Milton's epic poem opens on the fiery
lake of hell, where Satan and his army of fallen angels find
themselves chained. Satan and his leutenant Beelzebub get
up from the lake and yell to the others to rise and join them. Music plays and
banners fly as the army of rebel angels comes to attention, tormented and
defeated but faithful to their general. They create a great and terrible
temple, perched on a volcano top, and Satan calls a council there to decide on
their course of action.
The fallen angels give various suggestions.
Finally, Beelzebub suggests that they take the battle to a new battlefield, a
place called earth where, it is rumoured, God has
created a new being called man. Man is not as powerful as the angels, but he is
God's chosen favorite among his creations. Beelzebub suggests that they seek
revenge against God by seducing man to their corrupted side. Satan volunteers
to explore this new place himself and find out more about man so that he may
corrupt him. His fallen army unanimously agrees by banging on their swords.
Satan takes off to the gates of hell,
guarded by his daughter, Sin, and their
horrible son, Death. Sin agrees to open the gates for her
creator (and rapist), knowing that she will follow him and reign with him in whatever
kingdom he conquers. Satan then travels through chaos, and finally arrives at
earth, connected to heaven by a golden chain.
God
witnesses all of this and points out Satan's journey to his Son. God tells his
Son that, indeed, Satan will corrupt God's favorite creation, man. His Son
offers to die a mortal death to bring man back into the grace and light of God.
God agrees and tells how his Son will be born to a virgin. God then makes his
Son the king of man, son of both man and God.
Meanwhile, Satan disguises himself as a
handsome cherub in order to get by the angel Uriel who is guarding earth. Uriel
is impressed that an angel would come all the way from heaven to witness God's
creation, and points the Garden of Eden out to Satan. Satan makes his way into
the Garden and is in awe at the beauty of Eden and of the handsome couple of Adam and Eve. For a moment, he deeply
regrets his fall from grace. This feeling soon turns, however, to hatred.
Uriel, however, has realized that he has
been fooled by Satan and tells the angel Gabriel as much. Gabriel finds
Satan in the Garden and sends him away.
God, seeing how things are going, sends Raphael to warn Adam and Eve
about Satan. Raphael goes down to the Garden and is invited for dinner by Adam
and Eve. While there, he narrates how Satan came to fall and the subsequent
battle that was held in heaven. Satan first sin was pride, when he took issue
with the fact that he had to bow down to the Son. Satan was one of the top
angels in heaven and did not understand why he should bow. Satan called a
council and convinced many of the angels who were beneath him to join in
fighting God.
A tremendous, cosmic three-day battle
ensued between Satan's forces and God's forces. On the first day, Satan's
forces were beaten back by the army led by the archangels Michael and Gabriel. On the second
day, Satan seemed to gain ground by constructing artillery, literally cannons,
and turning them against the good forces. On the third day, however, the Son
faced Satan's army alone and they quickly retreat, falling through a hole in
heaven's fabric and cascading down to hell.
This
is the reason, Raphael explains, that God created man: to replace the empty
space that the fallen angels have left in heaven. Raphael then tells of how God
created man and all the universe in seven days. Adam himself remembers the
moment he was created and, as well, how he came to ask God for a companion,
Eve. Raphael leaves.
The next morning, Eve insists on working separately from Adam. Satan, in the
form of serpent, finds her working alone and starts to flatter her. Eve asks
where he learned to speak, and Satan shows her the Tree of Knowledge. Although
Eve knows that this was the one tree God had forbidden that they eat from, she
is told by Satan that this is only because God knows she will become a goddess
herself. Eve eats the fruit and then decides to share it with Adam.
Adam,
clearly, is upset that Eve disobeyed God, but he cannot imagine a life without
her so he eats the apple as well. They both, then, satiate their new-born lust
in the bushes and wake up ashamed, knowing now the difference from good and
evil (and, therefore, being able to choose evil). They spend the afternoon
blaming each other for their fall.
God
sends the Son down to judge the two disobediant creatures. The Son condemns
Eve, and all of womankind, to painful childbirths and submission to her
husband. He condemns Adam to a life of a painful battle with nature and hard
work at getting food from the ground. He condemns the serpent to always crawl
on the ground on its belly, always at the heel of Eve's sons.
Satan,
in the meantime, returns to hell victorious. On the way, he meets Sin and
Death, who have built a bridge from hell to earth, to mankind, whom they will
now reign over. When Satan arrives in hell, however, he finds his fallen
compatriots not cheering as he had wished, but hissing. The reason behind the
horrible hissing soon becomes clear: all of the fallen angels are being
transformed into ugly monsters and terrible reptiles. Even Satan finds himself
turning into a horrible snake.
Adam
and Eve, after bitterly blaming each other, finally decide to turn to God and
ask for forgiveness. God hears them and agrees with his Son that he will not
lose mankind completely to Sin, Death and Satan. Instead, he will send his son
as a man to earth to sacrifice himself and, in so doing, conquer the evil
trinity.
Michael
is sent by God to escort Adam and Eve out of the Garden. Before he does,
however, he tells Adam what will become of mankind unitl the Son comes down to
earth. The history of mankind (actually the history of the Jewish people as
narrated in the Hebrew Bible) will be a series of falls from grace and
acceptance back by God, from Noah and the Flood to the Babylonian exile of the
Jewish people.
Adam
is thankful that the Son will come down and right what he and Eve have done
wrong. He holds Eve's hand as they are escorted out of the Garden.
