Book II of Paradise Lost

Book II begins where Book I ended: with Satan and the fallen angels established in Hell. They have built Pandemonium, their magnificent palace, and now they gather together to determine what they will do. Satan sits above them as their rebel king, and Milton immediately gives his throne an impressive description:

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand.
Show’rs on her kind barbaric pearl and gold, Satan exalted sat, by merit raised To that bad eminence;
(II.1-6)

The imagery is magnificent. Satan’s throne surpasses the fabulous wealth of the East, and he is surrounded by all the imagery of an earthly king. Satan seems to possess everything necessary for a great monarch.

Yet this grandeur falls short. Satan is not sitting on a throne in heaven, but in Hell. He rules a kingdom that is a parody of the order he has rejected. Milton soon calls Satan’s position “bad eminence.” He indeed has been exalted, but his exaltation is toward evil rather than good. The qualities that make Satan impressive are all turned against God.

This is an important development from Book I. Satan can still appear heroic, but Milton is increasingly showing us what kind of hero he actually is. His greatness does not lead him toward reconciliation with God. Instead, it makes him more effective in rebellion.

Book II presents rebellion as a false form of freedom: Moloch, Belial, Mammon, and Beelzebub each propose different responses to defeat, but all ultimately reject repentance and remain trapped by the consequences of Satan’s rebellion.

Moloch: War

The first to rise is Moloch, the strongest and fiercest of the fallen angels:

He ceased, and next Moloch, sceptred king
Stood up, the strongest and fiercest Spirit
(II.43-44)

Moloch’s answer is almost immediate: they should go to war against Heaven again.

My sentence is for open war: of wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
(II.51-53)

Moloch does not want subtlety. He wants open war. His proposal is driven by the same rebellious spirit that brought about their original defeat. He refuses to accept that their rebellion has failed, and instead proposes they repeat it.

Moloch’s reasoning is tragic. He has nothing left to lose, or so he thinks. His despair has made him fiercer rather than submissive. His courage has become reckless because it is no longer governed by wisdom.

Moloch represents one extreme answer to defeat: destructive action without repentance. If they cannot have victory, they will at least have another battle.

Belial: Ease

On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane:
A fairer person lost not Heav’n; he seemed
(II.108-110)

Belial offers the opposite solution. Milton portrays Belial as appearing wise. He is graceful, eloquent, and reasonable. Unlike Moloch, he does not call for another assault upon Heaven. Instead, he counsels the fallen angels to remain where they are and avoid provoking God any further.

Belial’s argument sounds reasonable because it contains prudence. The devils have already suffered defeat; why should they deliberately bring further punishment upon themselves?

But Milton exposes a flaw in Belial’s reasoning:

Thus Belial with words clothed in reason’s garb
Counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth,
Not peace: and after him thus Mammon spake.
(II.226-228)

The phrase “reason’s garb” is key. Belial’s argument looks reasonable, but reason has been placed in the service of cowardice. Milton therefore distinguishes between peace and “peaceful sloth.” Belial does not desire true peace, because true peace would require reconciliation with God. He desires merely to avoid further suffering.

Moloch would rather suffer while fighting God than submit to Him. Belial would rather remain in rebellion while avoiding further suffering. Both have rejected the possibility of repentance.

Mammon: Liberty

Mammon takes Belial’s argument a step further. If they cannot return to Heaven, perhaps they can simply make a life for themselves in Hell.

Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess,
Free, and to none accountable, preferring
Hard liberty before the easy yoke.
(II.254-256)

Mammon’s vision is especially revealing because he describes rebellion as liberty. The devils, he says, can “live to ourselves,” free from anyone to whom they must give an account.

This is a fundamental illusion of Hell: that freedom means freedom from God. Mammon would rather endure the pains of Hell than submit to an “easy yoke” of obedience. His language therefore turns a curse into a supposed virtue. Hell becomes the price of independence.

