Dante believed God punished suicides by trapping the person's spirit in a tree trunk. On Judgement Day, they were the only sinners who didn't get their souls back, because they tried to get rid of them once before.

Summary

This quote refers to Dante's belief about the punishment for suicides in his famous work, "The Divine Comedy." According to Dante, those who commit suicide were assigned a specific punishment where their spirits were trapped within tree trunks in the afterlife, denying them the opportunity to regain their souls on Judgement Day. Dante sees suicide as an attempt to rid oneself of their own existence, and as a result, these individuals are denied the second chance for redemption that others may have on the day of reckoning.