5. Paradise Lost, by John Milton, pp. 83-112

Book IV

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Milton opens with a lament that no one raised a warning of Satan's approach to Eden, but as it turns out, Satan is having his own misgivings, a wee touch of conscience spurred by "the bitter memory / Of what he was, what is, and what must be / Worse." His soliloquy gives him a tragic dimension -- sympathy for the devil. Things weren't really so bad "In that bright eminence" of Heaven -- a deliberate echo of the "bad eminence" to which his merit has raised him in Hell -- because God "with his good / Upbraided none; nor was his service hard." It hasn't been so long since he was proclaiming it better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, but now he's wishing that God had made him "some inferior Angel. I had stood / Then happy; no unbounded hope had rais'd / Ambition." But now there's no escaping what he is:

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.

Satan struggles with his conscience, by Gustave Doré, 1866

This is a long way from the claim that the mind can create a Heaven of Hell. And now he is even tempted to repent, except that he chokes on the very word "submission" and moreover is afraid of losing face: "my dread of shame / Among the Spirits beneath." He's also afraid that he wouldn't be able to maintain a vow of repentance, that the "wounds of deadly hate have pierc'd so deep: / Which would but lead me to a worse relapse, / And heavier fall."

And so he commits another deadly sin: sloth, or acedia, which is the spiritual version of sloth, the unwillingness to rouse oneself to the effort of betterment.

So farewell Hope, and with Hope farewell Fear,
Farewell Remorse: all Good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my Good; by thee at least
Divided Empire with Heav'n's King I hold
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign;
As Man ere long, and this new World shall know.

During his soliloquy, Uriel has been watching as "ire, envy and despair ... marr'd his borrow'd visage," i.e., he no longer looks like the "stripling Cherub" he had disguised himself as.

Satan looks down on Eden, by Gustave Doré, 1866

So he reaches Eden, and it's a touch of Miltonic irony that we see the earthly paradise first through Satan's eyes. Its pleasures are so great that they are "able to drive / All sadness but despair," and Satan's chief mood at the moment is despair. He makes it easily over the walls of the garden, and "So clomb this first grand Thief into God's Fold," a line whose thudding monosyllables contrast with the mellifluousness of the description of the garden itself. He turns into a cormorant and perches on top of the Tree of Life for a good view. "Our Death the Tree of Knowledge grew fast by, / Knowledge of Good bought dear by knowing ill."

"A happy rural seat of various view," by Gustave Doré, 1866

Milton's description of the garden has been criticized by some for a lack of sensory detail, for over-general descriptions such as "Lawns, or level Downs, and Flocks grazing the tender herb." It's true that there is much conventional pastoral imagery throughout, but to my ear the lines are musical and flowing. And finally we get to the famous description by negative, the passage in which Milton tells us that Eden surpassed all the great gardens of classical myth:

                                             Not that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpin gath'ring flow'rs
Herself a fairer Flow'r by gloomy Dis
Was gather'd, which cost Ceres all that pain
To seek her through the world; nor that sweet Grove
Of Daphne by Orontes, and th' inspir'd
Castalian Spring might with this Paradise
Of Eden strive; nor that Nyseian Isle
Girt with the River Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Lybian Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid Son,
Young Bacchus, from his Stepdame Rhea's eye;
Nor where Abassin Kings thir issue Guard,
Mount Amara, though this by some suppos'd
True Paradise under the Ethiop Line
By Nilus head, enclos'd with shining Rock,
A whole day's journey high, but wide remote
From this Assyrian Garden, where the Fiend
Saw undelighted all delight, all kind
Of living Creatures new to sight and strange:

 Milton alludes to classical legends that his readers would know, reaping the benefits of allusion by claiming that his garden is the superior to all these. The story of Proserpina carried off to the underworld also foreshadows the story of Eve. And the introduction of Satan, the fiend who sees all delight but is undelighted by it, is a smart dramatic trick that puts an end to the extended passage about Eden.