But Milton’s irony is obvious. The devils have chosen “hard liberty” and are now suffering precisely because they have rejected their Creator. What Mammon calls liberty has become bondage to sin. His proposal is not to escape Hell, but to become comfortable in it:

Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements, these piercing fires
(II.274-275)

Instead of asking whether their rebellion was wrong, Mammon asks whether they can adapt themselves to the consequences of their rebellion.

Beelzebub: A New Enemy

After Moloch, Belial, and Mammon have spoken, the council has considered war, inactivity, and the attempt to establish a life within Hell. Then Beelzebub rises.

Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom,
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave
(II.299-300)

His proposal is different. If Heaven cannot be conquered directly, perhaps God’s new creation can be attacked.

Some easier enterprise? There is a place
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heav’n
Err not) another world, the happy seat
Of some new race called Man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In power and excellence, but favoured more.
(II.345-350)

Here the direction of the poem shifts. Until this point, the fallen angels have been concerned primarily with themselves: their defeat, their suffering, their freedom, and their future. Now their attention turns outward toward mankind.

Beelzebub recognizes that they cannot overthrow God directly. But God has created a new race, and that race is especially favored by Him. If the devils cannot defeat God, they can attempt to destroy what God has made. This is the beginning of the temptation of mankind.

It is also the moment when Satan’s rebellion reveals its deepest character. He cannot endure his own separation from God, so he seeks to drag others into it. He cannot strike at the Creator, so he turns against the creature.

The council has therefore arrived at its most destructive possibility. Moloch wanted another war; Belial wanted comfortable inactivity; Mammon wanted independence. Beelzebub proposes something more cunning: to make God’s new creation share in Hell’s rebellion.

Satan’s Journey

Having decided to attack God’s new creation, Satan now undertakes the journey himself. The transition is important. The council has spent much of its time discussing what the fallen angels should do, but Satan is now separated from the rest of Hell. Milton emphasizes his isolation:

Meanwhile the Adversary of God and man,
Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design,
Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of Hell
(II.629-631)

The phrase “highest design” is deliberately ironic. Satan’s purpose is certainly ambitious, but it is not noble. His thoughts are “high” only in the sense that they are directed toward a great act of evil. Milton continues to call him the “Adversary of God and man,” reminding us that Satan’s rebellion is not merely a private dispute between himself and God. His hatred will soon be directed against mankind as well.

Satan’s journey also gives Milton an opportunity to show the vastness of Hell. He eventually reaches its gates:

Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof,
And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass
Three iron, three of adamantine rock,
(II.644-646)

The gates are enormous and seemingly impenetrable. They are made successively of brass, iron, and adamantine rock, and they are surrounded by fire. Satan, despite all his power, does not simply pass through them. Before the gates stand two mysterious beings.

Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat
On either side a formidable shape;
The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair,
But ended foul in many a scaly fold
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed
(II.648-652)

The first creature is Sin. Milton makes her both beautiful and grotesque. She is fair above and serpentine below, an image of the corruption produced by Satan’s rebellion. Sin is not merely something Satan encounters on his journey; she is something that has come from him.

Before Satan can pass, however, Death confronts him. Sin intervenes to prevent father and son from destroying one another:

O father, what intends thy hand, she cried,
Against thy only son? What fury O son,
Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart
Against thy father’s head? and know’st thou for whom;
(II.727-730)

The grotesque family relationship is important. Satan is the father of Sin, and Sin gave birth to Death. Milton has turned the theological relationship between rebellion, sin, and death into a literal genealogy. Satan’s rebellion produces Sin, and Sin produces Death.

Yet Satan does not even recognize his own offspring. He asks who they are and why they call him father. Sin then explains her origin:

Out of thy head I sprung: amazement seized
All th’ host of Heav’n; back they recoiled afraid
At first, and called me Sin, and for a Sign
(II.758-760)

Sin was born from Satan’s head when he first rebelled against God. Milton’s image recalls classical mythology, particularly the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. But Milton reverses the classical image. From Zeus comes Athena, associated with wisdom; from Satan comes Sin.

