I've Got The World on a String

Milton continues to confuse me with his winding staircase sentences that lead to nowhere. I love the language and creativity he has, but just write a simple sentence once in a while to get your point across, you know? I do like where the story is headed though, and I wish we had time to trip over the words in all ten of the books, but my end of semester brain thanks Dr.MB for only making us tackle two.

All seems to be well in hell. We've now taken a look around and in addition to the expected molten fire, we've also found a surprising frozen tundra. Satan has asked his little devils to keep house and tidy things up to make hell a more suitable place to live. And now, because no good story begins and ends by staying in one place where you've been banished, Satan has taken it upon himself to go exploring. He journeys to the gates of hell, which I am actually surprised exist/he is not in charge of them. Part of me has always pictured Satan having some sort of docking station upon a lake of skulls or fire and only he has access to let people in or out. Anyway, he comes across two figures by these gates: a half woman-serpent and something shapeless and terrible. We find out that this woman is Sin and that her son, who Satan is the father of is death. Interesting, right? Sin and Satan have worked together to produce death.

I really like this theory behind the existence of death. Whenever someone dies from an illness, suddenly or just too soon, people are so quick to say something like, "How could God let such a terrible thing happen to such an innocent soul?" But is it God? If death was produced by satan and sin, it isn't really God at all. The embodiment of rule-breaking and cruelty has teamed up with a fallen angel that wanted God's powers. We don't know why death exists, but it's more of a chain of events than something God just thought up. If Satan had never betrayed God and fallen, then maybe death wouldn't exist. But then again, God knew that Satan would do this and it would eventually result in death. Beyond this, Satan actually bribes death and sin and says Hey, if you let me out of this gate, I'll let you roam earth with me. Satan literally brings death and sin to earth.

The chaos part confuses me, which I guess it should. I really thought chaos would be one with the earth, but I guess its more of a messy limbo. Chaos is described as a potpourri of miscellaneous tasks and objects that Satan must get through and I think that might be symbolic of the chaos a person on earth would have to go through to get either to heaven or to hell. Chaos sparks people to make decisions that can lean in either a positive or a negative way, but we have to make it through the chaos to make a decision. I also like that Satan sees earth is dangling from heaven by a string. In fact, I think that's my favorite symbol so far. We are dangling from a single tie to heaven. It's so much easier to fall into the depths of chaos or hell, but heaven is barely holding on to us and seems so out of grasp. The ties between heaven and earth are slim and few, showing that maybe good is not as common on earth and that if the earth is truly all evil, it would be quite easy to cut the string and let it all fall to chaos.