Commentary Inf XXXIII 64-69

The father, thinking that display of his own sorrow will only increase the pain felt by his sons, teaches them his lesson: stoic silence in the face of death. Had Seneca written this canto, perhaps we would be justified in thinking Ugolino's reserve a valuable example of courage. The silence is only broken once more, on this fourth day, by Gaddo, dying, who asks the question the reader, too, might very well ask: 'O father, why won't you help me?' The drama of paternity that we find in this canto is not that proposed, in his beautiful essay, by Francesco De Sanctis (Desa.1967.1), but that of a terribly failing father.

The total absence of religious concerns in Dante's portrait of Ugolino is in contrast to the tale that circulates in some of the commentaries, first in 1333 in the Ottimo (DDP Ottimo.Inf.XXXIII.1-9), that Ugolino, realizing they were all to die, asked for a friar to confess them, and was refused. Had Dante included such a detail, his Ugolino would have seemed a much different man.