JOHN MILTON: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES

Americans tend to forget that they weren't the first to have a

revolution. The English had theirs more than 130 years before the

Thirteen Colonies rebelled. The English revolution consisted of a

bloody Civil War from 1642 to 1649, the beheading of King Charles I

in January 1649, and ten years of Puritan republican rule; it ended

finally with the restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II in

1660.

These events aren't merely the background to John Milton's life:

they were his life. We usually think of the war as a conflict

between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads. John Milton was a

Roundhead. The Cavaliers, or Royalists, supported the king and

tended toward Catholicism. They believed in an aristocracy that had

the right to special privileges, both in politics and in religion.

The Roundheads, or Puritans, believed in a wider distribution of

political and economic power and the right of every man to enjoy

direct access to God.

Milton was so strongly committed to the Puritan cause that he

accepted a government position under Oliver Cromwell, who ruled as

Lord Protector from 1649 to 1658. Milton was a radical Christian

individualist who objected strongly and vocally to all kinds of

organized religions which, he believed, put barriers between man and

God.

Milton was therefore a rebel because he identified himself with a

revolutionary cause. Paradise Lost, his masterpiece, is about

rebellion and its consequences.

One way of looking at the poem is to see it as Milton's working out

of his own position. Although many readers have thought that Milton

is really Satan, he probably saw himself as Abdiel, the angel who

refuses to go along with Satan. Milton was arrogant in his belief

that he understood the truth and had a duty to explain it for

everyone's good.

The revolution he lived through changed every aspect of English life.

When he was born in 1608, Shakespeare was still alive and Queen

Elizabeth was only five years dead. Her influence was still felt.

She had been an absolute monarch who regarded Parliament as a

necessary evil in order to get money for her projects. When Milton

died in 1674, Charles II reigned as constitutional monarch without

any real power except that granted to him by Parliament.

Milton's circumstances changed drastically during his life. His

family was reasonably well-to-do. They lived in London, which was

Milton's home for most of his life. His father was a scrivener, a

sort of combined notary and banker, who was wealthy enough to afford

private tutors for his son, then schooling at St. Paul's and

Christ's College, Cambridge University. Perhaps just as important

for Milton's development was the fact that his father was a musician

and composer. One of the most attractive features of Milton's poetry

is its marvelous musical qualities.

Since Milton had a small private income, he did not seek a profession

when he left Cambridge, but stayed at home writing poetry and

increasing his already amazing stock of knowledge. Some people have

said that Milton was one of the most learned men England has ever

known. He wrote poetry in Latin, Greek, and Italian, and read almost

all the literature surviving from the Greek and Roman periods. He

even read the Bible in Hebrew.

Just before the religious and political quarrels in England came to a

head, Milton went abroad for fifteen months, meeting and talking with

learned and famous men all over Europe. He met Galileo and looked

through his telescope, a fact Milton mentions more than once in

Paradise Lost.

When he returned, he put his learning and considerable rhetorical

force at the service of the Puritan cause. He wrote a series of

scorching political and religious pamphlets: he condemned bishops,

not only the Catholic ones but those of the Protestant Church of

England; defended the liberty of the press against censorship; even

advocated divorce. Many of the controversies in which he engaged

with heat and passion we find difficult to sympathize with now, but

Milton championed them with vigor and made himself not only well

known but also well hated.

The Civil War deeply affected his personal relations. His brother

Christopher adhered to the Royalist side. Milton married into a

Royalist family in 1642. He was swept off his feet by a fun-loving

seventeen-year-old, Mary Powell, whose family was originally the

source of Milton's private income (they had bought property from

Milton's father). The Powells kept Mary away from Milton, in Oxford

where King Charles I made his headquarters, and did not let her

travel to London to live with her husband until 1645.

By that time Milton had been extremely vocal publicly on the subject

of divorce (he even advocated polygamy at one time) and had had an

affair with a Miss Davies. His was a lively household, for he looked

after and educated his dead sister's three sons. (One of them became

Milton's biographer and the source of most of what we know about

Milton's life.) He took his duties as schoolmaster very seriously;

the boys were beaten if they did not learn their Latin and Greek

grammar. The civil disturbances flowed in and out of the house as

Milton's pamphlets provoked angry opposition and his supporters cried

for more.

Only six weeks after King Charles I's head rolled from his body

(Milton's friend Marvell wrote a famous ode on the occasion), Milton

became Latin secretary to Oliver Cromwell. It was his duty to

compose all the government's diplomatic correspondence in Latin, a

job probably concerned as much with public relations as with accurate

translation.

By this time Milton was blind, probably as a result of a cyst or

tumor of the pituitary gland. For the rest of his life he depended

on others to read to him and to write at his dictation. Because he

was not a patient man--he had the arrogance of a person conscious of

his talents--reading and writing for him was not easy. His daughters

objected to the tyranny he showed in demanding their time and then

complaining when they read incorrectly.

Mary died in 1652, leaving a blind man with three young daughters,

the eldest mentally retarded. Milton married again in 1657, but his

second wife, whom he called in a famous sonnet his "espoused saint,"

lived only fifteen months and died after giving birth to a daughter,

who also died. Milton married a third time, to a woman who looked

after him for the rest of his life and managed to bring order to a

household full of quarreling daughters, relatives, and visitors to

the famous writer.

In 1658, Oliver Cromwell had died, leaving England in the incompetent

hands of his son, Richard. The passions that had caused the Civil

War had cooled, and the king's son was asked to return, but on the

conditions which brought about the English constitutional monarchy.

The coming of Charles II meant the end of Milton's government job.

For a time he was in danger of his life and had to be hidden by

friends--one of his pamphlets had argued strongly in defense of

Charles I's beheading. Milton retired from public life and devoted

himself to the composition of Paradise Lost. By the time he had

finished dictating it to whoever got up early in the morning, two

other events had disturbed Milton's never very tranquil life. In

1665 he was forced by the Great Plague to leave London and live in a

Buckinghamshire village. A year later, in the Great Fire in 1666,

Milton lost the last piece of property he owned. He lived the last

few years of his life in considerable poverty, quite unlike the

comfort of his first pampered years in his father's house.

Paradise Lost (1667) is the culmination of his life's work. His

early poems, the exquisite "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Lycidas,"

the masque Comus, and the sonnets would all secure him a place among

the finest English poets. But it is Paradise Lost which makes it

impossible for you to ignore Milton. He wrote Paradise Regained

afterward, but it has nothing like the stature of Paradise Lost. (It

is not, as you might think, about Christ's sacrifice, but about his

three-day temptation in the desert by Satan.) Milton's final work,

Samson Agonistes, is a Greek drama as impressive as Paradise Lost in

everything except size.

Milton died in 1674, just after the second edition of Paradise Lost

appeared. The poem was for that time a modest best seller. It sold

1,300 copies in the first eighteen months and earned Milton a total

of ten pounds. By the end of the seventeenth century, the book had

gone through six editions, including one published in 1678 with large

engraved illustrations. It has never lost its status as a classic,

and it has never stopped being a source of controversy. People love

or hate Paradise Lost, for as many reasons as it has readers. The

poem has retained its interest because it deals with subjects that

will always concern us--good, evil, freedom, responsibility. And

because, like any great work of literature, it's exciting to read.

PARADISE LOST: THE PLOT

Paradise Lost follows the epic tradition in not telling the story

chronologically, with one event following another in the sequence in

which they occurred. Instead it begins at midpoint and tells the

rest in flashbacks (and flash-forwards). Before we consider the plot

as it actually unfolds in Paradise Lost, it is helpful to have in

mind an outline of the story in chronological order.

PARADISE LOST: THE CHRONOLOGICAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

God has three aspects, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost or

Holy Spirit. As creator, God the Father sets everything going, like

a clock, so that he knows what is to happen but does not interfere

with the running of it. In Heaven he is surrounded by angels

("angel" comes from a Greek word meaning "messenger"). When he

decides to announce the equal status with himself of his Son,

one-third of the angels rebel under the leadership of Lucifer, who

becomes Satan, the Prince of Hell. A terrible three-day War in

Heaven ends in the defeat of Satan by the Son, who drives all the

rebel angels down to Hell, which God has created for them out of

primal Chaos.

To replace the missing angels, God through his Son creates the World,

and he puts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise. Like the angels,

they have free will. They live in pleasure, with frequent visits

from the angels, but they must not touch two trees in the garden, the

Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Satan wants revenge on God for his defeat, so he tempts Eve to eat

fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. She in turn tempts her husband,

Adam. This is the original sin from which all mankind's troubles

flow. The life of pleasure is over: man must work and woman must

suffer childbirth pains. The two are driven from Paradise to make

their home in the rest of the World, comforted by the knowledge that

the Son will become man in a later generation and will die for their

sins.

Now we turn to the plot as Milton relates it in Paradise Lost.

PARADISE LOST: THE NARRATIVE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

Satan has been in Hell for nine days, lying on a burning lake where

he and his companions have been thrown by God and his angels. He

moans to his companion Beelzebub about their terrible fate, but he

resolves to continue his fight against God through other means.

He and Beelzebub raise themselves painfully from the lake and gather

the fallen angels on the shore, where they build a great hall called

Pandemonium. In it they hold a great council meeting about their

next move.

One of the leaders counsels open war. Two others oppose the idea,

saying they've had enough of God's fury and will make the best of it

in Hell. Satan tells them of a rumor he had heard in Heaven that

another kind of being was to be created. In order to find out how

this creature could be corrupted for their purposes, he volunteers to

go on a spying mission.

As he leaves, he meets Sin, who is his lover and daughter, and Death,

his son and grandson, who guard the gate. They let him out into

Chaos, the fundamental material of the universe from which God has

fashioned Hell and the World.

Meanwhile in Heaven God foretells what is to happen and asks which of

the angels will offer to die for man. The Son takes on the task and

is praised for his sacrifice.

Satan alights on the top of the World (the universe, not the earth)

and looks up into Heaven and down into the concentric spheres of the

planets. He flies down to the sun, where he asks directions of

Uriel, the angel who guards the sun.

As Satan watches Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise, Uriel flies

down to warn the angel Gabriel that Satan has deceived them both and

is on earth. Satan overhears Adam telling Eve that they are

forbidden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He conceals

himself until night, when he becomes a toad and sits beside Eve's

ear. Two guardian angels, Ithuriel and Zephon, find him and bring

him to Gabriel. Gabriel threatens to drag Satan in chains to Hell if

he's found in the garden again.

Eve tells Adam her terrible dream, induced by Satan. She dreamed

that she ate the fruit and became a goddess flying above the earth.

She is very frightened and needs Adam's comfort. When they go out to

their daily chores in the garden, they find that the archangel

Raphael has come to visit them.

In a very long flashback, Raphael tells Adam (Eve is sometimes there

and sometimes doing her housework) what happened before he was

created. He tells the story for a reason: he wants to warn Adam

against Satan, who, he feels sure, has some evil design in coming to

earth.

Satan was originally called Lucifer and was one of the highest angels

in the heavenly host. On the occasion of the Great Year, which comes

every 36,000 years, God proclaims his Son equal to him. Lucifer's

pride is so hurt that he draws away one-third of the angels with him

into the North, where they prepare to fight a war against God. One

of the number, Abdiel, is appalled at Satan's rebellion and refuses

to be part of it. He runs back to the Mount of God, where he finds

that the faithful angels already know about the rebellion and are

preparing for war.

The War in Heaven lasts three days. On the first day, the rebel

angels don't do well. They experience pain for the first time,

although their wounds are never fatal because they are immortal. On

the second day, they bring out cannons which they have built

overnight and introduce gunpowder into Heaven. At first the heavenly

host is bowled over, but they recover and throw hills and mountains

as if they were snowballs.

On the third day God sends out his Son in his war chariot. It is

soon over: the angels are driven over the edge of Heaven into Hell.

That brings us back to the point where the poem began.

Raphael continues the story, telling Adam about God's creation of the

earth. Adam reciprocates by telling Raphael about the making of Eve

from his own rib and his great love for her. Raphael cautions him

against worshipping her excessively and then leaves them in Paradise.

