There is no godlike external judge. They decide their own destinations, to one or the other of the Utopian or Dystopian states, to reflect the specific need of the spirit in question. Bantock then takes us through the dilemma and collection of each individual. It is here that his talent strikes one most forcibly, for each object is fully imagined and realized, then photographed. Every photographed object is visually dense, and clogged with meaning both for the fictional collector, the Curator and ourselves.
Every collection is odder than odd, and has a poignant story attached.
All these people have crippling character flaws, many had parents who either created or exacerbated these defects. The collections help them to assuage their pain, and in Purgatory they obsessively examine their collections, as if they were meditative objects, until the objects reveal their underlying purpose. As the Curator, himself a very flawed soul, comes to understand, collections are the method by which one takes in encrypted information from the collective unconscious. Through its omissions, a collection will point to the unresolved conflicts that still have to be breached in order that an individual might progress. We see all these collections, or some of them, in great detail.