Examples Of Evil In Dante's Inferno

Gauging Evil Do you remember that time you offered to give your sibling something in exchange for them keeping their mouth shut about something they saw you do? That small fraudulent act would land you right down in Circle Eight, Bolgia Five of Hell in Dante’s Inferno. Now that may seem like severe over punishment, but it has it's reason. In The Inferno by Dante Alighieri sinners are placed in concentric rings all approaching the center of Hell. The rings are ordered not by the severity of the crime, but by the darkness of the heart of the sinner. Still you may be asking why does that sin belong so low in the depths of hell, and there is a good reason that it is that far down. The sins that you are willing to commit speaks greatly about

The real crimes are the ones where you get to know your victim, ones with malicious intent towards a certain person and no matter what you do you will stop at nothing to debase that person's life. Crimes that take planning and deceit are what will land you deep deep down into the chasms of the underworld. As Dante and Virgil descend into the eighth ring of hell, it is noticed that this ring is peculiarly large in comparison to the previous circles, “There is in hell a vast and sloping ground called Malebolge, a lost place of stone as black as the great cliff that seals it round”. (Alighieri 144) The Malebolge is, by it's Italian meaning, an evil pouch. The expanse of sinners in this ring was so large that Dante could only describe the segmented ring of hell as smaller rings where about half of the poem is spent. The ‘innocent’ crimes that are committed by everyday man are considered worse than murder, not because the actions are so horrendous, but the loss of one's moral that comes with

And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art tho? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, She gave me of the tree, ( Genesis III. 8-12)

Adam is indeed at fault and instead of simply accepting the blame he attempts to push it off on God himself, saying that He gave Adam the woman that fed him the fruit. Here Adam is doing anything he can to maintain his good standing with his Lord, even if it means throwing Eve under the proverbial bus. In all, evil should be gauged by the darkness of the heart because the intentions are not always as simple as the consequence of the evil action. The ultimate consequence given for an evil action cannot be simply determined by the physical outcome of the sin, but has to take into account the intent of the sinner. That being said, the darkness of one’s heart only correlates with the intentions of the evil doer, while in modern times people are pushed to a desensitisation to some of the worst sins imaginable. That bribe you made to your sibling was only the beginning of the ‘small’ sins