The next morning Eve suggests that they should work separately in

order to get more gardening done. Adam reluctantly allows this,

despite his misgivings. In the form of a serpent, Satan tempts Eve

to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, using the argument that he,

a beast, received the gift of speech after eating it and God hasn't

killed him. She finally eats the fruit and then persuades Adam to

eat some as well. Because he loves her so much and does not want to

be parted from her, he eats it.

The Fall has happened. Adam and Eve copulate like beasts and fall

asleep like drunkards. When they awaken they realize for the first

time that they are naked, and they begin to quarrel, furiously

reproaching each other.

The universe reacts with groans to the dreadful event. God sends

down the Son to judge Adam and Eve. Their happiness and immortality

are taken from them. Adam must work and Eve must suffer the pain of

childbirth, and both must die. The serpent will be punished by

always being the enemy of man.

Satan begins his return journey in what he thinks is triumph. At the

top of the World he meets Sin and Death, who have built a road

leading from the gate of Hell to the World. Satan joyfully shows

them their prey, waiting for them down on earth. He returns to

Pandemonium, where the fallen angels are waiting for him in council.

He announces his triumph, but they all immediately become snakes and

the entire hall is filled with hissing. Although they eventually

regain their shape, they must each year become snakes for a time to

remind them that Satan became a snake to deceive man.

As Sin and Death move into their new quarters, drooling at the

thought of feasts to come, God causes the angels to make the World as

it is now--with extremes of weather, seasons, and bad planetary

influences. Surveying the wreck of the beautiful World they have

known, Adam and Eve throw themselves on God's mercy.

He responds to their prayers and the Son's pleas for them by agreeing

that Death shall not strike them immediately, but they must leave the

Garden of Paradise. Michael, the warrior archangel, is sent down to

escort them out of Paradise into Eden and to leave a guard on the

gate so that no one can enter.

But Michael gives them some comfort. He shows Adam what is to happen

in the generations following, including Noah's flood, the descent

into Egypt, the coming into the Promised Land, and the incarnation of

God as Jesus Christ. Adam is greatly encouraged when he realizes

that the great blessing of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit are

possible for man only because of what he did. His sin is a "happy

fault," since ultimately it will bring so much good to man.

Calmer but apprehensive, Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Paradise.

As they walk away, they look back to see the fiery weapons of the

angels guarding the gate. They look forward to their new life.

PARADISE LOST: THE NARRATIVE STRUCTURE OF PARADISE LOST

The following schematic plan of the narrative structure of the poem

makes it easy for you to see the distribution of the events. Note

that the poem is divided into 12 books.

I. Hell. Satan rallies the fallen angels

II. Hell. The council in Pandemonium

III. Heaven. The council in Heaven

Limbo and the Sun. Satan's journey

IV. Paradise. Satan spies on Adam and Eve

V. Paradise. Raphael arrives

Flashback: War in Heaven

VI. Flashback: War in Heaven

VII. Flashback: Creation of the world

VIII. Flashback: Creation of Adam and formation of Eve

IX. Paradise. The Fall

X. Heaven. Judgment

Chaos. Sin and Death build bridge

Hell. Fallen angels turn into snakes

Paradise. Adam and Eve quarrel

XI. Paradise. Sentence on Adam and Eve

Flash-forward: The World until Noah's flood

XII. Flash-forward: The World to the second coming

Paradise. Adam and Eve leave for Eden

The characterization of Paradise Lost is peculiar. Only two

characters, Adam and Eve, are people. Even they are different from

us because they have not been born in the conventional way and

neither is a member of a family. We don't see them in relation to

other people because there aren't any.

All the other characters are immortal and have powers beyond our

human understanding. But to describe them Milton must use human

terms. That works to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of

others.

PARADISE LOST: SATAN

Is Satan the hero or the villain of Paradise Lost? That's the

question that has intrigued readers since the poem first appeared.

It's too easy to say that Milton intended him for a villain but he

turned out a hero. More probably Satan gets the benefit of the fact

that Milton has to use human terms to describe him. It is

easier--sad to say--to make absolute evil understandable than to do

the same for absolute good.

Satan is an endlessly intriguing character. You will not be able to

make up your mind about him even after you've read the poem and

written essays on him. You will find yourself using him to

characterize people you know about: "He's a bit like Satan in

Paradise Lost--unbelievably talented but throwing it all away because

he won't accept authority." Such people are fascinating and

attractive, but they're infuriating when they waste it all for what

they think is freedom.

All the main characters in Paradise Lost are concerned with freedom.

Those who understand true freedom know that it consists of obeying

God's will without question. (Abdiel is the best example--look at

the discussion of his character further on.) Those who do not

understand it think freedom means being free from someone else's will

and following your own. Satan is chief among them. He is so

offended by God's announcement of the Son's equality with him that he

wants to be free of what he calls "tyranny."

Satan's essential characteristic is deception. He deceives himself,

he deceives others. To trick the angel of the sun, Uriel, he changes

shape to become a polite young cherub eager to see God's creation.

When he approaches Adam and Eve, he changes into whatever animal will

get him close to them. He becomes a toad to squat by Eve's ear and

give her a nightmare. And of course he deceives Eve in the shape of

a serpent.

His seduction of Eve is a masterpiece of persuasion. He knows

exactly which buttons to push--her vulnerability to flattery, her

desire for power, her susceptibility to a logical argument. Milton

tells us that he summons up all the orator's art for this final push:

his speech is certainly a textbook model. To his talents as leader

and inventor, we can add the deception and polish of a Madison Avenue

advertising man.

When we last see Satan he has become the serpent whose shape he

borrowed to seduce Eve. There is little sense that he understands

the punishment he will eventually receive. He thinks he has won.

I am to bruise his heel;

His seed, when is not set, shall bruise my head:

A world who would not purchase with a bruise,

Or much more grievous pain?

(X, 498-501)

Has Satan won his fight against God? Or is it just not in his

character to understand his defeat?

PARADISE LOST: BEELZEBUB

Beelzebub, whose name during the Middle Ages meant simply "devil," is

Satan's second-in-command. He behaves like a foil for Satan,

allowing his leader to demonstrate his best qualities. Beelzebub is

quite content with his reflected glory.

PARADISE LOST: BELIAL

Belial appears twice in Paradise Lost, once when he advises the

angels not to fight again and a second time during the War in Heaven

when he makes bad puns with Satan about the cannon.

PARADISE LOST: MOLOCH

Moloch is the archetype of mindless force. He fought against Gabriel

and was split in two, but since he is immortal he soon recovered. In

the debate in Pandemonium he quite unreasonably counsels open war,

without much sense of how victory can be attained in view of the

recent devastating defeat. Where Belial is all charm and

acquiescence, Moloch is blind and pointless defiance.

PARADISE LOST: MAMMON

Mammon is the engineer of Pandemonium, the miner who finds the ore

for the golden budding. He is "the least erected spirit that fell"

(I, 679), because his mind is on money.

PARADISE LOST: OTHER DEVILS

Nisroc has a single speech, urging the rebel angels on the first

night of the War in Heaven to do something quickly because he can't

stand pain. Mulciber has no speeches. He is the architect of

Pandemonium: Many other devils are named as they slowly move from

the bunting lake to the shore for the military parade. They are all

false gods, those who seduced the Israelites away from God in the Old

Testament, or the classical gods of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

PARADISE LOST: THE TRINITY

Christianity is based on a mystic trinity, a three-in-one,

one-in-three godhead, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy

Ghost or Holy Spirit. All three have existed since the beginning of

time, but the Son is only revealed at the celebration of the Great

Year, and the Holy Spirit does not appear in Paradise Lost at all

except in a flash-forward to the time after the Ascension of Christ

when the Spirit is sent as a comforter to man. When speaking of

Paradise Lost, by "God" we generally mean God the Father, and "the

Son" means God the Son.

PARADISE LOST: GOD

Like Satan, God is a problem for readers of Paradise Lost. We like

Satan too much and God not enough. People have suggested that in

each case their characters are already given: we know God is good

and we know Satan is bad, so neither has to be shown in action doing

what is expected of him. But the truth remains that we'd rather have

Satan's company than God's.

He elevates the Son without preparing the angels for the news, and

indeed without any obvious reason, but that's his privilege. The

rest of the universe must adapt to him, not he to it.

He loses more than one-third of the angels to Satan. One critic has

said a loss of that size would make one question God's management

style. And there is a certain teasing quality to his actions: if he

could so easily order the fallen angels to be pushed out of Heaven,

why did he let the war go on for three days? It seems capricious.

But he has virtues: he is a just and merciful judge. He listens to

the Son's prayers for Adam and Eve and does not kill them, even

though that was the punishment for eating fruit from the Tree of

Knowledge. He does everything he can to warn Adam and Eve, sending

them Gabriel to guard them and Raphael to explain their danger to

them. And he is deeply proud of the Son and what he represents, love

of man.

PARADISE LOST: THE SON

As a character, the Son has an important function in Paradise Lost as

the exact opposite of Satan. He is put into parallel situations to

demonstrate right behavior when Satan demonstrates what is wrong. In

Book III, when we first meet the Son, he willingly takes on the job

of dying for mankind:

Behold me then, me for him, life for life,

I offer, on me let thine anger fall;

Account me man; I for his sake will leave

Thy bosom...

(III, 236-239)

Satan too has willingly taken on a courageous task, but he did it to

destroy mankind, to complete his revenge on God. The Son always

obeys God immediately, with a grace that shows his perfect freedom.

He is the executive branch and God the legislative branch of the

heavenly government. He can use the power of God, for example when

he rides out in his chariot and pushes the rebel angels out of

Heaven, but he doesn't abuse it.

His great characteristic is his special love for man. From the

moment that he accepts his position as the future redeemer, he

represents man's interests before God. When he judges Adam and Eve

after the Fall, he does so as "both judge and savior sent," and

immediately after pronouncing judgment he begins to look after them.

He gives them clothes made of the skins of beasts and shields them

from God's sight.

In the flash-forward in Book XII, we see the culmination of the Son's

devotion to man, when he is born, lives, and dies for man. To him

God gives the privilege of cleaning out Hell on the day of judgment,

when a new Heaven and a new earth are created.

The Son is not blandly acquiescent. He knows that the sacrifice he

will make for man is going to be painful beyond belief. He is quite

capable of reminding God that the force of man's fall will be felt by

him--"worst on me must light." The Son has dignity without coldness

and obedience without fawning. It is a great deal easier to like him

than God, for his function in the Trinity is to be man's side of God.

PARADISE LOST: RAPHAEL

Raphael is the archangel who spends the most time with Adam and Eve

and therefore with us. He comes down in Book V and doesn't return to

Heaven until the end of Book VII. He is a magnificent figure with

six pairs of wings which drape around him like a many-colored robe.

He walks in great dignity to meet Adam and then acts as a gracious

guest, obviously enjoying the food and complimenting Eve on it.

Raphael is a great teacher and storyteller. He explains everything

that Adam wants to know--sometimes a little more than we want to

know. Through his eyes we see the War in Heaven and the creation.

PARADISE LOST: MICHAEL

Michael is the warrior archangel. He leads the heavenly forces in

the War in Heaven, with Gabriel as his second-in-command. It is

Michael who engages in single combat with Satan, challenging him

first in a speech where he threatens to send him to Hell. In their

battle, which is like a conflict between two planets in its enormous

scope, Michael wounds Satan with his great two-handed sword. It

brings the fight to an end, but Satan soon recovers.

God chooses Michael to carry out the judgment that Adam and Eve must

leave the Garden of Paradise. Adam understands the significance of

the choice as soon as he sees him: Michael is armed, dressed in

military splendor. He has come to carry out a sentence, although

with grace and mercy.

PARADISE LOST: GABRIEL

Gabriel has the somewhat thankless job of guarding Paradise. It is

thankless because Satan slips by Gabriel and the guards twice. After

the first occasion, when Gabriel, Ithuriel, and Zephon confront

Satan, Gabriel is willing to fight him, but God forbids with a sign

in the sky.

PARADISE LOST: URIEL

Uriel is the angel who guards the sun. Satan deceives him in the

form of a little cherub asking his way to the new creation, earth.

