Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno is one of the three parts of his Divine Comedy. The Inferno is

divided into thirty-four cantos, each containing a description of a specific

region of hell. Sinners in each area are punished for different sins. Sinners of

lust suffer in upper hell, sinners of violence in middle hell, and the sinners

of fraud in the lowest part of hell. The sufferings of these people are

portrayed through Dante's eyes as he descends lower and lower into hell with

Virgil, his helper. The punishment for each sinner corresponds to the sin that

they committed. In Canto 18, Dante and Virgil travel into the First and Second

Pouch of the eighth circle of hell, also called Malebolge. This region of hell

is divided into ten parts, or "pouches", where sinners of "ordinary"

fraud are punished. In the First Pouch, the panders and seducers are whipped by

horned demons. Here Dante encountered Venйdico Caccianemico, a Bolognese

who pandered his own sister, giving her to another man as a prostitute. These

panders and seducers had forced other people to obey them, many times against

their will, and had tortured them if they didn't listen. As compensation for

their sins, they are being held under the control of the demons, and are also

being tortured continually. This continual suffering also accounts for the

surplus time these sinners had in manipulating others. In the Second Pouch,

flatterers are punished by being made to live in an abysmal pit of excrement.

Flatterers are sycophants who try to use insincere and excessive praise to look

good in other people's eyes. These false attentions and comments are commonly

called "bull-*censored*" in slang. This applies directly to what these

sinners are condemned to live in forever. In the 23rd Canto, Dante and Virgil

travel from the Fifth Pouch of Malebolge to the Sixth Pouch, where hypocrites

are being punished. They are made to walk around in circles in cloaks that are

overlaid with a thin covering of gold on the outside, but inlaid with a very

thick heavy layer of lead. These sinners are made to carry this heavy burden of

lead forever. Here, Dante talked with a man and his friend who were friars of a

Catholic military order called Jovial Friars. Even though the adjective

"jovial" did not mean anything negative at first, but this term began to

have significance later on when these so-called ascetic friars started to

neglect their work of reconciliation and peace-making to satisfy their greed for

luxury. As a result, they are made to wear those gilded cloaks to show their

greed for riches and to carry the burden of the lead hood. The two very

different layerings of the cloak show the two-faced natures of hypocrites; on

the outside they seem so righteous and clean, but truly, inside they are just

the opposite. Also back then King Fredrick II forced a similar but faster and

more excruciating punishment on the people who betrayed other people's trust.

He forced them to wear leaded hoods also, placed them in cauldrons, and boiled

them until the lead became hot, and until eventually the person died. Lead was

also a common backing for mirrors during that time. This fact could be used to

say that these leaded cloaks truly mirrored how bogus these hypocrites' true

natures were. Hypocrisy is prevalent in today's modern society. Even Bill

Clinton,