dipping into hell

This week, cantos 1-18 presented. Dante's mind disturbs me. Who could think up such things, for (in Dante's mind) crimes that are not so severe? The first few cantos aren't to exciting, as they merely are beginning to enter hell through mountains and gates. It makes me wonder why Dante didn't turn around, why he wanted to see any of this at all. The next few cantos, limbo, lust, gluttony, and greed are some basic sins, which I wouldn't imagine having the punishments they did. It goes from limbo not really having a punishment besides them being absent from god forever (kind of just hanging out down there), to only the next canto where you find sinners being forever blown in a storm of violent winds. This is a sizable escalation, leaving me wondering how Dante came about this idea. Gluttony showed the sinners being rained upon by human feces for eternity. I had canto 23, the hypocrites, who merely have to walk around with heavy coats on. I would rather walk slowly than do any of those things, including shoving heavy bags up hills or be tortured in River Styx. It's odd that I would rather be thrown into canto 23, than the first few cantos.
The wrath/violence circle is all pretty similar, just different types of wrath and some variations in punishment. This part has some really disturbing means of punishment like burning forever in graves or living forever in a boiling river of blood and fire. Goodness, where is Dante's mind through all this? These are thoughts I can't imagine coming up with. The suicide canto was honestly really hard to sit through. The punishment wasn't even just simple violence of a blood river, but a deep, disturbing metaphor that Dante tried to make work for a suicide. I have dealt with more suicide than I knew possible for a 16 year old. No human being who has been brought to the point of taking their own life could possibly be in hell. I am comforted by the fact that I don't believe a hell exists at all, because I couldn't live thinking people I hold dear should deserve any more suffering after they die. Dante talks like they "disrespected" their bodies, like the were belonging to a god. I believe your body is yours and absolutely no one else's, so this is hard for me to take in.
After the violent, we started to just dip into the fraud circle, with flatterers, (who are somehow worse than all of the violent people...what?) who are punished by the beating of demons. I really can't see through Dante's eyes on this, but I'll keep trying.