Despite the fact that Uriel is one of the seven angels closest to the

throne of God and is known to have sharper sight than any other

angel, he cannot perceive the deception. This is not a defect of

character but a theological condition. Only God can see through

hypocrisy--neither men nor angels have that power. Uriel speaks with

warm encouragement to the young apprentice angel.

PARADISE LOST: ABDIEL

This is the character Milton identified with. Abdiel is a rebel

against rebels, the one angel who realizes before it is too late that

Satan's cause is wrong. His name means "servant of God," and that he

proves himself to be.

He stands in the middle of the rebel angels and tells Satan he is

wrong. Satan does not understand true freedom--the service of God

who made him--but calls it tyranny. Abdiel will not hear God

blasphemed (a religious term meaning "insulted"). His impassioned

speech shows a clear understanding of a correct relationship to God.

It makes us wonder why he came to be among the one-third of the

angels who followed Satan to his headquarters in the North.

He receives the praise he deserves from God:

Well done, thou hast fought

The better fight, who single has maintained

Against revolted multitudes the cause

Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms

(VI, 29-32)

The praise from God and his own conviction of right make Abdiel bold

enough to challenge Satan on the first day of the war. He steps out

from the army and addresses Satan as a "fool." Satan attempts to mock

him and the others by calling them lazy: they'd rather take the

easier path of serving God with "feast and song" instead of seeking

their freedom.

Abdiel's last speech is the best exposition of "true freedom" in the

poem: it is freedom to serve the highest, as God and nature both

command. It is not freedom to seek to exercise your own will, but

servitude to yourself. Satan is welcome to reign in Hell; Abdiel

will serve "in Heaven God ever blest." And with that he strikes the

first blow of the War in Heaven. It is his privilege as the champion

of truth.

PARADISE LOST: OTHER ANGELS

Ithuriel finds Satan squatting next to Eve's ear while she sleeps.

As he touches the toad with his spear, it immediately becomes Satan.

A slanging match follows. Zephon accompanies Ithuriel on the

mission, and together they bring back Satan to Gabriel. Zophiel is

the cherub who sees the approach of the rebel army on the second day

of the War in Heaven and warns the heavenly host.

PARADISE LOST: ADAM

The clue to Adam's character is his relationship to Eve. It ought to

be his relationship to God, but it isn't--and that fact causes Adam's

fall. Adam has to argue with God to get Eve (although it is only a

mate he seeks at that point). When he sees her he falls so deeply in

love with her that everything good seems embodied in her. He knows

that Eve is not as close to God as he is, and he realizes that it is

her beauty that he worships. Love is supreme and love "leads up to

Heaven."

It is for love and for Eve that Adam eats the apple. As soon as he

sees her with a branch from the Tree of Knowledge in her hand, he

knows what has happened--as she does not. In his soliloquy, he makes

his decision:

for with thee

Certain my resolution is to die;

How can I live without thee?

(IX, 906-908)

So his fall is different from Eve's. He does not directly fall to

temptation, but to his desire to be with her, no matter what happens.

God the Son puts his finger on the matter right away: "Was she thy

God, that thou didst obey / Before his voice?" (X, 145-146). Adam

has upset the proper order of things. Nothing must come before God.

He certainly learns from experience, although too late. Before the

Fall, he allows Eve to persuade him that it is all right for her to

work in the Garden separately from him--the fatal decision. But

afterward he accepts neither of her suggestions--that they not have

children and that they commit suicide.

Following his initial despair after the Fall, Adam's character

improves. He forgives Eve with the sensible idea that they must now

be each other's comfort in a world changed from the Paradise to the

kingdom of Sin and Death. It is Adam who suggests that they should

plead for God's mercy. He asserts his leadership by insisting that

Eve leave him alone to speak with Michael. And it is to Adam

alone--Eve sleeps under a benign drug--Michael reveals the future.

Adam's relationship to the angels who visit him from Heaven is always

courteous and correct, for he knows that he is inferior to them in

the hierarchy established by God. He has no difficulty with that

position. It seems as if Adam was made to be a follower rather than

a leader until the Fall brought him face to face with his

responsibility.

Finally he has learned. His last speech, as Michael points out, is

"The sum / Of wisdom." In it Adam says that it is best to love and

fear God; to depend on him; to work against evil, content with small

victories; to stand up for the sake of truth, no matter what it

costs; and to die understanding Death is the gate to life.

This is very hard won wisdom. But Adam is the first man, and like

all of us after him, he can only learn through bitter experience.

PARADISE LOST: EVE

Looking at Eve through twentieth-century eyes, we find it difficult

to separate her character from our feelings of indignation about the

role she is given. Certainly Milton was sexist; he could not be

otherwise given his times and his religion. He has to tell a story

that was itself sexist, because it is a myth with a social purpose.

Poor Eve suffers from Milton's time and place. She is the "weaker,"

she was made not directly in God's image but from part of Adam's

body, she must worship God through Adam, not in her own right. She

is beautiful, yet her beauty is her downfall when the serpent

flatters her, and it is downgraded in value by both Adam and Michael.

When left to herself she acts in no way that could be faulted. But

it is Eve's ear, not Adam's, into which Satan pours the bad dream.

And the effects of it cause her to argue with Adam that she should go

separately to work in the garden. (There is no evidence that she had

ever suggested this before the dream.) And of course it is Eve who is

tempted by the serpent.

Her behavior during the first exchange with the serpent can't be

blamed. This is the first time she has ever heard another creature

speak except for Adam and those angelic but long-winded visitors.

She listens with natural curiosity, but when they get to the tree,

she says they might have spared themselves the walk. There is no

thought in her mind of doing anything forbidden.

What convinces her are Satan's arguments. They are based on reason,

and reason is a deceiver in Milton's theology. Right reason is the

following of God's law absolutely. False reason is man's own logic.

To trust to logic is to put your powers ahead of God's--the

fundamental error. We have to sympathize with Eve in trusting her

own reason. She's only human.

Her reactions after the Fall make that very clear. She wants Adam to

eat the fruit not for his own benefit but for a self-serving reason:

if she dies, Adam will get another Eve. But she never says that to

him. And she puts the blame squarely on him for allowing her to

suffer temptation:

Being as I am, why didst not thou the head

Command me absolutely not to go?

(IX, 1156-1157)

The quarrel is only too true to life.

Yet it is Eve who knows how to get out of the quarrel and on with the

rest of their lives. She falls at Adam's feet, even though he has

repulsed her first effort at reconciliation. Her submission wins him

over. Like Adam, she has become sadder, wiser, and more mature after

the Fall. She is very unhappy at being forced to leave Paradise.

It's a bit like a corporate wife being told that she has to leave her

home when her husband is transferred. But just like the wife, Eve

realizes the truth of Michael's remark that her home is wherever her

husband is.

When Michael prepares to tell Adam the future history of mankind, his

descendants, he puts Eve to sleep with a drug. Yet when she wakes

she knows all that has been said and is comforted by the thought that

her "promised seed," the son of the Virgin Mary, the "second Eve,"

will redeem mankind. This symbolizes a different way of

knowing--woman's intuition, direct instinctive knowledge rather than

explanation and reasoning. It is another sign that "women are

different."

Eve's last words refer to her consciousness of guilt for "my wilful

crime." You might think Eve gets a bum rap. At least reflect that we

no longer think that she represents the truth about women.

PARADISE LOST: SIN AND DEATH

Sin and Death are not characters but allegorical figures. That means

they do what their names say they do. Whenever you see them, try to

translate what they are doing into its meaning. Sin was born from

Lucifer's head at the moment of his rebellion; this means that Sin

begins with rebellion against just authority. Death was born as a

result of an incestuous relationship between Sin and Satan; the

meaning of this should be obvious.

Sin and Death keep the gates of Hell. When Sin opens the gate, it

can never be shut again (another moral for us all). The mother and

son together build the road from Hell to earth, so that while they

are causing trouble with all the creatures there, the devils from

Hell can easily travel to earth--and the condemned souls from earth

will easily slide down to Hell. One of the horrible figures who keep

running in and out of Sin's womb, Discord, begins to make food for

her incestuous father Death as soon as they all get to earth.

We still use allegorical figures today. Our best-known one is

Liberty, the statue in New York harbor. All her features, especially

the lamp she carries, are meant to symbolize the freedom offered by

this country.

PARADISE LOST: SETTING

There is a built-in problem in talking about the setting of Paradise

Lost: words we normally use, like "world," "universe," and "earth,"

have different meanings in the poem. Let's take a tour of the cosmos

so that you can see the differences.

The largest frame of action is what we would call the

universe--everything imaginable. Looking at it schematically, Heaven

is at the top and Hell at the bottom. Both extend infinitely, Heaven

upwards and Hell downwards. Between the two, filling all available

space, is Chaos, which, like its name, is shapeless and confused.

Chaos must have been the original stuff from which the other places

were formed because Chaos (the name for the ruler as well as the

place) complains that he has lost territory when God made Hell, and

then lost more when God made a home for man.

Hanging in the center of the cosmos is what Milton calls "the World."

We loosely understand by that word the earth on which we live, but

Milton means what we call the universe. Milton's World is a sphere

made up of ten concentric circles. The earth is at the center. Some

of the circles revolving round it contain the planets (including the

sun), the heavens, and a watery firmament.

The World (our universe) hangs from Heaven by a golden chain. At the

top there is an opening, where three directions converge: standing

at the opening (as Satan does in Book III), you can look up the

golden stairway to Heaven, down through the concentric circles to

earth, and out into Chaos. When Sin and Death build their bridge

across Chaos, they begin it at the Gate of Hell and end it at the

opening to the World.

The earth for most of the poem does not look like anything we see

now. The features that characterize it--seasons, weather, mountains,

and valleys--are all brought into the world after the Fall. Angels

are sent by God to turn the axis of the earth off dead center, thus

introducing changes in climate and length of day. In Paradise, all

kinds of animals and plants live together, without distinction of

habitat. Flowers bloom constantly, and roses have no thorns.

Paradise is the name for the garden where Adam and Eve live. In the

Bible, their home is called the Garden of Eden. Milton has

interpreted this strictly. Paradise is the garden part of Eden.

Eden is a land usually identified with Mesopotamia, the region

between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. But there is a tradition

that Paradise was an island in the South seas, so Milton has it moved

there during the flood.

The garden, Paradise, is watered by rivers that run under the

boundaries (guarded by the angels) and come up as fountains. It is a

real garden to the extent that it needs pruning and its fruits must

be harvested, but there doesn't seem to be any weeding to be done and

there is no mention of snails.

The important point to remember is that the entire setting is

imaginary. The familiar terms should not mislead you. You are

looking not at a landscape, but into Milton's mind.

PARADISE LOST: THEMES

Here is a list of the themes in Paradise Lost. They will all be

studied more extensively in the discussion of the poem.

1. JUSTIFYING THE WAYS OF GOD TO MAN

The poem explains an entire theology. It is about the coming of sin

into the world through the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan after

his defeat in Heaven. If Milton has justified the ways of God to

man, all our questions about our relationship to God should be

answered by implication from the poem. The success of the

explanation of course depends on whether you accept the Christian

world view--even whether you accept Milton's special brand of

Christian individualism. The task of explaining an entire physical

and moral system is not one we attempt today. We divide our systems,

believing that the world is too complex for a single theory to

explain.

2. GOD'S OMNIPOTENCE, OMNISCIENCE, AND FREE WILL

The poem insists that all events are brought about by choice. Satan

chooses to rebel, Adam and Eve choose to eat the apple, knowing the

consequences. Every man and angel has free will. At the same time,

God knows everything that is to happen. But his foreknowledge has no

effect on choice--the universe is like a clock God winds up and sets

going: each of its parts performs without interference from God.

You will keep puzzling over this explanation throughout the poem. It

sometimes seems that God is callous about his creation because if he

is omnipotent, why doesn't he stop evil from happening? On the other

hand, perhaps God does not have the power to stop the clock or alter

it once it's got going. In that case, there must be something even

more powerful than God which programs him. It's an endlessly

fascinating question. The poem will give you lots of examples for a

continuing argument.

3. INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY

Everyone makes his or her own decisions. That means no one can blame

anyone else for what happens. But there is a great deal of blaming

in the story. Only when people accept responsibility for their own

choices do they find peace within themselves and forgiveness and

mercy from God.

4. THE TRUE NATURE OF FREEDOM

True freedom is total submission to God's will and acceptance of what

he wants in the world. It is freedom from self and self-will. Satan

symbolizes the wrong kind of freedom, rebellion against just

authority. You are free when you understand where you fit in

relationship to God and in the hierarchy of nature.

5. REASON

The highest exercise of man's reason is to understand and love

God--and to trust him. This means accepting what may seem illogical

to human reason. It also means not trusting human reason. Human

reason may deceive because it is limited and cannot necessarily

penetrate God's purposes, which are beyond logic. It was perfectly

reasonable for Eve to conclude that she would not die because the

serpent had not died when he ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.

But she was limiting fallible human reason. She ought to have gone

beyond the logical argument and trusted true reason--God's word.

6. THE HIERARCHICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE UNIVERSE

Everything is arranged in an order, beginning with God at the highest

point of all, going down through the angels to man, and from man down

to beasts and plants. Each part of the hierarchy has its own order:

in Heaven, the angels are lower than God and must take their orders

from him. On earth, Adam is closer to God than Eve, and she must

take her orders from him. The poem is about the violation of the

order, first by Satan, then by Eve, and then by Adam, who puts Eve

ahead of God.

7. HISTORY HAS A PURPOSE AND AN END

Although devastating in its results, the Fall is only part of a

historical process. Adam's fall leads through many generations to

the incarnation of God the Son as Jesus Christ. His fall is

therefore a "happy fault" ("felix culpa") because it leads to the

fulfillment of God's purpose. When Christ dies for man, he begins

the process of redemption which eventually leads to the Last Judgment

and the Second Coming. This will be the end of history, for then

there will be a new Heaven and a new earth.

PARADISE LOST: SOURCES

The sources of Paradise Lost are Milton's voluminous reading. The

story of Adam and Eve and the temptation comes from the first few

chapters of the Book of Genesis.

The story of the War in Heaven does not occur in one single place.

References to it occur in the Book of Revelation, the last book in

the New Testament. Other places where hints of a great war and of

Hell are to be found include the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament

and what are called the apocryphal books of the Old Testament.

Milton also adds some details from the Book of Ezekiel, also in the

Old Testament.

The vast majority of the allusions and references are to the Bible

and to the Greek and Latin classics. There are also references to

Arthurian legend, Italian epics, and earlier English literature,

especially the work of Spenser, the author of the moral epic The

Faerie Queene.

PARADISE LOST: STYLE: THE POETIC METER

The meter of Paradise Lost is iambic pentameter, the meter in which

Shakespeare wrote his plays. It is often called "blank verse"

because it doesn't rhyme. Each line consists of five heavy stresses

and five minor stresses. In theory a line should read like this:

da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum

It happens to be the almost natural rhythm of the English language,

which is why it is easy to read blank verse when you forget your fear

of poetry.

Very few lines are strictly regular in the meter. Even the famous

first line reverses the stress in at least two places, where da-dum

is replaced by dum-da and dum-dum. It also has one more syllable

than the ten prescribed by theory.

English poetic meter is not the simple matter of counting feet that

is often taught. It is a very complex interaction of stress, length,

and quality of sound. It is better to forget the complications and

read the poetry as naturally as possible. You will then be able to

appreciate how Milton varies his rhythm and the musical quality of

the words to fit what he wants to say. Read it out loud whenever you

can, especially in the places where the speeches alternate like those

in a play.

NOTE: HOW TO QUOTE POETRY WHEN WRITING A PAPER Although you can

ignore the line endings when you read the verse (and you should do so

to make the reading move faster), please don't do that when you quote

in an essay or paper. For quotations of two lines or less, you may

run the quotation along within your paragraph, but then you must use

quotation marks and slash marks to indicate where one line ends and

the next begins: "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit / Of

that forbidden tree...," for example.

When you are quoting three lines or more, put them separately from

your own writing. Don't use quotation marks, and copy the lines

exactly as you see them on the page:

Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe.

With loss of Eden...

If you need to indicate where the quotation comes from, use the Roman

numeral for the number of the book and Arabic numbers for the lines.

Put all this into parentheses, and place it after the final

punctuation. For example, the last line of the quotation above would

look like this:

With loss of Eden...

(I, 1-4)

PARADISE LOST: BOOK I

The first book (1) introduces the theme of the entire poem, (2)

introduces us to Satan and the fallen angels, and (3) tells us that

we are reading an epic poem. In order to put himself in the epic

tradition of The Odyssey and The Aeneid, Milton uses devices like the

invocation, epic similes, and catalogs. They'll be explained as we

come to them. They are used heavily in the first two books to

establish the credentials of Paradise Lost as an epic, then they

occur less often in the later books.

This book begins, as they all do, with Milton's prose summary, "The

Argument." He is using the word in the sense of "subject matter," not

as we do meaning a verbal clash. You will see "argument" used again

with this meaning in line 24. The prose summary tells you the story,

so you can use it as reference.

In Book I we meet one of the story's main characters, Satan. Whether

he is the hero or the villain is one of the questions you'll face

continually in Paradise Lost. It is obvious from this first book

that Satan has qualities we all admire. He is a fearless leader,

eloquent, inspiring, resourceful, even sympathetic to his followers'

sufferings. Is he portrayed with these virtues because Milton wants

to show us how we can be deceived by heroism? Have you found

yourself attracted to "friends" who weren't good for you?

It is (unfortunately!) easy to identify with Satan when we first meet

him in the imaginary landscape of Hell. We have all felt angry,

bitter, and vengeful after a brush with authority. Perhaps you've

received an F in a class where you thought you would pass, or gotten

a speeding ticket when you were sure you weren't observed. These are

small-scale personal grievances, but your feelings are intense.

Satan's grievances result from conflict with God and have universal

consequences. He wants to strike back at God for throwing him into a

stinking pit of darkness, and he's going to do it by dragging us all

down there with him.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-25. THE INVOCATION

Epics traditionally begin with a call for divine help in the task the

poet has set for himself. Classical epic poets usually asked for the

help of the Muses, the daughters of Zeus who watched over the arts.

But Milton's muse is "Heavenly," Urania, who inspired Moses, the

author of the Biblical Book of Genesis.

Milton wants to remind us that Paradise Lost is not only an epic, it

is a Christian epic, and therefore--in his eyes--superior to its

heathen predecessors. Milton wants to "soar above the Aonian Mount,"

that is, to exceed the accomplishment of the classical Muses. He

will do this because of his "great Argument," his subject, which is

nothing less ambitious than explaining the ways of God to men. Keep

asking yourself whether Milton manages to do so. If he doesn't

succeed, what has he explained?

PARADISE LOST: LINES 25-83. THE SCENE IN HELL

The Holy Spirit is asked to begin the story by naming the cause of

mankind's fall. That of course is Satan, the first character we

meet. Milton has told us in the Argument that the poem "hastes into

the midst of things," because this too is a classical storytelling

device. We begin with Satan in Hell nine days after he lost the War

in Heaven, which would be just about the midpoint of the story if it

were told chronologically. We shall go forward and backward to hear

how and why he rebelled and fought against God.

This kind of storytelling is quite familiar to us from flashbacks in

movies, plays, and TV drama. In fact, the first book of Paradise

Lost is the dramatic hook which gets you interested, so that you will

want to find out what happened and why. In the flickering flames of

a burning lake (a contradiction which symbolizes the chaos of Hell)

we barely see Satan as he slowly becomes conscious of what has

happened to him and how far he is now from Heaven, where he had hoped

to reign.

He is accompanied by a vast number of followers, one-third of all the

angels in Heaven. Next to him is Beelzebub, his trusted

second-in-command. Beelzebub hasn't got the same fire for revenge as

Satan. He expresses the despair which you might expect from a

defeated angel who has been banished forever from Heaven.

Nevertheless he is always loyal to Satan and accepts his leadership

without question.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 84-191. SATAN AND BEELZEBUB

Satan's defiance and his desire for revenge overcome his pain. At

first he seems dismayed as he addresses Beelzebub, once like him

among the brightest angels and now "O how fallen!" But as soon as he

speaks of God, "He with his thunder," Satan's rage overtakes his

sympathy. He will not repent or change. "All is not lost" while he

has his "unconquerable will / And courage never to submit or yield."

He will continue the war, either by force or by guile. Because we

know the story of Adam and Eve and how Satan will corrupt them,

"guile" is like a wink at a knowing audience.

You may think that Beelzebub takes a more realistic view of the

fallen angels' terrible situation because he thinks further rebellion

is futile. He regrets what has happened. The fallen angels may feel

their strength undiminished, but perhaps God has left them that

strength only so that they can work as slaves in Hell and has allowed

them their immortality so that they can feel acutely their eternal

punishment.

Satan is a good leader who knows when his subordinates need to be

jerked out of what looks like self-pity. "To be weak is miserable"

he declares, as he sets out a program of action: everything that God

does must be opposed, even if God tries to bring good out of evil:

To do aught good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight.

Then he draws Beelzebub's attention to the fact that God has recalled

his forces and left the fallen angels to suffer in Hell. Things now

seem calm enough for them to leave the lake and hold a meeting of

their troops on a "dreary plain," to plot their revenge strategy.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 192-375. THE EPIC SIMILES.

As Satan prepares to rise, Milton gives us the first physical

description we have of the Archenemy. To do this, he makes use of

another classical device, the epic simile.

NOTE: EPIC SIMILES A simile is a comparison of one thing or idea to

another; an epic simile is an extended comparison, often taking up

several lines, in which the epic poet elaborates so much that

additional ideas are brought in. Epic similes often occur in

clusters, as they do here. Satan is so big that his trunk covers

"many a rood," a rood being about a quarter acre. He is as big as

the Titans and Giants who rebelled against Jove (Zeus), the supreme

god of classical mythology. But it isn't a simple comparison of

size--like Satan, the Titans and Giants were rebels against

authority.

Giants and Titans aren't enough to emphasize Satan's size; he's also

like a whale. Again this isn't a simple statement. This whale, like

Satan, is a deceiver, because he seems to be an island and attracts a

lost sailor to anchor in his hide. We can imagine what happens when

the whale goes down. This story would have been well known to

Milton's first readers, who had been brought up on "bestiaries,"

descriptions of animals in terms of the moral lessons they provide

for mankind.

As Satan raises his huge head, Milton explains that he can move

because God grants him free will: "Left him at large to his own dark

designs." This is an important theme throughout Paradise Lost. (In

Book III, God explains the doctrine of free will in his first

speech.) God created all beings capable of action--angels and

men--with free will, so that they can choose what to do.

However--and this is the difficult part for us to accept--God knows

their choices in advance, as he knows everything. You will have to

make up your mind as you read the poem whether you find this a

plausible explanation.

What Milton explains here is that God could have made it impossible

for Satan ever to lift his head from the burning lake's surface, but

instead he allowed Satan to follow his own course of action. Because

Satan chooses to continue the battle through deceit, God has a chance

to shower "infinite goodness, grace, and mercy" on man when Satan has

ruined him.

Satan raises himself from the lake and with Beelzebub begins a flight

to solid ground. The landscape of Hell looks like the devastation

caused by an earthquake or volcanic eruption. More important than

its physical appearance is Satan's reaction to the scene. He doesn't

waste much time bemoaning the horrors of his kingdom. Hell may be

miserable, but it is Satan's realm, where he is second to no one, not

even God.

In any case, Hell and Heaven are mental states: "The mind is its own

place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."

This is a familiar psychological truth. We all know someone who

retains self-confidence and serenity in spite of failure and bad

luck, while others are never happy despite all kinds of advantages.

Satan is beginning to emerge as a complex character. He has a

rational understanding of his situation, for he certainly brought

about his own Hell. He is apparently quite determined to think of it

as his own personal Heaven. It's interesting to think about Satan as

a reverse God, especially when you see him acting responsibly, as he

does now, leading his unhappy followers to the shore. His physical

stature is impressive: how do you feel about his moral qualities?

