Essay on John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the War in Heaven

Paradise Lost and the War in Heaven From the beginning of password 1 the war in heaven seems more than a simple, finished event. In reality, we have the authorized formal side presented the war was ambitious, impious, proud, vain, and resulting in ruin. hellers first speech implies that there was a nonher side-even after we have partly discounted the personal tones of the defeated leader who speaks of the good old lost cause, menace in the Glorious Enterprise. That too is a formal side, presented by the losing actor in the drama. Then Satan goes on, to reveal, before he can pull himself unneurotic in defiance, something more Into what Pit thou seest From what highth faln, so much the stronger provd He with his thunder and then who knew The root for of these dire Arms? (I, 91, ff) A little afterwards the surprise has been bolstered with a kind of indignation But still his strength conceald Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall. (I, 641 f.) We soon learn that we cannot get answers in hell, nevertheless we begin to see certain questions, and the possibility that their answers may appear when we see the actual dramatic presentation of the rebellion. For one thing, Satans innumerable force receives a definite tally later- it is only one third of the angels. And this fact will look different when we learn that God opposes the enemy force with an tolerable number only, and then puts a fixed limit on the individual strength of the contestants, and then sends only the Son against the rebels, and with His strength limited too. Satan puts so much concentration on having shaken the throne of god, against His utmost power-Who from the terrour of this Arm so late/... ...s and then the gigantic niceness of the detail that pictures the mountains, pulled up by the tops, coming bottom side up toward them. In between we are forced to look away, to separate ourselves from the action, and see it as a spectator, not as a participator. In the grand finale o f physical ridicule the rebels are again left exposed to laughter by the interrupted grade of view. Never do they appear so ridiculous, not even as a timorous flock, as when they are caught isolated between the before and the behind. This is to be understood metaphorically, as the climax of their physical humiliation. It does not last, any more than their later mass metamorphosis into serpents, with which this is parallel. But it is a punishment, on the framework level, for the material nature of their sin. If they regain their form in hell, that is because they regain free will.