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.
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.
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.
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 (see illustration). But the World isn’t far away now, so Chaos wishes Satan luck. They have the same aims.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
LINES 416-497. SATAN IN LIMBO
Meanwhile, Satan lands on the outer rim of the World, suspended on its golden chain from Heaven (see illustration). 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.