Purgatory’s Structure

The organization of purgatory follows the arrangement of the seven deadly sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice and prodigality, gluttony, and lust. Virgil states that the formation is mainly on the pretense of love. As stated by Virgil, “love must be the seedbed where all virtuous deeds must grow, [and] with every act that warrants punishment” (Canto 17 103-05). This means that love is present within everything both sinful and virtuous. Those of insufficient love were being punished as sloths in terrace 4. The prior three terraces (pride, envy, and wrath) expressed the love given to evil objects or goals. The next three terraces (avarice, gluttony, and lust) presented excessive amounts of love to inherently good. This was the reason for the terraces formation, but still it was unclear why they were not the same as hell’s circles. Then looking back it became a little clearer and a sequence showed.

Purgatory focused on making worst sins like pride, envy, and wrath something easier to cleanse. Pride was seen as the dominant sin, first. So since purgatory was about getting closer to God the worst sin had to be first to go. Pushing back one’s pride is something that many would fail. This was a main reason pride (different types of frauds) was so close to the devil in Inferno. Many did not realize how serous their pride caused others around them to suffer. The next terrace of envy was presenting the sense of relying on others for help. Envy quality as a sin is to make the user neglect one’s own blessing want the life others. This was just as bad as pride, but just a little less important. Hell version of envy was the seventh circle of violence. Envy has the qualities of what hell gave violence: murder, suicide, blasphemy, sodomy, ...

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...unless in the mind.

In conclusion, the organization of is to show that the worst sins have to be cleanse before any progress can be made. As a soul goes up, they slowly relieve themselves of each lighter sin. This idea mainly described by Dante. When he started purgatory, it was hard, but as he climbed, he became lighter. It was not because he was purging him of the sins, but the order in which he was freeing himself. He started with the worst (pride), and then ended with the easiest, but also the one that is most common to occur repeatedly (lust). Hell on other hand was all about which sin cause the most pain to others and oneself. That is why it stats with lust, which is not harmful unless act upon. Then the worst pride a sin that will always cause another person to become harm or worst killed. In all both were mirror images of the other flip upside down.