Chapter Characters of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

secret conclave" (795). The Satan of Paradise Lost is the embodiment of the corruption of monarchy that Milton derided in his political tracts of the 1650s.

Adam & Eve

It was one of Milton’s finest literary masterstrokes to withhold his account of Adam and Eve until we accompany Satan into the Garden. The idyllic bliss is at first overshadowed by the evil of its destroyer. Milton skillfully built up their Fall; he preserves the picture of their innocence, while building up awareness of the latent weaknesses. The first manifestation is in Eve’s first speech; Satan plays on the human desire for knowledge beyond the constraints of the species’ wisdom, stirring Eve’s ambition to be a goddess among the gods. In Book VIII Adam questions the cosmos, but recognises the futility of speculating things beyond humankind’s capabilities, though delivers a eulogy of Eve that is idolatrous. Adam and Eve begin as superhuman figures in the poem, but their sins reduce them to mere humans.

Angels

There are several key points to Milton’s account of the characteristics of angels, both ‘good’ and ‘bad’, in Paradise Lost. The first two, i.e. that they are numerous and enigmatic, are of less interest than the third. Milton puts his attention to stressing the physicality of the angels: that they are governed by physical laws relating to their materiality. They have weight, can exert force, sleep, excrete, and have sexual intercourse; the fallen angels feel pain and lose some of their sexual capacities.

The angels typically travel either by flying or walking; they never just seem to appear. Raphael journeys to Eden "with steady wing… then with quick fan" (V.268-9), though walks the remaining part of his journey. In flight he appears to metamorphose into a bird-like being: he enters the wind-stream where "towering eagles" fly, and where "to all the fowls he seems | A phoenix" (V.270-2). Satan both walks and flies. The first encounter with the fallen angel in Book I, Satan walks to the shore. He moves from hell to earth is by flight – "his sail-broad vans | He spreads for flight" (II.927-8). At other times they move using their physicality. Uriel travels to warn the guards of Eden on a sunbeam

"Thither came Uriel, gliding through the even

On a sun beam, swift as a shooting star

In autumn thwarts the night"

(IV.555-7)

"Uriel to his charge returned on that bright beam, whose point now raised

Bore him slope downward to the sun now fallen

Beneath the Azores"

(IV.589-92)

However, Milton’s angels are able to metamorphose. Satan assumes a variety of animal forms that allow him to spy on Adam and Eve in Eden.

"he alights among the sportful herd

Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one,

Now other, as their shape served best his end."

(IV.396-8)