Ciacco in The Modern World

In Birk’s translation of Dante’s inferno, the Italian poem has been updated with better, more relevant vocabulary. But, more interestingly, the poem includes drawn images that relate the sins of Hell to modern issues. One of the more revolting pictures is about the sin of gluttony. Back in the time when Dante’s Inferno was written, the people guilty of gluttony would have been only within the extremely rich, and within that group only a handful of people.

The sin of gluttony is not at all the worst circle of Hell to be in, it’s actually one of the least offensive. It’s a sin that is easy commit, one that doesn’t take much effort. But it is the fact that the gluttonous decide not to do anything to fix it that puts them in Hell. In the picture, the sinners are surrounded by well-known fast food chains and there are various articles of gluttonous food scattered on the floor.

Just goes to show that maybe even after hundreds of years, society’s views of being overweight haven’t changed that much. Dante and our own society both (even if indirectly) accuse overweight people of not taking any action to make better of their lives.