Adam and Eve in the Garden, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Adam and Eve, by William Strang, 1896

And here we get our first glimpse of Adam and Eve, as well as our first irritating reference to Eve's inferiority to Adam:

Whence true autority in men; though both
Not equal, as thir sex not equal seem'd;
For contemplation hee and valor form'd,
For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace,
Hee for God only, shee for God in him

St. Paul's sexism is much to blame here, even in the fact that Adam's hair "manly hung / Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad" -- Paul asserted that long hair was a "shame unto" a man but "a glory unto" a woman. Of course, if God had created the sexes equal, then he wouldn't have provided Satan with such a nice target in Eve. But I doubt that all but the most orthodox Christians can read the lines about Eve today without feeling at best a twinge of annoyance.

Nor is it possible to read the lines about these naked gardeners strolling "hand in hand" (a motif for the two that persists even to the very end of the poem) without feeling that one has strolled into some kind of hippie commune and traveling circus, as the animals gather around to entertain them, though there is still some charm lingering in "th' unwieldy Elephant / To make them mirth us'd all his might and wreath'd / His Lithe Proboscis." Milton swiftly undercuts this bit of humor by introducing "the Serpent sly / Insinuating," though he hasn't yet been put to ill use by Satan.

Satan is, of course, upset by the scene, though his first words, "O Hell!" have a comic effect that Milton didn't intend. Adam and Eve are so attractive that even he "could love" the "gentle pair" and "could pity" them because he knows he's about to spoil everything for them. But he swiftly descends into sarcasm about the home he has prepared for them:

                                 my dwelling may not please
Like this fair Paradise, your sense, yet such
Accept your Maker's work; he gave it me,
Which I as freely give; Hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest Gates,
And send forth all her Kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring

But don't thank him for the lodgings: "Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge / On you who wrong me not for him who wrong'd." It's all God's fault. (He does have a point, you know. For an omnipotent, loving God, He sure does complicate things.) Satan views himself as a conquistador, "Honor and Empire with revenge enlarg'd, / By conquering this new World."

Satan eavesdrops on Adam and Eve, engraving by Francis Hayman, 1749

William Blake, 1808

So now he disguises himself as various animals to get closer to Adam and Eve and overhear Adam going on (and on) to Eve about how great God is for giving them this lovely place, and asking nothing more than that they prune a few shrubs and sweep up a few fallen petals and branches. And of course blabbermouth that he is, Adam also has to tell Eve something that she probably already knew: that they are forbidden "to taste that only Tree / Of Knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life, / So near grows Death to Life, whate'er Death is, / Some dreadful thing no doubt." Charming as that last phrase is, you do have to wonder why the word "dreadful" is even in the vocabulary of these pampered babies.

Eve responds to Adam's speech by praising him, though not without echoing a little Pauline misogyny:

                                             O thou for whom
And from whom I was form'd flesh of thy flesh,
And without whom am to no end, my Guide
And Head, what thou hast said is just and right.

But then she talks mostly about herself, and how, on the day when she was created she looked into a pool and saw her own reflection: "I started back, / It started back, but pleas'd I soon return'd, / Pleas'd it return'd as soon with answering looks / Of sympathy and love." Fortunately, a "voice" tells her to stop with the narcissism and leads her to Adam, to whom she will "bear / Multitudes like thyself." And under a plane tree she finds him, "and from that time see / How beauty is excell'd by manly grace / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair."

Satan is annoyed by all this lovey-doveyness, not because it does get a bit too cloying, but because there's nothing like it in Hell, "Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, / Among our other torments not the least, / Still unfulfil'd with pain of longing pines." But he has managed to overhear the crucial part about the Tree of Knowledge, and it puzzles him (perhaps as it puzzles us):

                                      Knowledge forbidd'n?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should thir Lord
Envy them that? can it be sin to know,
Can it be death? and do they only stand
By Ignorance, is that thir happy state,
The proof of thir obedience and thir faith? 

It's a real conundrum, but unfortunately he also recognizes the opportunity: "O fair fundation laid whereon to build / Thir ruin!" He'll tell them it's a plot to keep them in their place.

