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5 The old man cleared his throat as though beginning a lecture. "You know, the two greatest strengths, theologically speaking, of Dante's portrayal are the symbolic appropriateness of the punishments and the self-absorption of the damned." He took of his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt tail, then replaced them before continuing. "The trouble is, though, that the Commedia leaves the impression that these penalties are imposed by external authority, when in fact, hell is the intrinsic culmination of sin. When Sartre said 'hell is other people,' he was a fool. It's strictly a do-it-yourself project." Harry was only half-listening to the old man. He glared at the door again. Even if flames and pitchforks were on the other side, he suspected a few horned devils might be better company than this. A thought occurred to him. "If I'm not here physically, then neither are those walls." The old man raised a questioning eyebrow. Ignoring him, Harry walked straight toward a wall. And smack into it. Ouch. For not being real, it hurt. He rubbed his nose and looked at the old man, who covered his mouth with his hand, obviously trying not to laugh. After a moment, the old man shook his head. "Harry, you put those walls there. They're as solid as you made them. You couldn't honestly expect to walk right through them, could you?" That threw Harry for a loop, so he made no answer. Instead, he went back to pacing restlessly, muttering under his breath, "'I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space-- were it not that I have bad dreams.'" "Quite," said the old man. "Sit down, Harry. You're making me dizzy circling the room like that." Harry threw him a dark look and kept pacing. "You haven't been listening, have you?" "What?" "Stand still, for heaven's sake!" The old man's face was red with irritation. "Now, what's the difference between hell and purgatory?" Harry stopped pacing at the peculiar sensation that suddenly gripped him. He'd forgotten about purgatory. The tight feeling that made his noncorporeal insides do a flip, could it be hope? "Answer me, Harry." "The difference is, purgatory's finite. Not a, um, 'afterlife sentence'." "What's the purpose of purgatory?" "To exact the penalties of sin."
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