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Canto 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Purgatorio, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Purgatory and the Heavenward Journey
Love, Sin, and God
Free Will
Spiritual Power vs. Earthly Power
Time
Summary
Analysis
As Dante emerges from the cloud of smoke, he sees visions of wrath, such as the hanging of Haman and of Lavinia’s mother. Then an angel removes the “P” of wrath from Dante’s forehead as he hears the song, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Night falls, and it’s too late to climb further, but Virgil explains that the next circle is where the sin of sloth—“the love of good […] when this falls short”—is purged.
Haman was a figure in the biblical story of Esther—Esther averted the killing of all Persia’s Jews, and the king’s corrupt adviser, Haman, was killed instead. Lavinia was a figure in Virgil’s Aeneid whose mother killed herself in rage after wrongly believing that Lavinia’s betrothed had been killed. Both of these are examples of anger’s deadly potential, in contrast to the meekness that Mary, Pisistratus, and Stephen displayed earlier in Dante’s visions.
Themes
Virgil takes the opportunity to discuss the nature of sin. Every created thing, he explains, possesses “love of mind” and “natural love.” Natural love is instinctual and can’t be blamed for anything. On the other hand, “mind-love” can go wrong in a few different ways—it can be aimed wrongly, it can be too vigorous, or it can lack vigor. In other words, as long as “mind-love” maintains its focus on “primal good” (God) and ensures that other things are of secondary importance to God, it can’t go wrong. On the other hand, “mind-love” goes wrong when it veers away from the primal good or progresses too quickly or too slowly towards it. In this sense, then, love “must be the seed” of both good deeds and misdeeds.
Virgil’s discourse here encapsulates Dante’s theory of love and sin. According to Virgil, sin is a matter of the human will gone wrong. What Dante calls “mind-love” refers to love that’s rooted in the rational will (as opposed to mere instinct). Love that’s rooted in the mind, or will, can be twisted into sin in a few different ways—but whether it’s a matter of misdirection, too little love, or too much love, each of these sins is ultimately a distortion of that foundational love.
Themes
Virgil elaborates on the three types of sin being purged in Purgatory. The first three types fall within the category of perverted love—that is, love of other people’s harm. This takes the form of pride, envy, and wrath, as he and Dante have already seen.
Virgil argues that a person sins when they mistakenly pursue self-love by harming others. In other words, even prideful, envious, and wrathful actions are misguided efforts to love self.
Themes
The next types of sin, Virgil explains, are those which “[run], in broken order, after good.” The first of these, sloth, is too slack in its pursuit of that good. The other types fall short of seeking the greatest good (God). As Dante will soon see, these include sloth, avarice, greed, and lust.
The remaining two types of sin derive from love, but they both fall short of the ultimate good, which is God, either by pursuing God with too little energy, or by becoming diverted by lesser goods.
Themes
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