Uriel warns Gabriel, by Gustave Doré, 1866

As night comes on, Uriel reports to Gabriel what he has seen -- someone sinister in disguise -- and Gabriel promises to keep an eye out. And with that Uriel rides down a sunbeam below the horizon, "whither the prime Orb, / Incredible how swift, had thither roll'd / Diurnal, or this less volubil Earth / By shorter flight to th' East." Once again, Milton hedges his bets on whether the universe is heliocentric or geocentric.

Meanwhile, Adam is off on another lecture about how "Man hath his daily work of body or mind / Appointed, which declares his Dignity." And Eve says, okay, whatever you say: "God is thy Law, thou mind: to know no more / Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise." But after talking about how wonderful everything is, she has a question about the stars: "But wherefore all night long shine these, for whom this glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes?" Eve is the questioner, the seeker after knowledge. Adam plays the know-it-all again, explaining that the stars are there to keep Night from regaining "Her old possession, and extinguish life," and that anyway "Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth / Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep." So they retire to their bower and indulge in "the Rites / Mysterious of connubial Love," which Milton, the author of a pamphlet on divorce, now celebrates somewhat defensively.

Ithuriel and Zephon go to check on Adam and Eve in the bower, by Gustave Doré, 1866

Ithuriel and Zephon discover Satan as a toad, whispering to Eve, William Blake, 1808

Meanwhile, Gabriel is commissioning some angels, Uzziel, Ithuriel, and Zephon, to look out for this suspicious master of disguise. And sure enough, the last two find him "Squat like a Toad, close at the ear of Eve." Ithuriel touches the toad lightly with his spear and it explodes instantly into the figure of Satan. (Milton exhibits a cinematic imagination here, likening Satan's transformation to the "sudden blaze" of "a heap of nitrous Powder" touched by a spark.) Ithuriel and Zephon conduct him to Gabriel. Satan is a bit abashed by the fact that in comparison to these angels his own "lustre" is "visibly impaired," but he bluffs it out anyway. When Gabriel asks him why he's here, Satan treats it as a stupid question:

To whom thus Satan, with contemptuous brow,
Gabriel, thou hadst in Heav'n th' esteem of wise,
And such I held thee; but this question askt
Puts me in doubt. Lives there who loves his apin?
Who would not, finding way, break loose from Hell,
Though thither doom'd?

Gabriel is unfazed, and points out that Satan got caught and is in danger of having his pains increased "Sevenfold." And anyway, why did he come alone: "wherefore with thee / Came not all Hell broke loose?" Satan sasses back that if Gabriel knew anything about real leadership he'd know that you don't send an army on a mission that you haven't first reconnoitered. To which Gabriel retorts that first Satan claimed to be fleeing from pain and then to be a spy, which "Argues no Leader, but a liar trac't." If he shows up here again, Gabriel says, "Back to th' infernal pit I drag thee chain'd, / And Seal thee so, as henceforth not to scorn / The facile gates of hell too slightly barr'd."

Everybody bristles now, and it looks like a standoff that might result in the destruction of Paradise if it explodes again into war. But God "Hung forth in Heav'n the golden Scales" and "in these he put two wights / The sequel each of parting and of fight; / The latter quick up flew, and kickt the beam." Gabriel points out that the odds are against Satan, so he "fled / Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night."  

Satan flees murmuring, by Gustave Doré, 1866

11. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, pp. 301-327

Chapter LXVI: The Shark Massacre; Chapter LXVII: Cutting In;  Chapter LXVIII: The Blanket; Chapter LXIX: The Funeral; Chapter LXX: The Sphynx; Chapter LXXI: The Jeroboam's Story; Chapter LXXII: The Monkey-Rope; Chapter LXXIII: Stubb and Flask Kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk Over Him

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In some ways, sharks have taken over from whales as "monsters of the deep" in the popular imagination. So the grisly feeding frenzy of the sharks around the whale carcass has a special chill for us. But so it does for the crew of the Pequod, who commence to kill as many of the sharks as they can. The murderousness (to anthropomorphize as Ishmael does) of the sharks is persistent:

A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in their very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual life had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin, one of these sharks almost took poor Queequeg's hand off, when he tried to shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw. 

