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.

100%, Genuine Devil.

            If I were a character written into Paradise Lost, I would one hundred percent be a devil. No offense, God, but Heaven seems a little boring. Not to mention, the planning up there seems just a tad off. Who uses those guys as guards? Really. I'd much rather be a fallen angel than one of the ones stuck up there doing (no pun intended) God knows what. I found it very interesting that, like Nicole said, God seems to have created this whole mess. It would be intriguing to ask him/her why. P.S. Please go easy on me when it comes to all of this religion stuff. I have no idea about anything concerning it; growing up, my parents version of prayer was to put on a Bob Marley CD on Sunday morning, so I really am pretty ignorant.

          One of the other things that I found interesting was the planning and the way that the great city of Hell was designed. I love the fact that it was built beautifully and exquisitely. It adds a whole extra twist to the idea of Hell. It's not all fire and brimstone, it can be aesthetically pleasing as souls spend an eternity being punished for their sins. I think that part of the reason that it was built in the image of heaven is that that is all the fallen angels know, and there's something to that. I can't figure out what it is, but I know there's something there.  Also, the fact that these devils seem to be reminiscent of that one  kid in grade school that everyone had who just did whatever he pleased is just icing to the cake. Much like Bender from The Breakfast Club, or Dash from The Incredibles, the devils have that attitude that makes them fun to be around/more attractive than the Angels that still remain in Heaven.

It's All God's Fault

I’m still pretty stuck on the idea that this is all God’s fall. Regardless to free will, God created Hell and put really shitty guards on duty to keep his bad guys contained. I mean, sure, Satan had to do one step above a hop, skip and a jump to get around his kid (which, by the way, who the hell doesn’t know that they’ve reproduced…), but it really was not that difficult to escape his eternity in Hell. I sympathize with Faustus more than ever now because seriously, I don’t think Hell is all that permanent after all of this anymore either—especially before people were created.

Anyway… God created free will, God create Hell, God put these guards on duty, and… God created Satan. God sucks at making things that work in his favor… and really, it seems like God created sin.

Otherwise, I wish we were reading the rest of this text. I mention all the time in class that I know nothing about religion so it is so interesting reading about theories and stories from this time. It’s probably not the best idea, though, because I think the devils are complete badasses and are the best kind of bad guys. I mean, there the annoying kids that unscrew the legs in God’s chair so he falls on his ass and look silly. This world he is creating is supposed to be is little baby and the human race are his new favorite beings and Satan is all ready and able and essentially free to manipulate it into his personal revenge on God. Super cool… Go Devils!

Sin plus Disobedience and Satan equals Death? Finally.

So to begin, I’d like to point out how awesomely cheesy it is that “Sin” is the one to open the gates, thus letting sin into the world.  And the fact that she is Satan’s offspring.  I also find it interesting that Sin is a woman, considering this is technically a prequel to the events that unfolded between Satan, Adam, and Eve. I feel like Milton should’ve considered that, at the time this is set, the world wouldn’t know that a woman committed the first sin yet. (Perhaps he was too caught up in those presumptuous sentences.) In fact, all of this presumably happens before “Man” is actually created. 

When I finished this, I had some impressive (impressive to me, at least) revelations about who Sin and Death are in this story.  First, what I found utterly stupid is that fact that Satan doesn’t even remember reproducing.  After all, his disobedience was a way to “stick it” to God, right? I mean, technically Satan CREATED sin.  So why would he not remember the creation of the ultimate revenge on God? He must’ve hit his head way too hard when he landed in hell. 

I find it interesting that Sin is attractive, yet ugly at the same time.  Perhaps this is Milton’s warning of the attractive temptation of real sin—that we should not fall victim to it, despite its appealing nature.  Satan’s daughter is the ultimate personification of original sin.  And maybe the fact that she is a woman is necessary, because women are also considered to be great tempters (at least during Milton’s time, and even today, on some levels).

And speaking of Sin, I found the incestuous offspring between Satan and his daughter to be really weird.  I mean, what??? (Again I ask, HOW could he not remember this?) But then again, it’s kind of interesting because Death is the offspring of Sin and Satan, who is the ultimate symbol of disobedience.  So here’s the equation:

SIN      +          DISOBEDIENCE       =          DEATH

The end of Book II is a warning—that Death is not a natural occurrence, but rather, the ultimate result of disobedience toward God.  Woah! If only it was that simple in real life, eh?

            Right now, Satan doesn’t seem so awesome anymore! Obviously I can’t come to an accurate conclusion, considering we’re not reading the rest of Paradise Lost.  But I no longer feel bad for him, considering this odd chain of events that unfolds at the end of Book II.  Now he’s the god ol’ manipulative Satan we all know and love!

I think reading Paradise Lost would be easier if any (or preferably all) of the dialogue was in quotes.  Shorter sentences would be nice as well but I suppose that might be asking too much. Basic quotation marks would be really helpful for knowing when characters end their speeches. At some point it tends to say something along the lines of "so spake" or "h' Arch-Fiend replied" and that makes finding the start of speech a bit easier. They just are so wordy (I mean so far that's mostly all Satan) that it can be hard to figure out where they stop speaking. 

That being said  I do really like this translation or update or edition or whatever the proper term is for it. Not only are the notes pretty helpful but the words themselves are easier to process (as many of them as there may be). Just based on that factor this has been the easiest text for me to read up until this point in the semester. So thanks to whoever did the editing. I do think it's interesting how some sentences are ten-plus lines long while others are seven words long. I know a variation in sentence structure makes the reading more interesting but that is one hell of a variation. 

There was a  old man I grew up with, named Guy Waterman, who died when I was six. Guy was a professional jazz pianist , a speech writer for three presidents (including Nixon), and the author of four books. This may seem like a really weird tangent but Guy was a huge Milton fan with obsessive compulsive tendencies. So Guy memorized Paradise Lost. Not just a few lines, not just Book I, but the entirety of Paradise Lost.  In terms of sheer accomplishment I put Guy pretty high up on the list of bad-asses. I imagine the list of people who memorized Paradise Lost consists of Milton, Guy, and a few others who really need to find another source of amusement. 

But whatever, tangent aside. I find myself really liking Satan. Not because he's any pillar of society, I think it's pretty clear that he's not, but because he's pretty optimistic about this hell thing. Like Dr. MB said in class, "Satan's a glass half full kind of guy." And maybe it's because he's got it better than anyone else who fell with him, but I like his optimism. I'm not sure if the other devils/demons/fallen angels are quite such big fans of the "Better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven" theme but that's probably just because they're stuck serving in Heaven and Hell. I think it will be interesting to see how everything pans out.