The Intrusion of Allegory:
Sin, Death, and Perpetual Incestuous Rape by Animals
by Julian Darius
 The second half of Paradise Lost’s Book II should stand out for readers. Whereas Book I and the first half of Book II take pains to paint a realistic (motion) picture of Satan and his cohorts newly fallen into Hell, the allegorical figures of Sin and Death, followed by Chaos and Night, represent a clear departure from the rules the epic has established for itself. The odd episode feels like a Spenserian intrusion upon the otherwise (magically) realistic narrative, an episode so at odds with the general tone of Paradise Lost that we usually bracket it out in our thinking about Satan’s character.
Just prior to the intrusion of this allegory, the narrative is in full realistic swing. Following the disillusion of the rigged council in Hell, the proverbial camera follows not Satan but the crowd as it disperses into various activities. These include athletic competitions (II.528-530); “sing[ing] / With ... many a Harp / Thir own Heroic deeds” (II.527-529) in partisan depictions of the war; and colonial explorations of “bold adventure to discover wide / That dismal world” (II.571-572) in search of “easier habitation” (II.573), though “no rest” (II.618) is to be found -- only “A Universe of death” (II.622). Surely these activities may astound the reader unaccustomed to thinking of demons musing their time away in such fashions.
On the one hand, such activities represent a compellingly realistic psychological portrait: they are distractions, attempts by demons -- social creatures like ourselves, to avoid thinking of their dejection. On the other hand, we have to deal with the difficult implication of placing such activities in Hell. After all, when Dante places a particular Pope in Hell, the condemnation of such a person is clear enough -- cannot activities, like feigning at monarchy, be similarly condemned by showing their popularity among the demonic? Though we will later read of angels sporting and singing, we may be inclined at this point in the narrative to read such activities as having been invented by these demons, a reading reinforced by the apparent strangeness of reclining demons. A simplistic, if not dismissive, reading would see such a condemnation of sport, poetry, and colonial exploration as the result of Milton’s reactionary Puritan politics. A more closer reading, as with Satan’s monarchical posing, would stress that these are bad instances of such activities. The condemnation is thus not of singing but of martial heroic epic, already seen in Book I -- and, moreover, of self-praise, since these demons are absurdly singing of their own martial prowess, even in a landscape defined by that military loss.
Such a remarkably realistic depiction, so detailed as to imagine with what demons amuse themselves as Satan carries the action away from Hell, contrasts sharply with what follows. The description of the wasteland discovered in these explorations of Hell nicely segue to the image of Satan, flying over this barren landscape on his mission out of Hell and to Earth. The segue is linguistically signaled through a “Mean while” (II.629) -- that classic comic book caption. “At last” (II.643), we are told, Satan reaches Hell’s border with its “thrice threefold Gates” of Brass, Iron, and “Adamantine Rock, / Impenetrable, impal’d with circling fire” (II.645-647).
There, Satan encounters two seeming guards. And suddenly we are in a very different narrative. The first guard is Sin, though her identity is then unknown -- a “woman to the waste, and fair” (II.650), but a horrible bottom including an orbit, like the rings of the planet Jupiter, of “Hell Hounds” (II.654). Disturbingly, these dogs
... creep
... into her woomb,
And kennel there, yet there still bark’d and howl’d,
Within unseen. (II.656-659)
The second guard, though we do not know it at the time, is Death -- a black “shadow” (II.669) wearing what looks like a “Kingly Crown” (II.673) and porting his traditional “dreadful Dart” (II.672).
Satan, ironically citing his power as one of the “Spirits of Heav’n” (II.687), warns them to stand down. Death, who knows Satan well, calls Satan on his hypocritical claim of Heavenly power (II.696) and threatens Satan with his dart. This is already odd stuff: while we do not yet know that we are in allegory, we might well wonder at the sudden ascent of the grotesque and how these two figures might have come to be stationed in this new land without Satan’s knowledge.
The realism of the imagined (pre)occupations of demons left alone in Hell has been replaced with the rhetoric of “the Snakie Sorceress” (II.724) who holds “the fatal Key” to Hell (II.725). She then asks the two men to still their aggression, obscurely calling Satan both her and Death’s father. Satan inquires about this, saying, “I know thee not, nor ever saw till now / Sight more detestable then him and thee” (II.744-745).
