Chapter Characters of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

And to disordered rage let loose the reins,

With mountains as with weapons armed, which makes

Wild work in heaven, and dangerous to the main."

(VI.695-8)

The Son intervenes with the same devastation for Satan’s forces as Cromwell, Fairfax and the New Model Army brought to the Royalist hopes. Milton’s account of a protracted struggle in heaven was unusual; most commentators spoke of an abrupt fall of Satan, and earlier even Milton in De Doctrina says they "separated after a fairly even fight". Furthermore, Revelation 12:7-8, which Milton cites, does not validate this picture.

In his account of the war in Heaven, Raphael ponders,

"What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein

Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?"

(V.574-6)

This point is reiterated by the heavenly choir ("this new-made world, another heaven", V.617) and Satan ("O earth, how like to heaven", IX.99).

The Parliament of Hell

The debate in Hell has been interpreted by critics in political terms and it is likely that contemporary readers would have drawn comparisons with recent political events. The Victorian critic Walter Bagehot construed the poem in this way claiming that the "great experience" of political affairs Milton had developed as a servant of the Republic meant that his mind was always interpreting things in this manner.

In Of Reformation (1641) Milton extolled the idea of parliamentary system of government, a guarantee of representative against autocratic or tyrannous rule by king and bishop. Milton supported the rule of Parliament against a return to monarchy in The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660) as a key element of the struggle to attain liberty for the people. A parliament under a monarchy for Milton is illusory. The reason for this is enacted in Pandemonium; Satan develops the control over the parliament of Hell Milton had feared the English Parliament would once again become, suppressed as an instrument of royal power and interests, under a restored monarchy.

The parliament of Hell is one of united evil gathered in the darkness of Hell rather than the "one globe of brightnesse" Milton hoped the English Parliament could become. The corruption of this parliament is apparent from the beginning. There is no place for egalitarianism; only four of the devils speak, and the proceedings are brought to a closure once Satan has achieved what is for his own ends the raison d’etre of the assembly. The reference to "A thousand demi-gods on golden seats" in Book I recalls a proposal made during the debates of 1659 for a "popular assembly upward of a thousand" people which Milton rejected in The Readie and Easie Way. Milton’s argument against this proposed system is realised in the Pandemonium of Paradise Lost. Hence as Milton feared such a system would give way to an effective oligarchy, in the parliament of Hell it is only Satan, Belial, Moloch, Mammon and Beelzebub that speak. Contemporary political radicals the Levellers had also been wary of the dangers of too large a Parliamentary membership, as advanced in Foundations of Freedom and the second Agreement of the People.