Milton's Paradise Lost is filled with
very imagery in all of its many books, but Milton's descriptions of hell are especially
vivid, and keep in line with our general understanding of hell as being a place of fire
and punishment.
In Book 1, Milton describes what happened
to the fallen angels who dared to challenge God in Heaven. He states that the angels
were all
hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky /
With hideous ruin and combustion down / To bottomless perdition, there to dwell / In
adamantine chains and penal fire ... his (Satan's) horrid crew / Lay vanquished, rolling
in the fiery gulf.
This first
description of hell is very clearly a place of terror and torment. The rebel Angels
were thrown from the beautiful sky of heaven down to an unending hell of damnation.
There they are suffering in the fires that they cannot escape
from.
From there, the descriptions goes on to reinforce
the above mentioned description. Hell is described as
a
dismal
situation waste and wild / A dungeon horrible, on all sides round / As one great furnace
flamed, yet from those flames / No light but rather, darkness
visible.
This description is
especially interesting in the final image. Normally we think of fire and picture the
warm lighted glow that is emitted from the flames, but this fire is so intense and
other-worldly no light comes forth. It is actually darker than seems possible. It is
in incredibility frightening description. From there, the description continues with
interesting and powerful word choices and short phrases. There is a mention of the
"fiery deluge" which suggests a flood of fire -- a flood is usually thought to be
overwhelming and unstoppable. When Beelzebub tries to rally the angels to be strong in
the midst of this torture he acknowledges the "dreary plain" that is "forlorn and
wild." He calls it a "seat of desolation" and describes the flames as "livid." That is
an interesting word choice because the reader might expect "vivid" meaning bright and
lively, but he uses "livid" to draw the connotation of anger and power. Even though
this hell is an awful and frightening place, Satan wants his followers to "toss off the
fiery waves" and overcome this "dire calamity." He rallies the other angels to try to
rise from the firey pit they are in and to embrace the idea that even though they are
damned
The
mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, or a Hell
of Heaven.
The angels may
be eternally in this place, but they can still have great influence in the world. They
can embrace the idea that they are "in charge" of hell and no longer have God in charge
of them. The rest of Paradise Lost is about how Satan sets about to get his revenge on
God. As we know from the Bible, he sees his opportunity in the characters of Adam and
Eve in God's Garden of Eden. As they are brought down by sin, so is all of
humanity.
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