Sin and Death

Sin and Death

1. Highlight the tyranny of God

   • The treatment of Sin
     • 'Down into this Deep...this powerful key into my hand was giv'n'
     • 'ingendering with me, of that rape begot'
   • The need to follow God
     • 'him who sits above and laughs the while at the ordain'd his drudge, to execute what e're his wrath, which he calls Justice'
     • 'his wrath which one day will destroy ye both'
     • 'what ow I to his commands above who hates me'
       • Reference to the story of Job. The difference is that Sin succumbs to Satan

2. Illustrate Satan's limits

   • Death has power over him
     • 'never but once more was either like to meet so great a foe'
     • 'save he who reigns above, none can resist'
   • Satan's remit and status is limited outside of Hell
     • 'false fugitive'
     • 'return to thy punishment'
     • 'Traitor Angel'
     • 'Reckon'n'st thou thy self with Spirits of Heaven'?

3. Develop the relationship between Satan and the reader

   • Alienate them
     • The plight of sin and the fact it's his fault
       • 'seem'd woman to the waist'
       • 'hell hounds never ceasing bark'd...creep...into her woomb, and kennel'
         • 'embraces forcible and foul'
       • 'such joy thou tooks't with me in secret'
     • His response to them
       • 'a race of upstart creatures, to supply perhaps our empty room'
       • 'ye shall be fed and fill'd'
       • Later, ''Sin and Death amain following his track'
   • Attract them
     • 'undaunted fiend'
     • retire, or taste thy folly...hell-born, not to contend with the Spirit of Heaven'
     • 'Milton was of the devil's party without knowing it' (Blake)

4. Limited Characters

   • Ontologically limited
     • 'he knows his end with mine involved'
     • 'if shape it might be call'd that shape had none...substance might be called that shadow seem'd'
     • Ultimately at God's. behest: 'in the general fall I also'
       • Important for Milton to show ultimate sovereignty is with God
   • Limited in power
     • 'she op'nd, but to shut excelled her power'
     • 'save he who reigns above, none can resist'
       • Post-restoration. Monarch's eventual sovereignty/ cynical?
   • Epistemologically limited
     • 'Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me'
     • We can never be sure if they're allegorical or real
       • 'Hell grew darker'
         • 'removed from common experience' (Cormican)
       • 'terrible as Hell'

5. Paradoxical

   • Sympathetic
     • 'here in perpetual agonie and pain'
     • 'sorrow infinite...howle and gnaw my bowels'
       • The mixed portrayal of Sin, as with Satan, could be reflective of Milton's sentiments towards the revolutionaries. They will destabilise us (until 1661) but there are reasons
   • Loathed/Evil
     • 'every bolt and bar...with ease unfast'ns'
     • Clearly, they're coming to get us
       • 'sad instrument of all our woe'
     • '[in the] new world...I shall reign at thy right hand voluptous'