Can evil have aspects of good?

PARADISE LOST: LINES 376-520. THE CATALOG OF FALLEN ANGELS

For the listing of the fallen angels, Milton needs further help from

his muse, the Holy Spirit. The listing is like a panoramic shot of

the huge forces moving from lake to shore, with faces in the crowd

picked out as Milton comments on them.

While dramatic, the list is also another device of classical epic.

In The Iliad there is a famous catalog of ships, and in The Aeneid

there are catalogs of the armies and their leaders who help Aeneas.

These catalogs make the scale of the epic enormous: by naming

everyone, the poet gives the impression that anybody who was anybody

was there.

Don't try to follow every name in the catalog of fallen angels. To

do so will only get you lost in a maze of Old Testament history.

Instead, read parts of the catalog aloud to appreciate how impressive

the names sound.

But you should know why the fist is there. It shows that Milton had

none of our multicultural appreciation for other religions or other

mythologies beside the Christian one. In the later history of

mankind, recorded in the Old Testament, the fallen angels become the

false gods who turned the Israelites from the true God. The list

includes the Egyptian gods and the gods of Greek and Roman mythology,

"the Ionian gods" (line 508), who were also worshipped by people who

Milton thinks ought to have known better. For him, all other deities

except the Christian God are companions of Satan.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 522-669. SATAN REVIEWS THE FALLEN ANGELS

Satan shows us again just how inspiring a leader he can be. He first

"gently raised / Their fainting courage and dispelled their fears."

Then he orders a military review with a brass band ("Sonorous metal

blowing marital sounds") and a parade of all the divisions with their

banners flying.

He proudly surveys the numberless army, by the side of which any

other army would look like the pygmies fighting the cranes (line

575). A group of epic similes stresses the army's size: it is

greater than the forces on both sides in the Trojan War, greater than

any forces King Arthur or Charlemagne could command.

As he looks at the army (the similes have made it seem a cause for

pride), Satan chokes with tears. His first few words express his

affection and sympathy for his followers. How could such a "united

force of gods" be defeated?

He soon talks himself out of weakness as he inspires his followers

with hopes of regaining Heaven. They can't do it directly, since

they obviously underestimated God's forces before. Instead he hints

that a new world with beings equal to the angels is about to be

created. There may be the chance to continue the fight through

guerilla warfare.

The speech is so successful that the fallen angels flourish their

swords and bang them against their shields as they hurl defiance at

Heaven.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 670-798. THE BUILDING OF PANDEMONIUM

NOTE: We use the word "pandemonium" to mean any kind of confused,

noisy gathering. Here we see where the word comes from and what it

really means. It is a house for all devils, "pan" being the Greek

word for "all" and "demon" the Greek for devil.

Summoned by heralds and trumpets, the enormous army surges toward

Pandemonium, which has been designed by Mulciber with materials mined

by Mammon, the god of gold. Milton reminds us that angels are

creatures with wings by using an epic simile that compares them to

bees assembling outside their hive. At a signal, they all shrink so

that they can fit into Pandemonium. They now look like pygmies or

the fairies that appear to drunken peasants on their way home at

night. The association suggests the deceitful nature of the fallen

angels.

But the leaders of the fallen angels do not shrink. They are meeting

privately in another part of Pandemonium to decide their strategy.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-298. THE DEBATE IN PANDEMONIUM

As suits his position, Satan presides over the debate from a high

throne, "that bad eminence." But the debate is really a setup. Three

fallen angels (later, the gods who deceive the Israelites into

worshipping them instead of the true God) offer what you might think

are reasonable alternative strategies; but Beelzebub, like a

well-trained staff officer, brings out the plan which we know will be

agreed on, and then Satan takes on the job of carrying it out.

Moloch blusters that open war is preferable to remaining in Hell. We

can't be worse off than we are, he says. If God wins again, we will

be put out of our misery: God will "reduce / To nothing this

essential, happier far / Than miserable to have eternal being." But

it may be impossible even for God to annihilate them because they may

be divine and therefore immortal (lines 99-100). In that case, they

already know the worst.

Belial is also unsure whether as fallen angels they are immortal, but

he makes a different argument. If we can be annihilated, why take

the chance? We might not be because God might not even give us that

relief. And it is certainly better to have some "intellectual being

/ Those thoughts that wander through eternity" than nothing. War

against God will not only risk annihilation, it will also hurt their

chances of getting back into God's grace through good behavior (lines

208-213).

Mammon's position is much less subtle than Belial's and more directly

opposed to Moloch's. Instead of continuing to fight against God, let

us make our kingdom here. There are plenty of resources, as Mammon

knows because in Book I he mined the materials to build Pandemonium.

Hell could eventually become a place rivaling the magnificence of

Heaven; the torments they now feel will diminish with time.

Do you find any of these arguments convincing? It's obvious that

Milton despises Belial, who "Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful

sloth." This comment, addressed directly to us, may help us to

understand one of the reasons why Satan seems attractive whether

Milton intended him to or not. Satan is active. He doesn't just

accept his fate, he thinks of ways to change it.

The other fallen angels like Moloch's idea best, fearing another

defeat. But it isn't what the leadership wants.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 299-505. SATAN'S MISSION

Beelzebub, not approving of Mammon's speech or the applause it

receives, quickly dismisses its arguments. God is not going to let

the fallen angels make a home for themselves in Hell--he designed it

as a punishment, and it will never be otherwise. On the other hand,

open war is hopeless because God will win again.

What about something easier? Beelzebub elaborates the rumor of the

creation of man, mentioned briefly by Satan in Book I. These

creatures are equal to angels--perhaps they were intended to fill the

gap caused by the expulsion of the rebellious one-third--but they

will receive God's special favors. At least the place should be

investigated, in hopes of finding a weak spot in God's armor, where

he can be annoyed if not defeated. Some trick may deliver the new

creation into their hands, so that the inhabitants of earth may join

the fallen angels in Hell.

Satan puts the finishing touch on this managed debate by praising

their judgment in adopting the plan he had in mind already. And then

he raises the essential question: who is going to be the spy?

Their cowardly silence gives Satan his chance. He alone will take on

the task of spying on God's new creation. Such an assignment best

fits a leader, who should be prepared to take on any danger. A

leader can't accept the honors due his position without also

accepting the hazards.

He stands up and ends the debate right there, knowing very well that

some other fallen angel would try to claim the difficult job, thus

detracting from Satan's glory. They all bow to him and praise him

for his heroism, prompting an epic simile in which their harmony is

compared to a beam of sun lighting up the evening sky after a storm.

Milton now adds his own comment: how shameful it is that devils can

agree among themselves but men cannot (lines 496-505). Milton had

lived through a civil war and all the horrors of revenge when Charles

II reestablished the monarchy. There were wars in Germany and France

almost continually during his lifetime. If only mankind would unite

against its common enemy, "hellish foes," and stop destroying each

other! We can heartily agree, for things are no better three hundred

years after Paradise Lost.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 506-628. LIFE IN HELL

The debate has broken up and its results have been proclaimed

throughout Hell. The fallen angels are now free to go about their

normal pursuits, while Satan prepares for his journey to the World.

The angels practice sports, race horses and chariots, and conduct

military exercises, even tearing up the soil in their more strenuous

efforts. Some are musicians, and they manage to produce songs so

beautiful that they "Suspended Hell and took with ravishment / The

thronged audience." Milton was a musician and his father a composer;

music could never be evil to him.

One group of fallen angels acts like classical philosophers (lines

555-569), arguing and disputing with eloquence about Providence,

Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate--the subjects of Paradise Lost itself.

But they are false philosophers who do not know the truth of the

Christian religion. They can offer only solace and patience with

their "pleasing sorcery."

Another group explores the rest of Hell. We are in classical

territory here, and Milton exploits it fully. Both The Odyssey and

The Aeneid include a visit to the underworld, where we find the same

features--the four rivers of Hell, fire, ice, the torments of the

damned, who suffer for their sins in life.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 629-725. SIN AND DEATH

Meanwhile Satan is off to the gates of Hell, through which he must

pass before he can break through--literally erupt--into Chaos and

then the World. An epic simile tells us that as he travels, he looks

like a sailing ship so far away that it seems to be hanging in the

clouds.

He soon reaches the nine gates of Hell--three brass, three iron, and

three of the hardest known rock, adamant. All three gates burn

continually but are never destroyed. They are guarded by two

horrible creatures, one on each side of the gates: one is a woman,

Sin, who is a serpent below the waist; the other is a man, Death,

with no shape but blackness. He carries a dagger and seems to be

wearing a crown.

NOTE: ALLEGORY AND ALLEGORICAL FIGURES These figures have a

different function in the poem than the characters we already know.

Sin and Death are figures of allegory, which means that they

represent in their appearance the parts they play in our lives. Sin

is foul and misshapen, only half human, filthy with hybrid offspring

who crawl in and out of her womb as they wish. She represents the

unnatural confusion of sin, which distorts the proper order of

things. Death is a black shadow, with a dagger to pierce his victims

and a crown which symbolizes his rule over everyone. As we follow

the interactions between Sin, Death, and Satan, you will be able to

translate what they do into its meaning.

Death strides toward Satan, who stands his ground: he fears nothing

in the universe except God and his Son. (When Satan looks Death in

the eye, we are seeing allegory at work: Satan is immortal, and

therefore he can defy Death.) He declares his intention to pass

through the nine gates, but Death won't let him. As they stand ready

to fight, Satan looks like a comet in the sky, and the threatening

combatants look like the thunderclouds just before a storm. The

fight never happens because Sin rushes between the two of them.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 724-870. THE BIRTH OF SIN AND DEATH

Sin prevents the fight by calling Satan "father"--as surprising to

him as it is to us. She was born from Satan's head, just as in Greek

mythology the goddess of wisdom, Athena, emerged from Zeus's head.

But Sin came out of the left side of Satan's head. The left is

connected with evil, and that's why we have the word "sinister,"

which simply means "left."

She emerged precisely at the time Satan initiated the war against

God. The meaning of the allegory is that Sin was born at the same

moment as rebellion against God's authority.

Once born, Sin became Satan's concubine in a vile incestuous

relationship. As Satan fell, she too was expelled from Heaven, but

she was given the key to the Hell gates. While watching the gates,

she gave birth to Death, a labor so difficult that it distorted her

body into the shape of a serpent. Death immediately turned on his

mother and raped her, causing the birth of monsters who continually

torment her with their gnawing inside her body. She knows that Death

would like to consume her but cannot do it.

So both Sin and Death are the offspring of Satan, an allegorical way

of saying that Satan is responsible for the introduction of sin and

death into the world, just as Milton said in the third line of Book

I.

Wanting to be let out of the gates, Satan promises Sin and Death that

he will take them back with him to earth after he has spied on it.

Death smiles a ghastly smile as he thinks of more victims. Sin shows

her nature by persuading herself that it is perfectly all right to

disobey God, because her own father has asked her to unlock the

gates. Sin can always find justification--as we know from our own

experience.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 871-1009. CHAOS AND OLD NIGHT

Sin opens the gates, which can never again be shut (lines 883-884).

The gates are wide enough to let an army, chariots and all, pass

easily. They open on the realm of Chaos. Think of it as the first

few moments after the Big Bang, when there is nothing but a soup of

uncombined electrons and neutrons. Here "hot, cold, moist, and dry,"

the four elements in medieval science, contend in confusion. The

prospect is so terrifying that even Satan pauses before launching

himself out of the gates.

When he finally jumps into Chaos, he is swept first down and then up

because the region is so chaotic that it is land, sea, and air, by

turns and all at once. In three and a half lines composed almost

entirely of monosyllables we get a vivid impression of confused and

constant change:

So eagerly the fiend

Over bog, or steep, through the strait, rough, dense, or rare,

With head, hands, wings, or feet pursues his way,

And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies

After a prolonged struggle, he follows a "universal hubbub wild" to

the place where King Chaos and his companion, Old Night, sit with

their followers, who are all allegorical figures like Sin and Death.

Note that Chance is one of these figures. Chance has no place in the

ordered universe ruled by God--chance is chaotic by nature.