The contrast is fitting. Satan’s rebellion did not produce wisdom or freedom, as the fallen angels would later claim. It produced sin.

Sin’s birth also explains why she resembles Satan so closely. She tells him that he became attracted to her because he saw his own image in her. Satan therefore loves Sin because Sin is his own image reflected back to him. His rebellion has become something outside himself, yet it remains fundamentally his own creation.

This is one of the most important ideas in the passage. Sin does not enter Satan’s life from somewhere else. It springs from his own rebellion. Milton is giving poetic form to the idea that evil begins with the turning of the creature away from God.

Sin then describes what happened after her fall from Heaven. Satan’s relationship with her produces Death, who violently emerged from her. The result is a grotesque parody of generation and creation:

At last this odious offspring whom thou seest,
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
Made to destroy: I fled, and cry’d out Death;
(II.781-787)

The language is horrifying. Creation should bring forth life, order, and goodness. Here, Satan’s rebellion produces the opposite: Sin gives birth to Death, and Death brings destruction wherever he goes. The allegory therefore becomes clear: Satan’s rebellion produces Sin; Sin produces Death.

Milton has taken a theological truth and embodied it in the strange inhabitants of Hell. Death is not an independent evil that simply happens to exist alongside sin. He is the offspring of sin. There is an additional irony in the fact that Sin is the guardian of Hell’s gates. She possesses the key:

This powerful Key
Into my hand was giv’n, with charge to keep
These Gates for ever shut, which none can pass
Without my op’ning.
(II.774-777)

Sin therefore stands literally at the entrance to Hell. The imagery suggests that sin itself is bound up with the imprisonment and isolation of Hell, and Sin is made its gatekeeper. Satan can leave only because Sin opens the gate for him.

Milton’s picture of Hell is consequently more than a physical location. It is a kingdom generated by rebellion itself. Satan sits upon its throne; Sin guards its gates; Death waits beside her. The entire structure of Hell reflects the nature of its ruler.

Yet Satan is not deterred by what he sees. On the contrary, once he learns that Sin and Death are his offspring, he persuades them to join his mission. He presents himself as one who is willing to expose himself to danger for the sake of his followers. Once again, Satan can imitate the language of self-sacrifice while pursuing a fundamentally destructive purpose.

His journey now continues beyond Hell and into the vast region of Chaos. He is leaving the kingdom he has built and moving toward the world God has made. The significance of that journey is therefore becoming clear. Satan cannot strike directly at the Creator, so he turns toward the creature.

Through Chaos

Beyond the gates of Hell lies something even stranger: the vast region Milton calls the Deep, or Chaos. Satan has escaped from Hell, but he has not yet reached the created world. Between them lies a realm where the normal boundaries of creation have not yet been established.

Milton describes it in cosmic terms:

Before their eyes in sudden view appear
The secrets of the hoary deep, a dark
Illimitable Ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and heighth,
And time and place are lost; where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
(II.890-897)

Chaos is the opposite of the ordered world that God has created. There is no stable distinction between one thing and another. Even “length, breadth, and heighth, / And time and place” are lost. Milton is imagining a realm in which the structures that make the created world intelligible have not yet been established. This becomes even clearer as Milton describes the elements themselves:

For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce
Strive here for mast’ry, and to battle bring Their embryon atoms;
(II.898-900)

The language is that of a battlefield. The elements are “Champions,” each fighting for mastery, while their atoms gather behind them like opposing armies. Nothing possesses lasting dominion. Chaos itself presides over the struggle:

To whom these most adhere,
He rules a moment; Chaos umpire sits,
And by decision more embroils the fray
By which he reigns: next him high arbiter
Chance governs all.
(II.906-910)

This is a form of government much like Satan’s council in Pandemonium. Satan’s kingdom has councils, kings, and political speeches; Chaos has an “Umpire” and an “Arbiter.” But neither possesses true order. In Pandemonium, the fallen angels debate how best to continue their rebellion. In Chaos, the elements fight without any lasting rule. Milton then gives Chaos a remarkable description:

Into this wild Abyss, the womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave, (II.910-911)

Chaos is both “womb” and “grave.” It contains the raw materials from which worlds may be formed, but left to itself it is incapable of producing ordered creation. Milton immediately makes the distinction clear: these confused materials will continue to fight unless the Almighty Maker orders them.

