Fire is a symbol that can be used in a variety of ways but, I argue that since we are on the terrace of the lustful and at the threshold of Earthy Paradise that the fire in this particular instance is used to portray the notion that everybody has been burned in love. Recall that while Dante is not literally burned as he walks through the flames. The flames are however, intensely hot to the point where he would rather have thrown himself into molten glass to find coolness. My point being love creates within us a swell of emotions and passion that "heat up" so to say; generally speaking everyone has felt this. But, when the object of our burning desire is not as passionate as we are, when they act cold, cruel and harsh toward us it hurts. We are not literally burned but figuratively burned. Dante must experience this feeling of love, desire and pain before he is able to reach Beatrice for obvious reasons. And in this way the fire also serves as a liminal space.

The mind drawing within in couple with the phantasmic state Dante the pilgrim is in reminds me of Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception" in which he talks extensively about "the mind at large" in which the use of psychedelic drugs allow for us to actualize the perception of everything happening in the universe and recall anything that has ever happened to us. Because of the nature of Dante's epic and all of its imagined aspects from the very design of the after-life to instances when he draws within; I must ask myself, "Was Dante using psychedelic drugs?"