Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Hope in Hell
In Paradise Lost, John Milton describes hell as a place where "hope never comes," but later Satan says "we may with more successful hope resolve/ To wage by force or guile eternal Warr..." (66, 120-121). That seems contradictory to me. Does Milton mean to specify that "good" hope does not exist in hell? Then again, hell is supposed to be absolute torment, but it seems that the fallen angels take some sort of comfort in the fact that they will not repent but continue to rebel.
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Don't be surprised to find many such contradictions. Maybe you can located some commentary on these paradoxes in your critical reading. Or maybe we as a class can address such issues. Is it hopeless for Satan to hope? Or is Satan's hope a false hope?
ReplyDeleteSatan probably thinks that because he is better than God, he can get around some of the obstacles that God has laid out for him. In Hell, the place of (what seems like) no hope, Satan might think that he is good enough to beat the sense of hopelessness that God wanted to instill in Satan, an so he would be able to hope for another opportunity to rebel against God once again.
ReplyDeleteI think that Satan's hope may prove to be a curse. Obviously, Satan can't beat God in the end, so in a sense God puts Satan in a position where his torment is his own hope because it drives him to work and suffer to oppose God, rather than accept him and, hopefully, be readmitted into heaven. If there was no futile hope, I think people, or souls, or whatever there is in hell would grow numb to their eternal torture.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the contradiction of hope being non-existent and then later it being requested, the presence of rest is also contradicted. I wonder if Milton did this on purpose to show how Hell is basically a contradiction on its own. Hell is more of a contradiction to Heaven and evil a contradiction to good than oppposites. Or maybe this helps show to reader how chaotic Hell is and how confusing and scary not knowing what to expect is.
ReplyDeleteNow we're BLOGGING!
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