Verified answer

Incontinence is sin without malice and those guilty of the various forms of this sin are punished in the First Circle of Inferno. For example, the lustful are blown about by powerful winds so that they cannot give nor receive physical contact.

The lower circles of Hell are reserved fo worse offenders such as those guilty of intellectual sins (fraud), violent offenders and the like.

Murderers (in the violence category) are condemned to thrash about in pools of blood that is tied to the number of their victims (ex. the more people they killed, the deeper the pool).

Flatterers (in the Fraud category) are covered in their own excrement and false healers are afflicted with the diseases they were supposed to cure.

The nature of offenses and the resulting punishment intensifies the further down you go into Inferno. The Ninth Circle is reserved for traitors and they are frozen in a lake along with the greatest betrayer of all; Lucifer.

Most traditional depictions of Hell show it as a place where people suffer in lakes of fire. However, Dante depicts the deepest level of Hell as an icy wasteland where the sky is always in eternal twilight.

He does this because this is the place that is the furthest from Heaven, so it does not receive the warmth and light of God.

I have enclosed a link to a really good cheat sheet showing the divisions of Hell and their representive punishments.

I hope you do well on your essay.

Check for yourself.

http://novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/eng251/dante.html