Paradise Lost: Book 2

This is not your Bunyan's allegory!

Gustav Doré, Satan Confronting Sin and Death at the Gates of Hell, c 1880

First, a couple of housekeeping details.

One, a content note: there is portrayal of rape (between the fictional characters of Satan, Sin, and Death) in Book 2 which is mentioned in the post below. I don’t go into more detail than Milton, but my language isn’t as poetic as his either, so I wanted to let readers know.

Two, I’ve been linking to this online text of Paradise Lost, but since many of us are referring to line numbers, those of you using an online version might find this one better.

Now, on to the show!

I was so encouraged by the participation and discussion during our first week of this slow read of Paradise Lost! So many of you offered so many excellent and insightful contributions. You set the bar high, dear readers! Let’s keep going!

One or two of you commented about how thick and difficult this reading is. And it is! Most editions have copious notes to elucidate Milton’s allusions (whether biblical, classical, or historical) and his language, which includes many obscure and archaic words. It can be daunting! However, in A Preface to Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis offers an excellent reminder to us. He cites a schoolmaster friend who pointed out to his students, “If Milton returned from the dead and did a week’s reading in the literature of our own day, consider what a crop of questions he might bring you.”¹ So, be encouraged! Milton would likely be as lost reading A Visit from the Goon Squad as we can get in one of his Miltonic similes filled with allusions to minor Greek demigods.

In last week’s post, I offered a pretty broad overview as an introduction to the work as a whole and to Book 1. This week, I want to take a different approach and dive more deeply into one part of Book 2. Since there is so much going on in Book 2, however, let me at least briefly set the stage.

Book 2 has two major events: first, a debate among the demons about what their next course of action should be, having found themselves in Book 1 expelled from Heaven, landing in Hell, and dusting themselves off. The demon Moloch, true to his character as portrayed in the Bible, is bloodthirsty for more war.² Slothful Belial³ eloquently argues (“he pleased the ear”) they wait it out, suggesting God might eventually restore them. The materialistic Mammon⁴ wants to cut their losses and see what they might make out of their new home. Beelzebub⁵ offers the idea “first devised by Satan” (379-80) to take revenge by seeking out

…another World, the happy seat
Of some new race, called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more
Of him who rules above… (347-51)

Surprise, surprise, that’s the plan that wins the vote.

Satan volunteers, naturally, to scope out this other world that is rumored to have been created by God where some other creatures he has made might offer the perfect means of taking revenge on God.

The second major event in Book 2 is Satan’s journey setting out to seek this other world. I want to focus on Milton’s rich (not to mention horrifying) allegory within the story that depicts the nature of sin and death. This allegory is so dark and realistic that it almost needs a mature rating. (Milton would definitely need a footnote to explain what that is.)

Let me remind you what allegory is. Allegory uses symbols to tell a story. A symbol is something that has at least two levels of meaning: the surface, literal level along with another level of meaning that the literal points to. Both levels of meaning make sense in allegory: the literal and the symbolic level. Thus, in The Pilgrim’s Progress (published just a few years after Paradise Lost) which is entirely allegorical, every character is a character in the story but also symbolizes the concept suggested by the character’s name. (“Christian” is a character who progresses along his particular journey, one filled with obstacles and pitfalls, and he symbolizes the spiritual journey all Christians take.)

To be clear, Paradise Lost is not an allegory (although it has allegorical elements here and there, as we will see). Milton believes in the historicity of Adam, Eve, Satan, and Christ. He was writing for an audience that also so believed. Milton believes Hell is a real place and that the angels (fallen or otherwise) are also real. He imagines details we don’t know about these real figures and relays those details in poetic form. But he is not, in so doing, writing allegory.

However, the story within the story that he tells about Sin and Death is an allegory. What he tells about them is an imaginative story of characters who go by the names “Sin” and “Death.” But it is allegory because these characters symbolize the actual nature of sin and death in the world. That nature—that reality—is grotesque, disgusting, and perverted because sin and death are grotesque, disgusting, and perverted.