Satan asks Chaos and Old Night for directions to the World. He

points out that if he reaches the earth and is successful in ruining

it, Chaos will gain because he will have more territory. It is an

argument Chaos is glad to hear; he grumbles that too much has been

taken from him recently. He lost territory when God created Hell out

of a corner of Chaos and then lost more when God created the World.

It can be seen hanging on a golden chain from Heaven down into Chaos.

But the World isn't far away now, so Chaos wishes Satan luck. They

have the same aims.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1010-1055. FIRST SIGHT OF THE WORLD

Satan plunges back into Chaos, again fighting his way through the

confused elements. Milton tells us that later there will be a smooth

road from Hell to earth, built by Sin and Death. It will follow

Satan to the World and make a direct pathway for the devils to reach

and corrupt man. You can easily see the allegorical meaning here.

As Satan comes to the edge of Chaos, day begins to dawn, causing Old

Night to retreat so that his journey becomes easier. As he floats on

the calmer air, Satan looks upward: there is Heaven, where he

formerly lived, and hanging just below, the globe of the World.

NOTE: MILTON'S COSMOLOGY The World is not the earth, but the

universe. in this imaginary cosmos of Milton's, we should forget our

Copernican model of the universe. This is a schematic universe,

where the component parts are placed in symbolic relationship to each

other. Heaven is at the top, with unlimited extension upward. Hell,

at the bottom, is Heaven's counterpart--it is unlimited downward.

The space between is filled with Chaos. The World hangs suspended

from Heaven, with a stairway leading down to an opening in the top of

the sphere. inside the sphere are ten concentric circles, with the

earth in the middle. The sun and the planets revolve around the

earth. The outside of the World is like a hard rind, which protects

the World from the buffeting winds of Chaos.

Don't be too impatient with what may seem to you a ridiculous model

of the cosmos. Milton knew about the Copernican universe (the

archangel Raphael refers to it in Book VIII). Ask yourself why

Milton might have wanted to retain the classical and medieval

cosmology, with the earth at the center, for the purposes of his

poem.

Reflect that science fiction also does not represent the universe as

twentieth-century physicists and astronomers describe it. Think of

those imaginary worlds where starships land to find robots. Like

Milton, science fiction writers invent a background to fit what they

want to say. They freely give planets atmospheres with or without

important ingredients and put them in space at distances and in

places where they need them for their plots. The important question

for them and for Milton is whether the interactions which take place

in these settings are believable and interesting to us.

PARADISE LOST: BOOK III

The scene now shifts to Heaven, where for the first time we see God,

his Son, and the angels. Book III is almost a point-for-point

contrast with the two preceding books. All is light here, as all was

darkness in Hell. In Heaven there is a council, as there was in

Hell, but it is characterized by harmony and expressions of love.

Just as Satan undertook the task of spying on man, so the Son takes

on the burden of dying to redeem mankind.

Contrast this introduction to Heaven with Book I's description of

Satan in Hell. You may find that God and his Son lack the

characteristics--human failings--which make the fallen angels

interesting. In Satan, God has a hard act to follow, and Milton

hasn't given him much help. It's quite difficult to think of ways in

which absolute authority could be given a human face, especially when

by definition God's choices cannot be understood by man.

The poetry of the scenes in Heaven has a different texture. There

aren't many epic similes or classical allusions in this book (which

is one-third shorter than Book II). Most of the classical references

are found in the first part, where Milton speaks of himself, and the

last, where Satan continues his journey and lands on the sun. God

and his Son converse in quite straight-forward statements; whether

you agree with God or not, you can follow his argument quite easily.

NOTE: THE CHRISTIAN TRINITY In Christian theology, God has a mystic

three-in-one, one-in-three unity. The Godhead has three aspects:

God the Father is the original authority, while God the Son has a

special affinity for mankind, since he himself became man to redeem

Adam's sin. God the Holy Spirit is not mentioned until Book XII,

when his coming is foretold. But you will remember that Milton

prayed to the Holy Spirit after the first invocation.

The threefold nature of the Christian God separates him from the

Hebrew deity, who has only one aspect. The Holy Trinity is a

difficult concept to grasp, not least because, although the Son and

the Holy Spirit are revealed later in time, they have existed as part

of God from the beginning. They are therefore present at the

creation of everything, including the angels.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-55. THE INVOCATION TO LIGHT

Milton went blind in his forties. He married his second and third

wives without seeing them. The whole of Paradise Lost--like Paradise

Regained and Samson Agonistes, the great works of Milton's

maturity--was dictated to secretaries and to his daughters, who did

not like the chore. Most of the poem was composed in the early hours

of the morning, for Milton was an early riser. He waited impatiently

for his secretary to arrive--like a cow waiting to be milked, he

would say.

His anguish about his blindness is clearly expressed in the

invocation to light. Book III is full of light, so he invokes its

aid as God's first creation. But light cannot enter his eyes. Being

blind does not prevent his enjoying classical poetry or the Hebrew

Old Testament. Homer and other Greek poets were also blind. But the

sense of regret is poignant:

ever-enduring dark

Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men

Cut off, and for the Book of Knowledge fair

Presented with a universal blank

Of Nature's works to me expunged and razed,

And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.

(45-50)

So light must shine inside his mind, communicating what is after all

invisible to all men.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 56-134. GOD'S EXPLANATION OF FREE

God the Father is seated on his throne in Heaven, with his Son by his

side, looking down through the gate of Heaven, past the stairs, on

Adam and Eve in Paradise and on Satan flying toward the suspended

World. As he points out Satan to his Son, God describes what is

going to happen: Satan will deceive Adam and Eve, who will listen to

him and disobey God.

It is difficult to like what God says. He calls man an

ungrateful--"ingrate"--for his good fortune: "he had of me / All he

could have." The contradiction between man's free will and God's

omnipotence is easy to understand but hard to accept. God knows

everything that is to happen and controls it all, but man is free, If

he were not, then he could not choose and earn praise or blame.

NOTE: THE DOCTRINE OF FREE WILL Free will isn't a dead issue. It's

hotly debated in political science and philosophy classes. How free

are you to do what you want? Are your actions under the control of

your free will or is that your perception only? Milton thinks that

man experiences his choices as free, even though God knows what the

results will be. Because man does not know what God knows, man has

the sense of complete freedom. Is it possible that this is a

metaphorical way of describing our dependence on our context and

heritage? We may not believe that God determines our actions, but a

large part of them are controlled by genes, family history, economic

circumstances, and environment--matters which, like God, are beyond

our individual control.

God continues his explanation to the Son by saying: "Foreknowledge

had no influence on their fault." Man is therefore responsible for

his fall, but not as responsible as Satan and his followers. Because

they fell "self-tempted, self-depraved," they will receive no mercy,

but man will find grace and mercy, to God's glory.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 135-415. THE HEAVENLY COUNCIL

In contrast to the stench and darkness of Hell, Heaven is full of

"ambrosial fragrance" and love shines on the face of the Son. He

asks what God intends to do with man: will Satan take the new

creation down to Hell with him, or will God abolish it entirely?

God answers that he will offer mankind grace in the form of prayer,

which he will hear gladly: "Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not

shut." He will also give mankind a conscience to guide them.

But man will die eternally unless his mortal crime is atoned for by a

heavenly being willing to die for him. Who in the heavenly host will

become man and die a mortal death to redeem mankind?

There is the same silence in Heaven as there was in Hell when a

parallel question was raised. Finally the Son offers himself as

sacrifice. His faith in his Father is so strong that he knows God

will not abandon him, but will allow him to kill Death himself:

"Death his death's wound shall then receive." He predicts the

glorious moment when he will return from deaning out Hell to the "Joy

entire" of God's presence.

The parallel between the Son and Satan will be drawn again,

especially when we find out later what caused Satan's rebellion.

Satan and the Son are two brothers--one good, one evil--fighting for

their Father's attention.

God greets the Son's courageous offer with an outpouring of praise.

The Son will become man in a virgin birth, mystically combining his

nature as man (Adam's son) with his nature as God. Because the Son

humbles himself to join mankind as one of them, he will unite in

himself the qualities of man and God and become worthy to judge all

creation. His sacrifice is so glorious that it will bring about "New

heaven and earth, wherein the just shall dwell." God turns to the

angels and commands them to worship the Son as his equal.

The angels sing a song which praises God in terms of light so radiant

that even the angels must shade their eyes with their wings when they

see it (line 382). Then they sing praises to the Son, the warrior

who defeated the rebel angels and now the redeemer who had "offered

himself to die / For man's offence." The passage ends with the poet's

vow to praise the son endlessly as God's equal.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 416-497. SATAN IN LIMBO

Meanwhile, Satan lands on the outer rim of the World, suspended on

its golden chain from Heaven. He manages to find a spot where he is

to some extent sheltered from the winds of Chaos, like a vulture who

rests for a while on the windy plains of Mongolia, on his way to

steal lambs for his prey. Notice how the epic simile makes a kind of

double image: you see the ugly bird and Satan superimposed on one

another, sharing the same characteristics.

There is nothing where Satan is walking up and down "alone bent on

his prey." Later in the history of the World, Milton tells us, this

place on the perimeter of the World will become Limbo. Here will be

found the souls of those who are more misguided than sinful, who

can't be sent to Hell but aren't good enough to enter Heaven. They

will include the builders of the Tower of Babel and the Greek

Philosophers who wanted to become gods. Milton especially mentions

those Roman Catholics who believed that putting on religious garments

would get them into Heaven.

NOTE: MILTON'S CHRISTIAN INDIVIDUALISM England had become a

Protestant nation in 1539, not for purely religious reasons but

because King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his first wife and the

Roman Catholic Church opposed divorce, as it still does. So Henry

declared a Church of England, with himself as head.

The main difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism comes

in the matter of access to God. The Roman Catholic Church believes

in the need for intercession with God, through a priesthood specially

trained to act as intermediary for the people. Protestants believe

they can address God directly through prayer. Their clergy, who are

permitted to marry, are counselors and advisors more than

intercessors with God.

As Protestantism developed, groups arose believing that even the

reduced priestly function of the Church of England was too much. The

extreme is probably the Quakers, who have no priests at all. Milton

was closest to being a Puritan, but his kind of Christianity is

really unique to him. We can best describe him as a Christian

individualist. He believed that he should obey only God and God's

law, which was immediately obvious to anyone who believed with a pure

heart. Milton had no use at all for the external shows of

religion--even symbols like the cross.

Thus you can see why he despises Roman Catholic "Indulgences,

Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls." All those who believed in them would be

blown away from Heaven and whirled into Limbo, the Paradise of Fools.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 498-629. SATAN ON THE SUN

Leaving Limbo, Satan comes to the opening in the top of the World

where he can look down into the concentric circles and up the stairs

to Heaven. He stands in amazement looking down into the World, like

a soldier on military reconnaissance who finds himself suddenly

looking down on a new land or a magnificent city.

He throws himself down into the World and passes through the circle

of the stars to land on the sun. The place is "beyond expression

bright," brighter than jewels or the philosophers' stone which was

said to turn any metal into gold. There are of course no shadows on

the sun, so Satan easily sees an angel standing there with his back

to him.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 630-742. THE DECEPTION OF THE ANGEL URIEL

Satan is always daring and always deceitful. It seems no problem for

him to change himself into a young angel or cherub with curling hair,

gold-sprinkled wings, and a wand in his hand. He approaches the

angel, who proves to be Uriel, one of the seven around God's throne,

and addresses him.

Satan gives the flimsiest excuse for his presence: he has a great

desire to see God's new creation, man, so much talked of in Heaven.

Will Uriel kindly point out on which of the circling spheres Man is

to be found?

Uriel suspects nothing. In fact, Milton tells us that only God can

know the truth hidden by hypocrisy; not even angels can penetrate a

lying appearance, especially when they are so good that suspicion is

not part of their nature. Uriel praises the little cherub for his

desire to see God's works and tells him with pride that he was

present when the World was made. The globe down there at the center,

the one half lit by the sun and half by the moon reflecting the sun's

light, is earth. Uriel even points his finger directly at Paradise

and tells Satan that he can't miss the way.

