Written for Development of English Literature to the Close of the 18th Century English 230, Professor Amodio In constructing Paradise Lost, John Milton crosses boundaries as an author by relativizing conventions which the religious community considers absolute. To introduce the heterodox idea of Satan as a heroic figure capable of challenging God's reign, Milton also constructs and deconstructs intertextual boundaries. The contrast between the order and enclosed space of Heaven and the unbounded expanse of Hell physically depicts the connection between goodness and bounded space, on the one hand, and evil and chaotic, open space on the other. Milton expands these connections to the level of the mind through the opposition of the Heavenly Angels' controlled, obedient thought and Satan's transgressive, free thought, which results in the creation of Sin and his exile from Heaven. The issue of boundaries becomes more complex, however, when one realizes that God, the ultimate good, also has unlimited thought, and thus, the infinite is worshipped in the case of God, and is feared in the case of Satan. One may resolve the seeming contradiction by recognizing that Satan's infinitude is frightening because it approaches God's ability, a movement that furthers Milton's authorial transgression. Milton accomplishes his own transgression on several levels, beginning with the physical terrain of Hell. After God and his Angels chase Satan out of Heaven, Satan confronts the landscape of Hell: "a dark/ Illimitable ocean without bound,/ Without dimension, where length, breadth, and heighth,/ And time and place are lost" (II, 892-894). As Hell looms before Satan, the sheer volume of the dark nothingness conveys the fear of inescapable despair. Satan cannot cope with his chaotic surroundings for they do not adhere to the measurements and dimensions which enclose Heaven's landscape. When he transgresses God's limits, the time and space considered absolute in Heaven no longer apply to his new home. Satan cannot easily comprehend his condition, and his new terrain of illimitable evil arouses his anxiety and feeling of displacement:
In crossing the boundaries of Heaven, Satan loses his self as he knew it in Heaven and can find no solace or order in the vast expanse of Hell, for his transgression robs him of these stabilizing absolutes. Even with the rhythm of the above lines, Milton stresses the continuity of Hell. The thoughts do not end at the line break, but spill over to the next line: the unessential Night gapes to the next line, and Satan's utter loss of being carries over to the next line and threatens him. The looseness and freedom of Hell's darkness becomes even more frightening when contrasted with the orderly confinement of good in Heaven, where light illuminates "the rising world of waters dark and deep,/ Won from the void and formless infinite" (III. 11-12). Satan "[Ascends] by degrees magnificent/ Up to the wall of Heaven a Structure high" and finds:
God contains goodness in Heaven and constructs an exclusive place where only those who adhere to his strictures may dwell. Heaven has absolute limits within which lies goodness, whereas Hell abounds and swells with unchecked doom. Like the delineated Heaven, Eden also contains goodness and Eden forbids the entry of evil with a row of trees of "insuperable heighth of loftiest shade" and "the verdous wall of Paradise..." (III. 138, 143). Yet Satan destroys the seeming absoluteness of the boundary when he "at one slight bound high [overleaps] all bound/ Of Hill or highest Wall," and with the repetition of "bound," Milton stresses the fear of evil transgressing the barriers of goodness and disrupting God's order and control (IV. 181-82). Though God extends his might over Eden, Heaven, and even the physical terrain of Hell, Satan's mind breaks free and the transgression of the mind proves the most insidious of all. Milton expands the microcosm of Satan's mind and strengthens the connection between unbounded space and the overflow of evil. In Heaven, God controls the minds of his Angels, and while still such a subordinate Angel, Satan enjoys his position in Heaven. When his thoughts cross the limits constructed by God and exist as the product of his interior rather than the outgrowth of God's will, he gives birth to Sin. Before her birth, however, Sin already existed and germinated in Satan in the form of private thought. Sin is not so much an imposition upon Satan, as she represents the solidified offspring of Satan's thought. Sin "Supris'd [him].../ In darkness, while [his] head flames thick and fast/ Threw forth, 'still on the left side op'ning wide" allowing her to exit (II.753-55). In so depicting Sin's birth, Milton illustrates the way in which individual thought -- by definitinion, confined to darkness and not illumined by God's command -- surprises Satan, generates evil, and leads to his exile from Heaven. Sin goes on to produce Death and then, with Death, produces the "yelling Monsters that with ceaseless cry/ Surround [her]...hourly conciev'd/ And hourly born, with infinite sorrow" (II. 795-98). Once conceived in transgressive thought, the magnitude of evil increases as it couples with itself-- in the manifestation of Sin and Death--and continues to grow unlimited, infinitely. Knowledge, particularly of one's individual thoughts, emerges as a source of ultimate transgression. Raphael, to prevent such a threat in Eden, explains to Adam the nature of knowledge and God's restraints upon his curiosity. He tells Adam that he may
Whereas God prescribes the thoughts of the good, Satan's mind falls prey to free-roaming thought. Satan, unlike the forewarned Adam, goes against God's command and gorges himself on his own knowledge and is punished by the gluttony of evil which consumes his mind. Milton even deconstructs the boundaries of suffering, for Satan can never escape Hell, despite his success in breaking through the gates of Hell and leaping over the wall of Eden. Satan cannot escape Hell, because he discovers that Hell has no absolute limits; Satan's mind is Hell, and though he may hurtle over physical barriers, he cannot flee from the mind's terrain. Milton emphasizes the terror of the inescapable expanse of Hell by making even Satan himself afraid: he recoils as his thoughts