What follows is a remarkable speech, beginning with Sin essentially snidely telling Satan that he seemed to find her “fair / In Heav’n” (II.748-749). In modern parlance, she is saying something sassy -- like uh-uh, boyfriend, you didn’t think I was so detestable in Heaven, did you? I didn’t hear you complaining when you were on top of me, um-hmm. She recounts her origin, like Athena’s, as her emergence from Satan’s head and claims he named her Sin (II.760), then secretly had sex with her (II.765-766), impregnating her; she fell with the others, “at which time this powerful Key / Into my hand was giv’n” (II.774-775) and she “Pensive ... sat / Alone” (II.777-778). She recounts her then giving birth to Death:
At last this odious offspring ...
Thine own begotten, breaking violent way
Tore through my entrails, that with fear and pain
Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew
Transform’d: but he my inbred enemie
Forth issu’d, brandishing his fatal Dart
...: I fled, and cry’d out Death. (II.781-787)
Death called back to her, and she fled again with him in pursuit. Catching her, Death raped her, causing her to birth
These yelling Monsters that with ceasless cry
Surround me, ... hourly conceiv’d
And hourly born, ...
... for when they list into the womb
That bred them they return, and howle and gnaw
My Bowels, thir repast; then bursting forth
Afresh ... me round,
That rest or intermission none I find. (II.795-802)
She speculates that Death might kill her if he would not die sympathetically, as is by “Fate pronounc’d” (II.809). She further warns Satan that even he is not invulnerable to Death’s dart.
This speech most clearly announces that we are in another narratological world. Whereas the epic has so far taken pains to depict with psychological, if not material, realism the conditions of the fallen angels discovering themselves, suddenly the epic has not only become fantastically gruesome but entered the allegorical world of origin myths. Sin’s “I fled, and cry’d out Death” is ironic, given that death does not yet exist, has all the delightful -- and perplexing, if one thinks on it too much -- irony of the best origin myths. Sin’s birth, without precedent in the fictional universe, is similarly mythological. Incestuous rape and horrific mythological birth follows incestuous rape and horrific mythological birth, culminating in an orbiting ring of dogs that continuous rape Sin’s womb, turning it into an hourly factory for those same gnawing, barking hellhounds. This is not only allegory but splendid allegory: Milton has made sin as bodily and disgusting as he could, providing a masterfully horrible -- if not outright Gnostic -- description. Yet for all its mastery, for all its amusement to the reader, this is not the same sort of narrative Milton has been crafting.
Milton has been careful to demarcate how long the angels lay unconscious after their fall, how they were chased down from Heaven, and how Hell has a particular geography, so real to have veins of metal to be mined. His psychological realism is perhaps even more profound. Yet now he has Sin pop full-grown from Satan’s mind the moment he contemplates rebellion. And he has Death born complete with his dart, which presumably gestated as well. (At least the dart was not accompanied by a chess set.) Moreover, Sin has been entrusted with the Key to Hell by some unknown person -- presumably God or an angel through Him, though characters’ whereabouts are realistically consistent elsewhere in Milton’s narrative. Similarly, “Fate” has apparently informed the allegorical pair that Death would die sympathetically if Sin were to die -- a fact which itself only makes sense allegorically. God’s actions as “Fate” or in giving Sin the key are incompatible without elaborate mental acrobatics with the rest of the narrative. We may well also ask how Sin came to fall so far from the fallen angels -- and this is just the type of realistic question that Milton’s narrative typically invites. Satan’s forgetfulness of Sin’s birth and their dalliance further separates the scene from the remainder of the narrative. That Satan gave birth by himself to Sin is obviously very attractive to allegory, and Sin literally giving birth to death is a classic allegorizing of the famous Biblical saying that “the wages of sin is death.” Similarly, many have paid attention to Satan, Sin, and Death as a Satanic inverse of the holy trinity, a point enhanced by Hell’s three gates -- yet such logic, beyond Milton’s intelligent subordination of the Son to His Father, makes best sense allegorically and mythologically and remains out of place in the larger narrative.
The scene continues, remaining in this allegorical world. Satan, “now milder, ... smooth[ly]” (II.816) links his own dejected state with hers and tells her of his mission, promising them both free reign on Earth, where “all things shall be your prey” (II.844). At this, Death “Grinnd[s] horrible a gastly smile” (II.846). Sin asserts her hatred of God who has -- we feel perhaps unjustly if we give her sentience -- “thrust me down / Into” (II.857-858) “perpetual agonie and pain” (II.861). Yet she ironically gives to Satan what he is unable to give to God, explaining her loyalty to him thusly: “Thou art my Father, thou my Author, thou / My being gav’st me; whom should I obey / But thee, whom follow?” (II.864-866). Even Sin herself is not so bad as Satan, since even Sin recognizes the natural hierarchy between parent and child. In a greatly cinematic moment, she then uses her key to unlock the massive, clanking doors -- but has not the power to shut them, and so “the Gates wide op’n stood” (II.884) “like a Furnace mouth” (II.888).
