The Divine Comedy is an epic poem on a vast scale, told by Dante himself in first-person point of view. The Divine Comedy is ... an allegory, a work in which characters, objects, and events have figurative as well as literal meanings. For example, in The Divine Comedy, Vergil symbolizes human reason, and Beatrice stands for faith and supernatural truth. The three beasts Dante encounters in Canto 1 represent sin, and various personages in other cantos symbolize specific types of sin, such as envy, sloth, gluttony and lust. Some allegorical characters, objects, or events symbolize several things at the same time.