Satan bows respectfully, as a cherub would to a senior angel, and

swoops down from the sun to the earth, landing on the top of

Niphates, a mountain in the Armenian Taurus range.

PARADISE LOST: BOOK IV

We find another change of scene and new characters in Book IV: the

action takes place in Paradise. We meet not only Adam and Eve but

the good angels who remained faithful to God and now guard Paradise.

The action, which occupies an evening and night, moves dramatically

from scenes in which Adam unwittingly tells Satan what he wants to

know to a confrontation between Satan and his former companions; it

also includes Adam and Eve's pleasure in their sexual union.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-130. SATAN'S REMORSE

The opening lines are a cry of regret: if only Adam and Eve had been

warned now of what is about to happen! For Satan is on earth,

looking at the Garden of Eden, of which Paradise is a part. Satan

brings Hell with him wherever he goes--which you will easily

understand in modern psychological terms as a continual state of

tension and dissatisfaction: Satan is always full of revenge,

remorse, and envy.

As he looks up at the sun, whose brilliance reminds him of his former

glory in Heaven, he regrets his disobedience, for after all God's

service is not hard. But ambition would always bring about his ruin

because he would freely make the same choice. So nothing is left but

Hell, for to repent would mean submitting to God. Not only would his

pride prevent that, it also wouldn't last very long. The only hope

is to divide possession of man with God, "more than half perhaps will

reign."

Unknown to him, Uriel has been watching the little cherub who spoke

so courteously to him. As the "cherub's" face contorts with anguish,

Uriel realizes who he is.

131-287. EDEN AND PARADISE

Paradise is a garden in a corner of Eden, surrounded by fruit trees.

As Satan approaches, he smells the delicious scent of the trees. One

epic simile compares the perfume to the spicy odors which sailors

smell off the coast of Arabia; a second contrasts it with the smell

of burning fish which drove away the devil Asmodeus in a Hebrew

fable.

Satan isn't deterred by the tangle of bushes and undergrowth that

guards Paradise. He simply leaps over into the garden, his entrance

celebrated in two more epic similes: Satan is like a wolf preying on

sheep and like a burglar breaking in through a window. Once inside

the garden, he perches on the Tree of Life in the shape of a

cormorant.

He has chosen a good spot to survey Paradise, which lies open before

him. It is watered by a river which runs south through Eden and

comes up in Paradise as a fountain, then pours out again into four

rivers. Next to Satan's perch is the Tree of Knowledge. In front of

him are all the delights of Paradise: flowers, fruit, grazing

animals, waterfalls, singing birds. Everything is so perfect that

roses don't even have thorns. No garden famous in classical myth can

compare with this "Assyrian garden" (Eden and Paradise were located

in Mesopotamia). Satan glowers on this perfection, for he "Saw

undelighted all delight."

PARADISE LOST: LINES 288-410. SATAN SEES ADAM AND EVE

We first see Adam and Eve through Satan's eyes. They walk naked and

majestic through the Garden, exemplifying the order and harmony of

God's creation. They are not equal, for Eve is subordinate to Adam

and wears her hair longer, curling like tendrils of a vine that needs

a tree for support.

The relationship between Adam and Eve is one of the most difficult

ideas in Paradise Lost for us to accept. Adam is Eve's God: "He for

God only, she for God in him: / His fair large front and eye sublime

declared / Absolute rule." Christian marriage for Milton was not a

partnership of equals but a harmonious hierarchy in which man and

woman have different roles. Keep this in mind as the story unfolds,

for Eve's sin is that she takes over leadership from Adam and Adam's

sin is that he lets her do it.

Adam and Eve sit down to a vegetarian supper, watching the animals

who play for their delight. Even the elephant gambols, though a bit

ponderously.

Satan, watching from the Tree of Life, is consumed with envy. He

comforts himself with the thought of dragging mankind away from

Paradise to Hell. "There will be room / Not like these narrow

limits, to receive / Your numerous offspring."

But don't blame me, Satan says. Blame God who made me seek revenge.

Here you'll probably think of those people you know who always find

someone or something else responsible for their actions, never

themselves.

Satan now assumes the shape of different animals, getting closer and

closer to Adam and Eve until he can hear their conversation.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 411-775. EVENING IN PARADISE

In Adam's first speech, he mentions God's prohibition against eating

the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. He doesn't know what Death is

because (as you remember from Book II) Death is coming behind Satan

and has not yet reached earth. Eve recounts the story of her birth

from Adam's rib, acknowledging "How beauty is excelled by manly grace

/ And wisdom, which alone is truly fair." They embrace, making Satan

furious with envy. He can only feel desire, never satisfaction--and

his unsatisfied desire is the Hell he carries with him. Satan has

gained an important piece of information from his eavesdropping: he

can corrupt man through the Tree of Knowledge. He voices the

question that has probably already occurred to you: is man's

happiness dependent on ignorance? As twentieth-century readers,

we're Likely to be scornful of a theology which seems to reward

ignorance. But perhaps some kinds of knowledge are best left

unknown: would man be happier if physicists had not used their

knowledge to Construct a nuclear bomb?

A plan to inflame Adam and Eve's desire for knowledge begins to form

in Satan's mind as he moves off to look for an angel who might tell

him more.

The setting sun suddenly illumines the eastern gate of Paradise (the

only legitimate entrance), where the angel Gabriel is on guard

between pillars of alabaster and rock. Uriel slides down a sunbeam

and quickly warns Gabriel that one of the "banished crew" has

deceived him and entered Paradise. Gabriel replies that nothing has

entered through the gate, but he can't be sure that a spirit hasn't

leapt over the surrounding hedge. However, if Satan is in the

garden, Gabriel will know by morning.

Evening comes on, the nightingale begins to sing, and Adam suggests

to Eve that they go early to bed in order to rest for their gardening

chores. Eve reiterates her submission--"God is thy law, thou

mine"--and asks Adam to explain why the stars and moon shine

throughout the night when nothing can see them.

They prevent the world from reverting to the reign of Night, Adam

explains, and they give light to millions of nocturnal spirits, who

praise God continually. Talking together, Adam and Eve walk hand in

hand to a flowery shelter, their marriage bed. In an epic simile,

Eve is described as more lovely than Pandora, who in classical myth

opened a box which brought sin and trouble to mankind. By now you're

probably wondering what Milton has against women: for him, their

beauty is certainly not an unmixed blessing.

Adam and Eve make their evening prayer to God who has blessed them

with perfection. They go to bed in each other's arms, as Milton

praises "wedded love." To enjoy its sensual pleasures is to obey

God's law. True love is found in the sexual embraces of married

lovers, not "in the bought smile / Of harlots, loveless, joyless,

unendeared."

PARADISE LOST: LINES 776-1015. GABRIEL CONFRONTS SATAN

The angelic guards are posted to watch for the intruder. Ithuriel

and Zephon are given the job of searching the bower where Adam and

Eve are asleep.

They find Satan almost at once, squatting in the shape of a toad by

Eve's ear. As soon as Ithuriel touches him with his spear, Satan

springs up in his own shape. The transformation looks like an

explosion, as the epic simile tells you.

Now we have come to one of the most dramatic passages in Paradise

Lost. To get its full flavor, read it like a play, assigning roles

to different speakers. Milton's skill in writing lines of blank

verse is at its best here.

At first the two angels don't recognize Satan, causing him to reply

scornfully "Know ye not me?" You must be really low in the heavenly

pecking order not to recognize me.

Zephon answers scorn with scorn: you don't look like a glorious

angel now, you look like a creature from Hell. The rebuke stings

Satan: he "felt how awful goodness is" (using "awful" in the sense

of awe-inspiring).

When they bring Satan to where Gabriel has just met the other guards,

Gabriel asks him why he has left Hell to make mischief in Paradise.

Satan thinks it's a silly question--who wouldn't try to leave Hell?

Yes, he was there beside Eve who was asleep, but that doesn't mean

anything. Gabriel answers sarcastically that Heaven lost a good

judge of wisdom when it lost Satan, and that his smartness will get

him sent back to Hell to learn better. Why is Satan alone? Gabriel

asks.

Satan gets angry and calls his former comrade "Insulting Angel," and

he boasts of his leadership in taking on the dangerous spying

mission. He scoffs at the "gay legions" in Heaven who take the easy

way and cringe before God instead of fighting against his tyranny.

Gabriel objects to Satan's using the word "faithful" of himself and

his actions. Gabriel even accuses him of having flattered God with

his fawning and cringing, hoping to take over God's throne. When

finally he gets down to business, he threatens Satan that he will

drag him in chains back to Hell and seal it over, if he finds him in

Paradise again. Satan has the last word, defying Gabriel to capture

him without another War in Heaven.

At this the angels surrounding Satan turn bright red and tighten

their circle around him. There are so many of them and they stand so

upright that their spears look like a field of wheat waiting to be

cut. For his part, Satan draws himself up so that he looks like a

mountain whose top reaches the sky. His helmet is proudly crested,

and he seems to carry powerful weapons. It is a tense moment: will

another war break out to tear apart not only Paradise but Heaven

itself?

God doesn't want it to happen. He sends a miraculous sign from

Heaven, holding in the sky the astrological sign Libra, the Balance,

which God had used during the creation to equalize earth and air. In

one side of the balance God places the consequences of leaving the

place quietly; in the other, the consequences of fighting. Fighting

proves lighter, which means less sensible: "The latter quick flew up

and kicked the beam."

Look, Gabriel says, God doesn't want another fight. Neither of them

can do what God denies, although the sign clearly shows that Satan is

a lightweight compared to Gabriel. Satan leaves hastily, as the

night gives way to dawn.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-219. MORNING IN PARADISE

Adam awakes, surprised to find that Eve is still asleep. After he

wakes her gently, she tells him the dream which we know was put into

her mind by the toad--Satan--who squatted by her head during the

night.

Eve's dream foretells exactly what will happen. In it she hears a

voice she thinks is Adam's, calling her to enjoy the night by walking

to the Tree of Knowledge. There she meets an angel who plucks fruit

from the Tree, using the argument that knowledge should not be

forbidden to man. He offers Eve the fruit, promising that it will

make her into a goddess. The fruit is so marvelously appetizing that

she tastes it, and immediately she is given knowledge of the earth by

seeing it from the clouds, as a goddess would. The dream ends as the

guide disappears and Eve finds herself back in Paradise, asleep.

Although Adam comforts her, he is puzzled by the work of evil in a

being who is "Created pure." Then he explains how dreams happen. His

explanation is the first of what you may think of as the lectures of

Book V. These lectures are Milton's version of the psychology and

cosmology underlying Paradise Lost. You will be surprised at the

variety of thinking in these lectures. The explanation of dreams,

for example, is not far from current theory. But the hierarchy by

which all lower things, even the planets, feed the higher ones, will

strike you as medieval.

The explanation of dreams is not unlike one you may have heard, once

you change a few terms. For Milton, Reason is the chief mental

faculty, assisted by Fancy (imagination), which works on the input

given by the senses. When we sleep, Fancy escapes from the control

of Reason and produces "Wild work," with actions and ideas jumbled

and mismatched. You may recognize similarities in this explanation

to the Freudian scheme in which the unconscious expresses desires in

dreams, when it escapes from the restraining influence of the waking

consciousness.

Milton says that the past becomes present in dreams, a fact which

makes Adam think that Eve's dream was caused by their evening

discussion of the Tree of Knowledge. Of course we know better: we

know as Adam doesn't that Satan put the dream in Eve's head. Adam

hopes (but not with complete confidence) that she would never do what

she had dreamed. This irony is a little heavy-handed, you may think.

Adam kisses away Eve's tears, and they go out to make their morning

prayer, which consists of requests that all parts of the universe

will join with them in praising God. Then they begin their gardening

chores.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 219-307. GOD SENDS RAPHAEL TO VISIT ADAM AND EVE

God sends Raphael down to warn Adam and Eve about the threat posed by

Satan. Raphael is to make it clear to Adam that his fate is in his

own hands because his will is free. But it is only fair to warn him,

so that he cannot claim he is "unadmonished, unforewarned."

