Examples Of The Seven Deadly Sins In Literature

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The Seven Deadly Sins in Literature The seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church are very apparent in literature, such as Hamlet, Dante’s Inferno, Romeo and Juliet, The Great Gatsby, House of Cards, and Oblomov. Characters from these books show these traits often, and sometimes more than one at a time. While the idea of going to hell is a prevailing thought for most of these characters, none seem to do much to avoid it. While focused on their particular task, these characters create a wake of destruction to achieve their goal. The seven deadly sins are listed in the Catechism as “pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth” (Paul 1866) The seven deadly sins share the same origins, from the bible “There are seven things that the…show more content…
Scott Fitzgerald. A main theme of the book is the disillusionment of the wealthy classes, which their gluttonous behavior distracted them from. A great example of the gluttonous behavior of Gatsby is how his party is described “Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York — every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler’s thumb.” (Fitzgerald) This quote shows the gluttonous over consumption of oranges and lemons, and this type of gluttony applied to every aspect of Gatsby’s parties. This is considered a mortal sin because he is just wasting money for his own plans and use, instead of giving it to the less fortunate to help decrease the gap between his gluttony and their lack of money. In Dante’s Inferno gluttons are punished by being forced to lay in a slushy rain where they cannot see other gluttons, symbolic for their selfish lives

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