Paradise Lost, Book Two
(John Milton)
In Book II, Milton compares Satan to an Eastern potentate. This is a direct contrast to the fact that he has just compared his army to a swarm of bees. Satan begins the council by addressing his army as to the course of action that they must undertake. Four of the devils give their opinions- Moloch proposes open warfare on Heaven; Belial proposes that they do nothing; Mammon argues that Hell may not be so bad, that it can be livable, even comfortable, if all the devils will work to improve it; and Beelzebub, Satan?s mouthpiece, argues that the only way to secure revenge on Heaven is to corrupt God?s newest creation: Man.
We now realise that Satan has corrupted the council, by using Beelzebub to speak for him. Since he cannot choose his own idea, he has asked Beelzebub to speak for him, thus making it seem like the suggestion has not come from him. Satan decides that he shall be the one to carry out this plan and begins on the epic journey. At the gates of hell, he meets his daughter sin and her son Death. Milton makes use of a sustained allegory for the first and last time in the epic. Sin was created by Satan as he held evil thoughts of God in his head. Sin thus, is a creation of Satan?s mind. She has the upper body of a beautiful woman, but the rest of her body is that of a serpent. She has hellish, barking dogs about her waist. Death was created by the union of Sin and Satan, thus, he is the result of an incestuous relationship.
Satan manages to persuade Sin to open the gates of Hell. She complies but then she cannot close them again. Satan ventures into the void that separates Hell from Heaven, meeting Chaos and Night along the way. Chaos tells Satan the information that he needs- that Earth is suspended from a golden chain that links it to Heaven. As Satan makes his way there, he creates a path from Hell to Earth, and Sin and Death follow him, constructing a broad highway which permits all the evils of hell to come towards Earth.
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