Some useful background: the Purgatorio takes place in time, in a place which is still on earth. However, things are beginning to change: there is no weather above the steps that lead from ante-Purgatory to the entrance into Purgatory proper. The mountain seems to respond to human salvation by shaking–almost dancing, in the spirit of the Psalms. The openings, which permit the Pilgrim to ascend, appear to him at a moment appropriate to his spiritual development; that is, they do not seem to be fixed–no “one size fits all.” Dante is being conformed to a higher destiny: he is gradually yielding up control over his imaginings, gradually becoming able to look directly into the blazing faces of angels, and gradually yielding up his free will. It is as if his whole being were becoming humble, as if it were making the tacit statement: “Thy will be done.” At the top of Purgatory, Dante becomes symbolically pure of heart: somewhere, somehow, he begins the final ascent which will take him to the face-to-face vision of God beyond space and time in the Empyrean. Before the final vision at the end of the Paradiso, he is still in time: still in statu viae and not yet in patria, but he is surrounded by those who know all things in God, men and women whose being has been perfected in the measure to which grace has proportioned them, and who proffer him knowledge and wisdom. Dante will learn much about the world and about his own future as man and as writer from Beatrice and his ancestor Cacciaguida. I want you to take a theme or motif from the Purgatorio: ships, angels, the mistakes of penitents, visions; or concepts: government, the Church, freedom, the decay of families and of nations, perception, reformation; or an episode: any of the terraces of the seven deadly sins, distraction, losing consciousness, dreams, ecstasies, the Siren; or a character: Cato, Casella, Fettucine Alfredo, Marco Lombardo, Forese, or Pope Adrian and compare the individual you have chosen to his/her perfected counterpart in Paradise. Define a fundamental difference between the two realms of the afterlife and reveal the important issues it underscores.