Continuing his journey, Satan encounters a limbo --
... a dark
Illimitable Ocean without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, & highth,
And time and place are lost. (II.891-894).
It is a testament to Milton’s imagination that one can vividly imagine this experience. Flying blind through this void, Satan remarkably almost plummets -- like some explorer on a snow-battered mountain -- into a drop
Ten thousand fadom deep, and to this hour
Down had been falling, had not by ill chance
The strong rebuff of som tumultuous cloud
... [exploding] with Fire and Nitre hurried him
As many miles aloft. (II.934-938)
Had this seemingly random explosion occurred just a second later, the arch-fiend himself would have been removed from human history, and we would all presumably still be enthroned in the Garden. Few critics have paid enough attention to this remarkable narrative moment, perhaps in implicit recognition of its otherwise allegorical context. Satan’s close call can be read alternatively as a recognition of randomness in the grand scope of history -- as in alternate histories or questioning what would have unfolded had General Grant, or Alexander the Great, fallen off his horse and died -- or as God’s providence, his active control of seemingly random events, implicitly offering not only his condoning through the doctrine of free will but his aid to the (perhaps necessary) evil acts of nonetheless free individuals.
Returning to the somewhat (perhaps intrinsically) awkward allegorical strain of Sin and Death, here Satan encounters Chaos and Night, addressing them and appealing to them to “direct my course” (II.980). Chaos recounts his own knowledge of Satan’s war in Heaven before explaining the cosmic geography: Earth is “link’d in a golden Chain / To that side Heav’n from whence your Legions fell” (II.1005-1006). Satan thus continues on his way. Whereas one could rationally believe in Milton’s England in this geography -- and that formless chaos existed in the universe, following the smart idea that nothing can be created ex nihilos -- here that chaos is given a voice, an allegorical persona.
The memorable encounter with Sin and Death -- and, to a lesser extent, Chaos and Night -- seems to take place in a parallel world, or a parallel narrative that Paradise Lost might have been. We may recall Spenser’s great influence upon Milton, sometimes bordering on adoration. We would do well to also remember that the epic was originally conceived (avoiding the implications of “conception” in this allegory) as a tragedy. Indeed, such allegorical figures were staples of Medieval drama -- though English law, during the first year of Elizabeth’s reign, had expressly forbade drama on religious subjects, facilitating the transition from Mystery Plays to Shakespeare. In the context of Medieval drama, Satan was routinely depicted as a buffoon or fool, and his ignorant encounter with his unknown children -- especially allegorical ones -- would not seem out of place. The episode with Sin and Death is likely a holdover from an earlier outline of Paradise Lost, closer both to drama and to Spenser.
Yet the psychologically realistic context of the epic invites us to sympathize with Sin’s pain and her loneliness after the fall, followed by her father insulting her upon his unremembering reappearance. We might also imagine, perhaps, Satanic interiority as his mood change when he hears Sin’s story. Since Milton, uniquely writing in allegory, atypically does not provide these details, the fact that we imagine them -- or yearn for them -- is a testament to Milton’s realism elsewhere, illuminated through contrast.
Milton knows well to end with a good cliffhanger, and Book II follows its strongly allegorical intrusion with a doozy. The proverbiall camera holds as Satan departs, then pans to reveal -- “Strange alteration!” (II.1024), the equivalent of comic books’ “when suddenly!” -- Sin and Death. The pair, following “the will of Heav’n” (II.1025), have been following Satan’s trail, building a bridge after him to facilitate deadly commerce with Earth. We then cut to Satan seeing the light of Heaven through the foggy chaos, from which he emerges “like a weather-beaten Vessel” (II.1043) into the calm of space. In this cosmic moment, he observes “Farr off th’Empyreal Heav’n” (II.1047) with its “Opal Towrs and Battlements adorned / Of living Saphire” (II.1049-1050) -- with the Earth below it, “hanging in a golden Chain, This pendant world” (II.1051-1052). Knowing Satan’s intentions against our species and recalling Beelzebub’s apocalyptic suggestions for us and our world -- perhaps first suggested by Satan himself -- we might well imagine Satan’s figure looming in the foreground, his hateful motivation glistening beautifully above, his dark figure implicitly menacing our vulnerable, green world.
NOTES
This essay was first made available at persiancaesar.com on 24 February 2003.
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