Humans, from the medieval world to the world today, could only save themselves from themselves by recognizing and rejecting the errors of independence and self-righteousness. The poets left the company of the four great poets to a dark road that lies ahead of them (Alighieri III. 148-150).
The poets Dante and Virgil leave the first circle of hell and enter the circle of Lust. Dante observes the sounds of the second circle as, "so much greater pain the voice of the damned rose in a bestial moan (Alighieri IV. 2-3)." The sounds of anguish came from a great whirlwind, which sweeps the souls of those who sinned in the flesh, the carnal and lustful, in a never-ending flight (Raffa). Virgil identifies the many historical figures swept together in their hellish demise to Dante, but something else had caught Dante's full attention (Alighieri IV. 73-75). Dante finds two of his Italian contemporaries, Francesca and Paola, punished together in hell for their adultery and calls to them to speak on their side of their story (Raffa). Saddened by their love story, Dante fainted with compassion and fell to the floor as Paola wept at Francesca's side (Alighieri 135-140). Nevertheless of the lovers' tragic, heartfelt tale, Francesca and Paola both suffer from the abandonment of human reason. Instead of the sole absence of God's presence in Limbo, the carnal and lustful let passion sway their reason to satisfy their sexual appetites, therefore, succumbing to the human desire for the flesh (Siero). Unfortunately for these damned souls, making no exceptions for Francesca's and Paola's indiscretions, their punishment of being swept into a violent whirlwind for all of eternity becomes worsen by the exclusion from the light of human reason and of God. Once humans assess their judgment for reason to resist the temptations of the flesh, they will come back to their senses and be absolved from the perversion of their mind to attain salvation in death.