[Milton-L] (no subject)

[Michael Bryson]

As Margaret Thickstun wrote in response to Christy's
earlier question about how Satan knew which was the
forbidden tree:

  I must
  protest strenuously against Marlene's suggestion
  that God wants
  Satan to do what he does.  That seems to me to
  undermine the entire
  argument of the poem, that God is not
  responsible/liable for human and
  angelic disobedience, that all the created beings
  are "sufficient to
  have stood, though free to fall."

This is certainly the argument of the character
called the Father, both claims being prominently
featured in his speeches in Book 3. I do not think,
however, that it is the "entire argument of the
poem." A great deal of evidence in the poem points
away from the Father's rather defensive--even
self-exculpatory--claims in Book 3. A few examples:
Satan is securely locked away in Hell, and yet there
is, not only a gate, but a key to that gate (a
prison sealed up in the fashion of the end of Cask
of Amontillado would have been rather more secure, I
think). The keeper of the key is located (by the
Father, at that) inside the gate, and is the one
figure in the poem who is (by her own admission)
most likely to be loyal to Satan rather than the
Father. Surprise, surprise...Satan gets out of Hell.

Next, Satan hasn't the foggiest notion how to get
from the gates of Hell to Adam and Eve. But at every
step, there are guides (Chaos, Uriel) and/or
roadsigns or roads (the stairway leading down from
heaven and the corresponding stairway leading up
that meets it). Even upon being "arrested" in Eden
by Gabriel, Ithuriel, and Zephon (whose name always
makes me think of the tune "Werewolves of
London"...but that's just me...), Satan is let go:
the scales that appear in the sky weigh the sequel
each of parting and of fight, and come down in favor
of parting. Who lets a wolf go once it has been
caught in the sheepfold? Who does such a thing?

Someone who does not intend the wolf to fail.

An alternate view, to be sure, Christy, but there it
is...

Michael Bryson
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