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, the president of the world’s most powerful country is a world-renown
hypocrite. His extramarital relationships have shown him to be a hypocrite of
various categories. At one time he said to Monica Lewinsky, his latest mistress,
that he can’t do any sexual activities with her on a Sunday because it is a
holy day. However, in his actions, Clinton is showing no respect for his beliefs
whatsoever. Instead is subtly denouncing them by having an adulterous
relationship while knowing that it is wrong and while trying to maintain a
facade of a Christian. Sure, he can always be forgiven, but after every affair
he gets caught for, Clinton has yet to truly repent and change. Clinton has also
been trying to put up a false front of a faithful and innocent husband all
throughout the Monica Lewinsky trial. He even said publicly, that he “did not
have a sexual relationship with that woman [ Monica Lewinsky]. In Sex Advice for
the Clinton Age [ New York Times Magazine ], Clinton is also labeled as a
hypocrite of marriage. After it states that, this article goes on to speculate
about why and how this type of hypocrisy is common, with two out of three
married men and one out of every three women guilty for it in the American
society. While promising a faithfulness and loyalty to one’s spouse at the
marriage alter, many people go back on their word and start to sleep with other
people and break their commitment of sacred trust. Not only Democrats, but
Republicans are also guilty of hypocrisy. The 1997 Washington Monthly Company
talks about the fiscal hypocrisy of the Republicans. This political party had
had an election to use more than $20 million to enlarge the committee budgets on
March 11, 1997. Ten Republicans had voted against it because they thought that
“vote was a matter of fiscal conscience” and because “the Republicans
hadn’t been sent to Washington to increase spending”. Some of the dissenters
claimed they “wanted to inject some courage in to the Republican leadership”
and that “the GOP must resist temptation to return to tax-and-spend ways of
the Democrats. They had plenty to say about that, but did not say anything about
the hundreds of millions of dollars that they had requested from the federal
government for their own little within-the province projects. Republican
representative Matt Salmon had asked the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee for $130 million to build a light-rail line in his province. Steve
Largent of Seattle approved a tax increase on licensed sportswear and souvenirs
in order to build a new Seahawks stadium, when he had been against Newt Gingrich
backing off tax cuts during budget negotiations. In less than two years, more
than $1 billion went to West Virginia; $75 million of it went to building a
radio telescope. Senator Phil Gramm spent $16 million on a program to kill fire
ants in Texas. Tons of money went into several of these cities with Republican
representatives, mainly for luxury. Republicans claim to be different from
Democrats in that they do not spend money for useless things, but their actions
don’t follow their words. Dante believes that in hell, we will suffer in the
way we made others suffer. Everything we do eventually comes back to us; so it
is left up to us to do unto others as we want to be done onto us.