Note from class

Seven deadly sins

 pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth
which are also contrary to 
the seven virtues
 refers to the union of two sets of virtues: the four cardinal virtues, from ancient Greek philosophy, are prudence, justice, temperance (meaning restriction or restraint), and courage (or fortitude); and the three theological virtues, from the letters of Saint Paul of Tarsus, are faith, hope, and charity (or love). These were adopted by the Church Fathers as the seven virtues.
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1.Pride

Darcy's greatest sin is his pride. His pride drives him away from Eliizbeth, causes him to make judgements he shouldn't make, and keeps him aloof from the things that really matter to him. He suffers from pride throughout the novel, but as we find out...... he really is a good man.
The negative version of pride is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins: the perversion of the faculties that make humans more like God—dignity and holiness. It is also thought to be the source of the other capital sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek ),or futility, it is identified as dangerously corrupt selfishness, the putting of one's own desires, urges, wants, and whims before the welfare of people.

In even more destructive cases, it is irrationally believing that one is essentially and necessarily better, superior, or more important than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal image or self (especially forgetting one's own lack of divinity, and refusing to acknowledge one's own limits, faults, or wrongs as a human being).

As pride has been labelled the father of all sins, it has been deemed the devil's most prominent trait.
 it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind." Pride is understood to sever the soul from God, as well as His life-and-grace-giving Presence.
In Ancient Athens, hubris was considered one of the greatest crimes and was used to refer to insolent contempt that can cause one to use violence to shame the victim. Aristotle defined hubris as shaming the victim, not because of anything that happened to the committer or might happen to the committer, but merely for the committer's own gratification.
※gratification : something that pleases or satisfies
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Dante's definition of pride was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour".

Benjamin Franklin said "In reality there is, perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility."
※stifle: to cut off
※mortify: to cause (someone) to feel very embarrassed and foolish
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2.envy
Envy , like greed and lust, is characterized by an insatiable desire. It can be described as a sad or resentful covetousness towards the traits or possessions of someone else. It arises from vainglory,and severs a man from his neighbor.

Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, "Neither shall you covet... anything that belongs to your neighbour."

Dante defined envy as "a desire to deprive other men of theirs". In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. 

Envy is said to be the motivation behind Cain murdering his brother, Abel, as Cain envied Abel because God favored Abel's sacrifice over Cain's.


Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness,bringing sorrow to committers of envy whilst giving them the urge to inflict pain upon others.
※potent: having or wielding force, authority, or influence 
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3.wrath
Wrath  can be defined as uncontrolled feelings of anger, rage, and even hatred, often revealing itself in the wish to seek vengeance.Wrath, in its purest form, presents with injury, violence, and hate that may provoke feuds that can go on for centuries. Wrath may persist long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. Feelings of wrath can manifest in different ways, including impatience, hateful misanthropy, revenge, and self-destructive behavior, such as drug abuse or suicide.
※feud   :a mutual enmity or quarrel that is often prolonged or inveterate; especially
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★★★Highly recommended book:
                    The Grapes of Wrath


＊About the book:

The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939.The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.

Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they are trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they seek jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

＊About the title:


While writing the novel at his home, Steinbeck had unusual difficulty devising a title. The Grapes of Wrath, suggested by his wife Carol Steinbeck,was deemed more suitable than anything by the author. The title is a reference to lyrics from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", by Julia Ward Howe:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

These lyrics refer, in turn, to the biblical passage Revelation 14:19–20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment. This and other biblical passages had inspired a long tradition of imagery of Christ in the winepress, in various media.
※apocalyptic:of, relating to, or involving terrible violence and destruction
※winepress: a vat in which juice is expressed from grapes by treading or by means of a plunger


Christ in the winepress
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4.sloth

Sloth( or acedia ("without care")) refers to a peculiar jumble of notions, dating from antiquity and including mental, spiritual, pathological, and physical states. It may be defined as absence of interest or habitual disinclination to exertion.