Like the physical landscape of Hell, Satan's thought unfolds in his mind and opens for him a vast expanse of evil. In Book II, Satan loses himself physically without the concrete limitations of time and space, and, likewise, he struggles to determine his position in his own mind. In Book IV, he asks: "...which way shall I fly/ Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?/ Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell" (73-75). Instead of depicting Hell as merely a physical place, with horrific terrain and terrifying characters, Milton makes Hell more frightening by locating it within an individual, where one is victim not to the cruel actions of another being, but to the free movement of one's uncontrolled and infinite thought. Whereas the physical boundaries of Heaven and Hell once seemed frightening to Satan, the uncircumscribed range of his own mind becomes even more insidious. Yet, in drawing the parallels between God, goodness, and boundaries, and between Satan, evil, and infinitude, one should consider the fact that the same capacity for infinite thought is interpreted as powerfully good in God and frighteningly evil in Satan. One needs to examine why the same characteristic-- that of unlimited thought-- acquires very different meanings when applied to different characters. While God's construction of physical boundaries and Satan's deconstruction of mental barriers raise the issues of boundaries and transgression, Milton also works on the authorial level to create a poem which breaks down the readers' absolute constructions regarding God and Satan. To open the reader to the idea that Satan may challenge God, Milton relativizes the demarcation between Satan and God by suggesting that evil may exist in Heaven and God and by connecting Satan to both God and the reader. In so doing, Milton unites concepts commonly considered antithetical. In order for Paradise Lost to posit Satan as a possible contestant to God, the reader must be able to understand Satan and must also believe that Satan poses a viable threat to God. Milton establishes a connection between the reader and Satan by illustrating that Satan is not merely a vague, evil force, but a mind which succeeds in breaking free from God's control. By placing Hell in the mind of a former Angel and depicting Sin as a surprise thought, Milton presents evil not as an inherent characteristic of Satan, but as a punishment earned by a deviant mind and constructed from the mind's interiority. Milton offers the plausible idea that evil is not necessarily restricted to Satan, but may exist within any mind, even the reader's mind, for the reader, in reading and thinking about Satan, necessarily imagines evil. And does not this act of imagination, this stretching of the mind, mirror Satan's conception of evil? Milton shakes the reader's conventional belief in evil as an outside entity by unsettling the reader's conventional comprehension of evil and introducing the frightening possibility that evil may exist in his own mind. In reconsidering the nature of evil, the reader is forced to confront the connection between Satan and himself, because the reader and Satan share the potential for unlimited and transgressive thought. Not only does the reader relate to Satan, but Satan also begins to approximate God by beginning to develop the characteristic infinitude of God's thought. In proportion to the comfort and safety afforded by God's overarching light and knowledge, Satan's invasive darkness and self-knowledge terrifies the reader. While God's control over the entirety of time and space surrounds the universe in goodness, the unbounded landscape of Hell and Satan's mind threatens to inject evil into the world with its massive size and pervasiveness. Infinitude, when manifest in God, reaffirms the reader's belief in the power of goodness and becomes all the more frightening in Satan, since the dual application of this trait upsets the reader's clear distinction between God and Satan. The recognition of a powerful similarity between God and Satan forces the reader to question whether God is incomparable, or if another entity, such as Satan, may at least pose a distinct threat to God. In order to instill this heterodox idea within the reader and make the distinction between God and Satan more complicated and indiscrenable Milton both connects the reader to Satan through the commonality of the mind and relates Satan to God by manifesting in them both the possibility of infinite thought. Milton incorporates the problematics of boundaries and transgression into several layers of the poem. The confinement of Heaven within the temporal limits of time and space physically depicts the connection between goodness and bounded space. In contrast, Milton presents the terrain of hell as a vast expanse of chaos, unrestrained and open to all. The poem also broadens the parallels between enclosure and goodness and space and evil to include the landscape of the mind. On a mental level, the Angels' thought is limited to God's prescription, whereas Satan's mind freely explores interior thought and gives birth to Sin. Milton intensifies the threat and horror of uncircumscribed thought by portraying Satan's mind as the inescapably vast domain of Hell. Not only does Satan transgress the physical boundaries of Heaven and Hell, as well as God's limitations on his thought, but Milton and the reader also cross the border of orthodox thought. Milton's transgression is manifest in his creation of Satan as a figure who challenges God's omnipotence. Milton, like Satan, destabilizes the seemingly absolute constructs of Heaven and Hell and draws attention to the areas where the concepts of God and Satan may intersect, particularly in relation to infinite thought. Satan's thought becomes believable and frightening in its similarity both to the human mind and to God's mind. The reader must expand the limits of his own mind in order to comprehend the magnitude and pervasiveness of Satan's evil. Paradise Lost not only presents a textual illustration of boundaries and transgression, but also implicates the author and the reader in the act of transgression. Articles are copyrighted by their authors. They may not be redistributed in whole or in part without prior written permission. You may make copies for your own private use, but include this copyright notice and proper attribution to the author.
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