Belial wishes to avoid war and action, but he couches his arguments so skillfully that he answers possible objections from Moloch before those objections can be raised. His basic argument is that the devils should do nothing. In contrast to Moloch, Belial as a character type is a sophist, a man skilled in language, an intellectual who uses his powers to deceive and confuse. And for Moloch, the "furious king" (VI, 357), violence defines his character. Unthinking violence is the result of lack of control of the will. In Moloch, the reader sees a straightforward example of the evil that comes from the will. In the Renaissance, these categories still dominated much thought concerning the nature of evil. In the Inferno, Dante had divided evils into three broad categories: sins of appetite, sins of will, and sins of reason. But, moreover, the attitude toward violence exhibited by Moloch reveals a particular type of evil. He is for continued war and unconcerned about the consequences. Like Diomedes in the Iliad, he is not adept in speech, but he does know how to fight. For example, Moloch, the first to speak, is the unthinking man of action. In his speech, each devil reveals both the characteristics of his personality and the type of evil he represents. Further the debates also seem based on the many meetings that Milton attended in his various official capacities. The council of demons that begins Book II recalls the many assemblies of heroes in both the Iliad and the Aeneid. The second section deals with Satan's voyage out of Hell with Sin and Death - the only extended allegory in Paradise Lost. The first is the debate among the devils concerning the proper course of action. As Satan creates the path from Hell to Earth, Sin and Death follow him, constructing a broad highway.īook II divides into two large sections. From Chaos, Satan learns that Earth is suspended from Heaven by a golden chain, and he immediately begins to make his way there. Satan ventures forth into the realm of Chaos and Night, the companions that inhabit the void that separates Hell from Heaven. Satan persuades Sin to open the gates, which she does, but she cannot close them again. Across from Sin is her phantom-like son, Death. All around her waist are hellish, barking dogs. At Hell's Gate, he is confronted by his daughter, Sin, a being whose upper torso is that of a beautiful woman but whose lower body is serpent-like. Each speaker offers a different attitude concerning a solution for their Hellish predicament: 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.īeelzebub's (Satan's) plan carries the day, and Satan begins his journey up from Hell. Four of the devils speak - Moloch, Belial, Mammon, and Beelzebub - with Beelzebub being Satan's mouthpiece. At the start of Book II, Satan sits on his throne like a Middle Eastern potentate and addresses the assembled devils as to the course of action they should follow.
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