a connection for these particular tortured souls?