Butchery is everywhere on the ship: "The ivory Pequod was turned into what seemed a shambles." Ishmael lingers on the peculiar features of whale anatomy as the animal is carved up, observing that "the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it... the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the 'scarf.'" In a vivid sentence, Ishmael sums up the action:

And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting and lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the heavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates scarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by way of assuaging the general friction.

Ishmael is particularly fascinated by the sperm whale's skin, which is covered with "an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat resembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as flexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it not only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle." He also notes the wrinkles of the skin, comparing them to hieroglyphics, though "the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable." Ishmael prefers to think of the blubber as being part of its skin, and to see the whale as "wrapt up in his blubber as in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho slipt over his head, and skirting his extremity."

Stripped of the blubber, the "colossal" carcass is cast away and pursued by sharks and seabirds. It represents for Ishmael a "great mass of death." But even in death, Ishmael claims that "a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare." He tells of ships that, spotting the whale carcass at a distance, have mistaken it for land: "straightway the whale's unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log -- shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabout: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place.... Thus, while in life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to the world."

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Judith with the Head of Holofernes, c. 1530

The drifting body is headless, however. As Ishmael notes, "the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck," so it takes an expert to judge where head ends and body begins. Moreover, "the sperm whale's head embraces nearly one third of his entire bulk." That head is "hoisted against the ship's side" where "that blood-dripping head hung to the Pequod's waist like the giant Holofernes's from the girdle of Judith."

The head is enough to provoke Ahab to a fantasia about what the whale has seen in the depths of the sea "where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot." He continues with his moral musings when the watch cries out that a ship is approaching and bringing the wind with her. Ahab says, "Would now St. Paul would come along that way, and to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."

Unfortunately, the encounter with the Jeroboam is not one that will cheer Ahab or anyone else on board, even though, like the Pequod, she hails from Nantucket. The Jeroboam's captain, Mayhew, informs them that "a malignant epidemic" has broken out on board, and that he has forbidden contact with other ships. So they attempt to make conversation from a boat that the Jeroboam has lowered, which tries to keep alongside the Pequod as best it can. There is, in fact, more than just an epidemic on the Jeroboam. In the boat is "a man of singular appearance" with a "deep, settled, fanatic delirium in his eyes." Stubb has heard about the man from the Town-Ho's crew. He grew up in what Ishmael refers to as "the crazy society of Neskyeuna [actually Niskayuna] Shakers," which he left for Nantucket, where he joined the Jeroboam's crew. But once they were as sea, "his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard." He failed at that attempt, but managed to gain a following in the crew, who prevented all efforts by Captain Mayhew to get rid of him. The epidemic on board only solidified his credibility with the crew.

Ahab, of course, is only interested in whether they have seen the White Whale. Mayhew had heard about Moby Dick in an encounter with another whale-ship, but when Gabriel heard about him, "in his gibbering insanity, [pronounced] the White Whale to be no less a being than the Shaker God incarnated." A year or two later, Moby Dick was sighted, and the chief mate, Macey, decided to go after him. "Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was tossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of speedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity." Macey was standing up in the boat when the whale surfaced. "Next instant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily into the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea at the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was harmed, nor a hair of any oarsman's head; but the mate for ever sank."

Macey's death only enhanced Gabriel's reputation among the crew as a prophet. And when Mayhew asks if Ahab plans to hunt Moby Dick and Ahab answers "Aye," "Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to his feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with downward pointed finger -- 'Think, think of the blasphemer -- dead, and down there! -- beware of the blasphemer's end." Ahab, of course ignores the warning, and changes the subject: He has remembered that he has a letter for one of the Jeroboam's officers that had been passed on to him. Ishmael explains that whale-ships routinely collect letters "from various ships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed, depends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans. Thus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received after attaining an age of two or three years or more."