I will summarize the plot of this little allegory (that occurs in lines 629-889). Keep in mind that what Milton is relaying about the characters Sin and Death on the literal level reveals symbolically the nature of sin and death.

Satan wings his way alone toward the gates of Hell (629-32) until he reaches its nine (or “three threefold”) gates: three of brass, three of iron, three of rock (645-46). The gates of Hell are guarded by Sin, who “seemed” a woman, one beautiful from the waist up, but foul below, her form ending in the shape of a serpent with a stinger. A pack of howling dogs surrounds her lower half. When disturbed they crawl back into her womb whence they came and howl from within. These dogs are the offspring of Sin and the next character, Death.

Death is introduced (although not named until later) in line 666. The Riverside Milton notes the biblical significance of this number, making clear this was intentional on Milton’s part. A few later lines make me shudder:

The monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides; Hell trembled as he strode. (675-676)

While Sin’s shape is monstrous, Death has no shape but seems more a shadow. What seems to be his head bears the likeness of a crown (672-73). Notice that death is but a simulacrum, not anything true or real.

When Satan moves to strike Death, Sin cries out, addressing Satan as her father, telling Satan that Death is his son. At Satan’s confusion, Sin explains, reminding Satan that when he was yet in heaven but first conceived of his rebellion against God, Sin sprang out of his head, his own offspring. (This is a direct allusion to the Greek myth in which Athena was born from the head of Zeus. These passages, like the entire epic, are filled with such allusions.) Thus Satan is Sin’s father. Sin then reminds Satan that she became impregnated by him, her own father (777-80), and gave birth to Death, born by bursting forth violently through her entrails (781-85). Death, her son, then pursued her in rage and lust, and from his rape of her were born those hellhounds who re-enter her womb at will where they gnaw her entrails, then burst forth afresh under Death’s constant, hungry eye (790-809).

From start to finish, the relationship between Satan, Sin, and Death is incestuous, lascivious, and violent. They breed with one another and the fruit of their union is an endless cycle of the same.

This is not your Bunyan’s allegory! But it is as spiritually true. Some might even say truer.

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It is so hard to cover much in a format such as this. (How I wish we were all in a real room together!)

However, I do think that together we can bring much more to the table. I encourage all of you who are part of our smaller community of paid subscribers to participate (as you always do) by commenting—any way you wish, of course. But here’s what I would love for you to do: drop a line or a passage or a phrase from Book 2 that struck you. I can’t offer more than a few lines each week. But each of you can point readers to more. What a gift that would be if you are so able to offer it.

Another thing to think about as we proceed is not just the details (the lines, the phrases, the words), but also the big picture of how Milton is weaving this story together: the order, the structure, the overall effect. That’s something we need to keep in mind as we proceed—both the forest and the trees. We will notice certain “trees” that form parallels, too, such as in lines 728-29 in Book 2, where Sin calls Satan “Father” and Death his “only Son.” This is one example of many where Milton paints a reverse image that calls our attention to the real thing.

Next up: Book 3.

"Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”⁶

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BOOK NOTE:

In the spirit of my ongoing series on publishing and platform, I’ve shared some of the journey to publishing shared by

Liz Charlotte Grant

. Her insights (painful, sobering, realistic, and not bitter—so rare!) at The Empathy List have been so rich. Well, despite all that painful and sobering reality, she had her new book release into the world last week. I’m going to say this honestly, with no hyperbole: Liz is one of the most beautiful writers I’ve read recently. She is herself well-read, erudite, thoughtful, and humble. Talk about rare! It’s a joy to note her new book this week, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible. (P. S. Thank you, Liz, for telling me how to put captions under my pictures here on substack. I’m so embarrassed that I did it so wrong and so poorly all this time!)

1. C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Harper One, 1942), 78.

2. See Leviticus 18:3, 21.

3. Belial has an interesting history as a word and a personage. More here.

4. See Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:9–13.

5. See 2 Kings 1:2-3, Matthew 12:22-32.

6. Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. By Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (London: Routledge, 2002), 117.