Chapter Themes of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

Themes

The Creation and Chaos

The world of Paradise Lost was created out of chaos ensphered by God’s act of turning the pair of golden compasses, and suspended from heaven by a golden chain. Milton did not believe that the universe was created from nothing. Chaos also meant "yawning gulf" and with it came connotations of emptiness and formlessness.

The central stage of the poem is the inner tribulations of Adam and Eve, but the cosmic background is of great religious, imaginative and aesthetic importance. The whole Ptolemaic world is only a point in Milton’s universe. Hanging in Chaos, it looks to Satan like a small star beside the moon. Chaos fills the space between heaven and hell.

The discussion of the Creation in Paradise Lost raises an obvious, though still topical in Milton’s time, theological question: if God foreknew the Fall of man, why did he proceed with the Creation? The answer is partly made in traditional theological terms: that is that the Lord’s ways are incomprehensible to mankind. However, since it is Milton’s purpose to justify the ways of God to humankind, this does not suffice. Milton has Adam ask

"How first began this heaven which we behold

Distant so high…

What cause

Moved the creator in his holy rest

Through all eternity so late to build

In Chaos, and that work begun, how soon

Absolved…"

(VII.86-94)

In the context of Newtonian physics, Adam’s question at first focuses on the process, or mechanics behind the universe, but also on God’s motives for creating it. Raphael declares,

"Immediate are the acts of God, more swift

Than time or motion, but to human ears

Cannot without process of speech be told,

So told as earthly notion can receive."

(VII.176-9)

In Dante this problem is non-existent; space, time and movement are only present as a means of talking about spiritual truth. Milton answers the question of how the universe works inside the answer to why God made it.

Raphael is clear that the universe mankind inhabits is not only made in chaos, it is also in part made from it. Chaos is insufficient for the process of creation, and in itself is not wholly good for that purpose; in Book VII we are told of the "black tartareous cold infernal dregs | Adverse to life" which must be "downward purged" before the universe can come into existence. "Tartareous" is a word that Milton twice used to allude to hell (II.858; VI.54). The raw material that constitutes chaos is made up of the four elements: earth,