Starbuck splits the end of a pole so the letter can be stuck in it and handed down to the Jeroboam's boat. Meanwhile, Ahab reads the letter and realizes that it is addressed to Macey, the mate killed by Moby Dick, and that it's from Macey's wife. Mayhew asks for it to be passed over to him. "'Nay, keep it thyself,' cried Gabriel to Ahab; 'thou art soon going that way.'"  Ahab curses Gabriel and sticks the letter in the slit in the pole, but as he hands it over, the boat drifts so that the letter is in Gabriel's reach. He grabs it, impales it on a knife, and throws it back on board the Pequod, where it lands at Ahab's feet.

Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their oars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the Pequod.

As, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket of the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild affair.

Ishmael now recalls that when work on the whale began, Queequeg's job was to attach the blubber-hook to the whale and to remain on its back through "the whole flensing and stripping operation." Because the body revolves as it is worked on, it's necessary to secure the person on the whale with a rope. And Ishmael had the job of being on the other end of the rope, on deck. The "monkey-rope," as it's called, was tied "fast to Queequeg's broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one." And if Queequeg were to lose his footing and fall, "both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake." Thus, Ishmael comments, "my free will had received a mortal wound." And typically, Ishmael draws a moral lesson from it:

I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connection with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die.

Adding to Queequeg's -- and by extension Ishmael's -- peril are the sharks, in whose midst he is hanging. And though Tashtego and Daggoo kill as many sharks as they can with their whale-spades, those sharp instruments also add to the danger because "both he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled water," so "those indiscreet spades of their would come nearer amputating a leg than a tail." And again Ishmael moralizes about Queequeg's plight: "Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad." Of course, in Ishmael's allegory, your friends, the spades, are almost as dangerous as your foes, the sharks.

Though the quarry of the Pequod is the  sperm whale, when right whales are sighted, Ahab gives the go-ahead to the capture. Stubb and Flask lead the pursuit and between them manage to take one. It tows both boats back toward the ship, and when the whale sounds it carries the line beneath the Pequod: "a swift tremor was felt running like lightning along the keel, as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship, suddenly rose to view under her bows, snapping and quivering." The whale tows the boats around and around the Pequod, and the sharks, attracted by the blood, follow. Finally, "with a frightful roll and vomit, he turned upon his back a corpse."

Ishmael is apparently a witness to the conversation between Stubb and Flask as they get the whale ready to be towed to the ship. Stubb wonders what Ahab wants with "this lump of foul lard," and Flask repeats a story that a ship that has had "a Sperm Whale's head  hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right Whale's one the larboard, ... can never afterwards capsize." He admits that the source of the story is "that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah" but "he seems to know all about ships' charms." (Notice that, in the end, Gabriel turns out to be a better prophet than Fedallah.) 

And so the talk between Stubb and Flask turns to Fedallah, whom Stubb takes "to be the devil in disguise" who doesn't sleep in a hammock but in a coil of rigging in which he hides his tail. Stubb further posts that "the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and the devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away his silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then he'll surrender Moby Dick." And he tells Flask a story about how the devil once asked God ("the old governor") for John. "'Take him,' says the governor -- and by the Lord, Flask, if the devil didn't give John the Asiatic cholera before he got through with him, I'll eat this whale in one mouthful." Stubb seems to have conflated the story of Faust (whose name was John) with the Book of Job, which explains Flask's confusion: "I think I remember some such story as you were telling ... but I can't remember where."

Stubb continues to suggest that God is afraid of the devil:

"Damn the devil, Flask; so you suppose I'm afraid of the devil? Who's afraid of him except the old governor who daresn't catch him him and put him in double-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping people; aye, and signed a bond with him that all the people the devil kidnapped, he'd roast for him? There's a governor!" 

Stubb's justification of the ways of God to man, then, is that God so fears the devil that he gives him free rein to snare human beings, and then punishes the tempted human beings with hellfire instead of punishing the devil who tempted them. And if Fedallah is the devil, Stubb asserts, it's Ahab who's his next victim.

Flask is right about the whale heads: the right whale's head is hoisted as a counterbalance to the sperm whale's, and Ishmael draws a lesson from the Pequod's regaining an even keel, "though sorely strained, you may well believe":

So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

Thus speaks the American pragmatist.

As for Fedallah and Ahab, it's not so clear which one is the devil:  "Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with and lengthen Ahab's."