This is an important distinction between Chaos and God. Chaos possesses matter, but not the power to give it proper order. God, by contrast, is the Creator who brings order out of what is disordered. Chaos can provide the material; only the Almighty Maker can make a world. And Satan is now attempting to travel through precisely this realm.

Into this wild abyss the wary Fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while
Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith
He had to cross. (II.917-920)

Satan, who appeared so powerful while sitting upon his throne in Pandemonium, now hesitates before Chaos. The journey is not easy. Milton compares the noise and violence of Chaos to the destruction of a city under siege and even to the heavens themselves falling apart. Satan eventually spreads his wings and enters the Abyss, but the journey is difficult.

This is significant because it reminds us of the limits of Satan’s power. He is extraordinarily powerful, but he is not divine. He cannot simply command Chaos into submission. He must struggle through it. Eventually Satan finds the throne of Chaos:

When straight behold the throne
Of Chaos, and his dark pavilion spread
Wide on the wasteful deep;
(II.959-961)

With Chaos sits Night, “eldest of things,” while around them are figures representing the forces of disorder: Chance, Tumult, Confusion, and Discord. Satan finds himself in a kingdom that resembles his own. Like Hell, Chaos is governed by forces opposed to order. Yet Satan does not come as an enemy. He comes as a politician.

He tells Chaos that he is seeking a way toward the light and asks him to direct his journey toward the newly created world. Satan then makes a promise:

Yours be th’ advantage all, mine the revenge!
(II.987)

This line exposes the true motive behind Satan’s journey. He does not ultimately seek freedom, justice, or restoration. He seeks revenge.

Satan offers Chaos the possibility of recovering territory from God’s creation and returning it to the dominion of Night. In exchange, Chaos will show him the way toward Earth. The bargain is perfectly suited to Satan’s character: he promises another power the benefit of his rebellion so that he himself can satisfy his hatred of God.

Chaos agrees to direct him. He tells Satan that the newly created Heaven and Earth have already encroached upon his realm. If Satan travels that way, he will find the world he seeks.

There is a deep irony here. God’s creation has pushed back the realm of Chaos. The ordered universe is an invasion of disorder. Satan, however, now travels through Chaos in order to reach that ordered world and corrupt it.

Milton has placed Satan physically between Hell and Creation, and Chaos lies between the two. His journey is symbolic as well as geographical. He has rejected God’s order and now travels through a realm of disorder on his way toward God’s creation. He is moving toward the place where he hopes to undo the work of the Creator.

But the journey also reveals something Satan himself does not understand. Chaos is not God’s equal. The Almighty Maker can order Chaos, while Satan can only move through it. Satan may cause confusion, but he cannot create a world.

That distinction becomes crucial as Satan finally approaches the newly created Earth. The world he is about to enter is not another Hell. It is an ordered creation, suspended beneath Heaven in a “golden chain.” Satan has crossed the realm of disorder and now sees the work of the Creator before him. And he does not see it with wonder. He sees it as something to destroy.

The entirety of Book II leads to the question: What does rebellion against God accomplish? Satan and the fallen angels believe that rebellion will give them freedom and independence, but Milton shows that their rebellion produces the opposite. What Mammon calls “hard liberty” becomes bondage to sin, and Satan’s rebellion ultimately produces Sin and Death. The fallen angels cannot overthrow God or escape His authority; they can only separate themselves from Him and suffer the consequences of that separation. Rebellion therefore offers no true freedom or lasting victory. It is instead the consequence of sinful nature turning away from God, a condition that can ultimately be cured only through Christ.