As Raphael flies to the gate of heaven and looks down on the earth

below, Milton seizes the opportunity to mention Galileo again. But

Galileo's knowledge of what he sees through his telescope is "less

assured" than Raphael's, for Galileo is only human.

Raphael seems like a Phoenix as he flies down and lands on the

eastern edge of the garden. The description will remind you of the

figure of Mercury, which you can see on advertisements for flower

delivery services, when Raphael folds his three pairs of wings, one

pair attached to his heels. He walks majestically through the ranks

of the angels guarding Paradise, then through a grove of spice trees

perfuming the air. Adam sees Raphael coming as he sits waiting for

Eve to prepare another vegetarian meal.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 308-450. ADAM AND EVE ENTERTAIN RAPHAEL

Adam calls to Eve to prepare a special meal with the best food and

drink. Raphael approaches alone with great dignity, and here Milton

makes a comment aside to the reader: he contrasts Raphael's

composure with the "tedious pomp that waits / On Princes." A few

years before Paradise Lost was written, King Charles II had entered

London with great processions and parades. Since Milton had opposed

the restoration of the monarchy, he was inclined to speak sourly of

royal display.

Raphael, Adam, and Eve gather round a "grassy turf" to eat what seems

to be a sumptuous picnic. Milton adds a domestic note: when you eat

fruit and drink juice, there is "No fear lest dinner cool."

Raphael delivers another of Book V's lectures, this time on the

universal need for nourishment. There is a vertical order which

causes all lower things to become food for higher ones. Even the

elements of earth, air, fire, and water feed the moon, which then

sends out nourishment to the higher planets. In return for giving

light to evening, the sun sucks up the humidity which rises. Saying

that the food on earth compares well to that available in heaven,

Raphael eats enthusiastically and digests his food as other creatures

do, thus demonstrating that angels have a bodily existence.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 451-561. AFTER-DINNER CONVERSATION IN PARADISE

Seeing that Raphael has enjoyed his dinner, Adam leads the

conversation into a comparison of life in Heaven and on earth.

Raphael, the celestial school-teacher, provides information on the

natural order. Everything begins the same, then becomes more refined

as it approaches God. Even the flowers are more spiritual than the

roots of a plant. When man eats the fruits, the nourishment produces

the "vital spirits," life, sense, fancy, and understanding, which

make the soul reasonable. Reason is the ruling faculty for both men

and angels, but angels have "intuitive" reason (line 488), which

means they understand at once, while man has "discursive" reason: he

has to work things out logically. The food Raphael eats on earth is

of the same kind as that in Heaven, but less refined because of its

greater distance from God.

However--and there's irony in this--if Adam and Eve "be found

obedient," they will probably become angels too and understand more

than their human reason presently allows them.

Adam notices the fatal phrase and asks innocently how they can

disobey a God who has been so good to them. Raphael offers another

lecture, this one on the free will given to man by God. You'll

recognize the main ideas from God's explanation of free will in Book

III. God has given man and angels free will so that they can

demonstrate their obedience: "freely we serve / Because we freely

love." But already some have disobeyed and fallen into Hell.

Naturally Adam wants to know the whole story, since until this time

he hadn't understood his situation or any of the history of the War

in Heaven and his subsequent creation.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 561-656. RAPHAEL'S STORY.

You have now come to the point in the narrative where the story turns

back to the events which came before those of the first book.

Raphael is about to tell Adam and Eve how the War in Heaven happened

and what were its consequences. The story will take up the rest of

Book V and the whole of Books VI, VII, and VIII. (We return to the

present in Book IX.)

This story-within-a-story technique is easy enough for us to follow

because we're familiar with it from movies and TV drama. But you

should note that it's another device Milton uses to put himself in

the great epic tradition. In Virgil's Aeneid, Aeneas the hero

relates the fall of Troy; in The Odyssey, Odysseus tells King

Alcinous his adventures during the ten years since he left Troy.

Raphael takes his listeners, Adam and Eve, back to a time when "this

world was not, and Chaos wild / Reigned where these Heavens now

roll." (Remember that in Book II King Chaos complained he had lost

part of his territory when God scooped up a piece of Chaos to make

the World.) At this time the Heavens are about to celebrate the Great

Year, which, according to the Greek philosopher Plato, comes every

36,000 years. (It takes that number of years for all the heavenly

spheres to complete all their revolutions.) God is going to mark this

Great Year with a special proclamation: his Son is equal with

himself. He calls his Son "anointed," which is the meaning of the

Hebrew word "Messiah."

The announcement causes great rejoicing in Heaven, with music,

dancing, and feasting "with Angels' food." Finally all the hosts of

angels retire to sleep in their tents, while some remain awake

singing hymns of praise all night long.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 657-802. SATAN ASSEMBLES HIS FORCES

Satan is also awake, but he isn't singing praises. He is stung with

envy and hatred because another angel--not him--has been declared

coequal with God. He is plotting how to strike back.

It isn't hard to identify with Satan's feelings. In fact, it's

really more difficult to understand why God so abruptly elevated the

Son, without explanation to Lucifer, as Satan was known in Heaven.

We are given no reasons for God's preference. But that is part of

what Milton wants us to understand about his God: we all must accept

with obedience and grace whatever he decides.

Lucifer can't accept it. He feels like a child rejected in favor of

another sibling. You may perhaps be familiar with another evil

figure, Iago in Shakespeare's Othello. Iago's only motivation for

the terrible destruction he brings about is that Othello promoted

someone else instead of him. In Iago's case, like Lucifer's, the

fury seems out of all proportion to the apparent cause.

Lucifer was "of the first / If not the first Archangel." Now he will

be the first in opposition to God's will. He whispers to his closest

companions a command to bring their forces to the North, the region

traditionally connected with Satan. They will gather there to

prepare a special welcome for the Son, he says.

But God is not deceived. As one-third of the angels follow Lucifer

(now Satan), God warns his Son that a great battle is coming. The

Son--in sharp contrast to Satan--never argues or contradicts his

Father but assures him he will be equal to the challenge.

So, Raphael continues (using Adam's name in line 751 to remind us

that we're following a story within a story), Satan took his

numberless army to the North, where he set up a palace in imitation

of the Mount of God. Satan addresses his followers, using the great

line naming all the orders of angels: "Thrones, Dominations,

Princedoms, Virtues, Powers." These impressive titles may not mean

much now that the Son has usurped "All Power." How can we get free of

their power, which was bad enough with one supreme authority and is

unendurable now that God is double? His argument is based on the

meaning of "peer," which means an equal. (Peers in a kingdom are

those people equal to the king in political importance.) Satan's

equality with God has been violated.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 803-907. THE LOYAL ANGEL

One angel interrupts indignantly. Abdiel cannot bear to hear God

blasphemed as a tyrant. Who is Satan to dispute God about liberty?

Because God has elevated one of the angels to become his coequal, he

has honored all of them. Better to seek forgiveness while there is

some chance of getting it.

Satan scorns the suggestion that the Son had anything to do with

Satan's origins--as he must have if he is God. (You will remember

from the note on the Christian Trinity that all three parts of God

exist from the beginning, and therefore the Son, as part of God, must

have created the angels, Lucifer among them.) "We know no time when

we were not as now." Angels are "self-begot, self-raised," and

therefore they owe their origin to no one else. Abdiel is told to

take this defiance back to God before anything worse happens.

Abdiel seems like the good guy who stands up to the gang leaders. He

knows what's right and will not put up with anything illegal. You

can admire his courage when you think of someone being surrounded by

an armed crowd of ruthless bullies.

Milton probably thought of himself as Abdiel, the lonely defender of

the truth. Even during the republic, when the Puritans held power,

he was an individualist whose views were regarded as extreme. When

he wrote Paradise Lost, he felt utterly isolated among the Royalists

who came in with King Charles II and restored not only the monarchy

but religious ceremonies that Milton despised. "Among the faithless,

faithful only he": this comes from Milton's heart.

PARADISE LOST: BOOK VI

This is the Star Wars book of Paradise Lost. It's the War in Heaven,

with two armies of angels battling each other on the ground and above

it. Telling this story presents the same technical challenges as

recounting an outer-space battle in modern science fiction.

The background is entirely imaginary and not entirely clear. (See if

you can draw a picture of Heaven from the description given in this

book.) An imaginary setting gives the writer unlimited possibilities,

but it doesn't make it easy for you to visualize. You can't feel

familiar with a landscape that you can't connect with a place you

have seen.

Keep in mind another fact: none of the angels in the battle can die.

That may be nice for them, but it cuts down drastically on the range

of emotions the story can evoke. We can't feel the pathos of a young

warrior's death or the suspense of a last-minute rescue.

In the circumstances, the War in Heaven is about as exciting as it

can be. Look for the invention of gunpowder on the second day and

the terrifying scene on the third day when the rebels are pushed off

the edge of Heaven. Read the book quickly to get its swift action.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 1-201. ABDIEL'S COURAGE

Through the night, Abdiel runs back to the Mount of God, expecting to

bring news of Satan's rebellion. But the news is already known, and

preparations are well in hand. God praises Abdiel from inside a

golden cloud, telling him that he has won the more difficult

battle--the moral one--by standing up for the right. Now comes the

easier fight.

Commanded by Michael and Gabriel, the army of God marches out in

perfect order. The angels fly above the ground like the birds who

came to get their names from Adam. Remember that Raphael is telling

the story to Adam; this is why he uses "thee" in line 75.

The armies meet each other after marching a distance ten times longer

than the earth. (This is certainly an imaginary battlefield!) Satan

descends from his gold chariot and walks toward the army of God.

Abdiel cannot bear to see Satan's pride and speaks to himself in a

speech called a "soliloquy." In his soliloquy, Abdiel resolves to

attack Satan, arguing that he should be able to win a physical fight

after winning the moral one. So Abdiel becomes the champion of God's

army, the first to strike the rebel Lucifer.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 202-405. THE FIRST DAY OF THE WAR IN HEAVEN

As the war rages on and above the ground, Lucifer fights fiercely,

defeating all who come near him. When he sees the archangel Michael

cutting down squadrons of the rebel angels with the sword he swings

in two hands, Satan thrusts his great shield (remember from Book I

that it is as big as the moon) between the sword and its intended

victims. Michael challenges him to single combat.

It is a battle like that between two planets. Each has almighty

power, but Michael has the advantage of a tempered sword. He chops

Satan's sword in half and then pierces Satan's side as he lifts his

sword arm. "Then Satan first knew pain," as a stream of liquid pours

from the wound.

Of course he soon recovers; he is an angel who "Cannot but by

annihilating die." Moloch suffers an even more terrible wound soon

after, when he is split down to the waist by Gabriel. But again it's

not fatal.

It is becoming clear that the rebel angels are getting the worst of

the battle. The heavenly forces retain their discipline: "In cubic

phalanx firm advanced entire." Their strength comes from their

discipline because they have not sinned and disobeyed.

PARADISE LOST: LINES 406-669. THE SECOND DAY

The war stops for the night, but Satan does not rest. He calls a

council to discuss their next move. We now know something about his

debating style: he's going to be asked a question to which he

conveniently has the answer. Nisroc obliges. He cannot stand pain,

the new discovery, and wants to know if there is any weapon which

would inflict some of it on their enemy.

It's already invented, Satan says. Beneath the surface (remember,

this isn't the earth!) are the makings of gunpowder. We shall

overwhelm God's forces with a new weapon, the cannon. Raphael,

turning to Adam, who listens intently to the story, remarks that the

angels recognized what a simple idea it was once they had been told

about it. For us twentieth-century readers, Raphael's remark that

man may just as easily invent more terrible instruments of war is

heavily ironical.

The "victor angels" rise next morning and scout for their enemy. The

cherub Zophiel brings the news that the rebels are advancing, closely

packed. They are hiding the cannon, but the heavenly host doesn't

know that yet.

Satan delivers a speech full of puns. On the surface it seems he is

talking about offers of peace, but every word has two meanings:

"composure" means the composition of gunpowder as well as a truce;

"overture" is not the beginning of negotiations, as the heavenly host

is intended to think, but the opening blast from the cannon;

"discharge," "in charge," "touch," "propound," and "loud" all have

two meanings.

Raphael tells what he saw, because of course he was there: a