The scope of sloth is wide. Spiritually, acedia first referred to an affliction attending religious persons, especially monks, where in they became indifferent to their duties and obligations to God. Mentally, acedia, has a number of distinctive components of which the most important is affectlessness, a lack of any feeling about self or other, a mind-state that gives rise to boredom, rancor, apathy, and a passive inert or sluggish mentation, Physically, acedia is fundamentally associated with a cessation of motion and an indifference to work; it finds expression in laziness, idleness, and indolence.


Sloth not only subverts the livelihood of the body, taking no care for its day-to-day provisions, but also slows down the mind, halting its attention to matters of great importance. Sloth hinders the man in his righteous undertakings and thus becomes a terrible source of human's undoing.

Dante describes acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love.
"sloth "as a noun refers to a kind of a very lazy animal!



※exertion:physical or mental effort
※affectlessness:  showing or expressing no emotion
※rancor: an angry feeling of hatred or dislike for someone who has treated you unfairly
※apathy:lack of feeling or emotion ;lack of interest or concern
※sluggish:moving slowly or lazily
※mentation:mental activity; thinking
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5.Greed
 also known as avarice(a strong desire to have or get money), cupidity or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of desire. However, greed  is applied to an artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions.  In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. Hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by Greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one attempts to purchase or sell sacraments, including Holy Orders and, therefore, positions of authority in the Church hierarchy.


As defined outside Christian writings, greed is an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth. Like pride, it can lead to not just some, but all evil.
※cupidity:a strong desire for money or possessions
※covetousness:having a craving for possession
※rapacious:always wanting more money, possessions.
※simony:  the buying or selling of a church office or ecclesiastical preferment
※inordinate:exceeding reasonable limits
※ecclesiastical:of or relating to the Christian church or clergy
※preferment:advancement or promotion in dignity, office, or station
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6.Gluttony
Gluttony  is the overindulgence and overconsumption of anything to the point of waste.
The word derives from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow.

In Christianity, it is considered a sin if the excessive desire for food causes it to be withheld from the needy.

Because of these scripts, gluttony can be interpreted as selfishness; essentially placing concern with one's own impulses or interests above the well-being or interests of others.
During times of famine, war, and similar periods when food is scarce, it is possible for one to indirectly kill other people through starvation just by eating too much or even too soon.

Medieval church leaders  took a more expansive view of gluttony,arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.
Out of these ardenter is often considered the most serious, since it is extreme attachment to the pleasure of mere eating, which can make the committer eat impulsively; absolutely and without qualification live merely to eat and drink; lose attachment to health-related, social, intellectual, and spiritual pleasures.

※withhold:  to hold back from action
※famine:an extreme scarcity of food
※ardenter: having or showing very strong feelings
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7.Lust
Lust, or lechery (Latin, "luxuria" ), is intense longing. It is usually thought of as intense or unbridled sexual desire,which leads to fornication, adultery, rape, bestiality, and other immoral sexual acts. However, lust could also mean simply desire in general; thus, lust for money, power, and other things are sinful. In accordance with the words of Henry Edward, the impurity of lust makes one "a slave of the devil".

Lust, if not managed properly, can subvert propriety.

※German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote:
"Lust is the ultimate goal of almost all human endeavour, exerts an adverse influence on the most important affairs, interrupts the most serious business, sometimes for a while confuses even the greatest minds, does not hesitate with its trumpery to disrupt the negotiations of statesmen and the research of scholars, has the knack of slipping its love-letters and ringlets even into ministerial portfolios and philosophical manuscripts".

Dante defined lust as the disordered love for individuals. It is generally thought to be the least serious capital sin as it is an abuse of a faculty that humans share with animals, and sins of the flesh are less grievous than spiritual sins.
※subvert:o make (something) weaker or less effective
※propriety:behavior that is accepted as socially or morally correct and proper
※knack:behavior that is accepted as socially or morally correct and proper
※unbridle: to free from restraint.
※bestiality: sex between a person and an animal