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Book 6 begins as Raphael continues to tell the story of the conflict between Satan and Almighty in heaven that resulted in Satan’s fall. Abdiel returns to God’s palace from Satan’s temple in the North. The other angels welcome Abdiel and praise him for his courage to oppose Satan. He is taken to God who praises him for his loyalty, obedience, and adherence to goodness even when no one else stood with him. God then assigns Archangels Michael and Gabriel as the leader of heavenly forces to fight against Satan and other rebel angels on his side. However, God limits the number of angel soldiers in Heavenly force equal to the number of angels ready to fight on side of Satan.
The next day, the two armies stand against each other, and Satan and Abdiel meet on the middle ground. They exchange angry words, insults, and then Satan attacks Abdiel. War begins as Abdiel returns the blow to Satan.
Both sides were equally strong and God ascertained that each side have an equal number of warriors. These warriors are angels and they cannot die or kill each other. As they fought fiercely, it appeared that the war will never come to end. Then Michael decided to take on Satan, the leader of the opposing army. Satan was the strongest and best warrior of both sides, he was next to none but God, but now he didn’t have blessings of God while Michael was representing the might of God. Soon it became clear that Michael will outpower Satan. Michael used an unusually large and intimidating sword and gave a strong blow to Satan that sliced through Satan’s entire right side. Satan couldn’t die, yet he was incapacitated by that blow. Soon his supporters came to his rescue and took him off the battleground and thus the war of the first day came to a halt.
It was a victorious day for the good angels but Satan manipulated his supporters and made them feel as if their side was winning. He turned defeat into victory by saying that if God was infallible and his army was insurmountable, why did he let the rebellions survive? He asks why God let them retreat instead of squashing and ending the whole army of rebellious angels? Satan says that if they could fight against God for a whole day without any major loss, why cannot they fight against the Almighty forever? He suggested that his supporters must create new weapons to surprise God’s army and then they will be able to defeat them. Satan says that they must use heaven’s natural resources to create much stronger and devastating weaponry.
All the rebellious angels collectively engage in creating a menacing weapon, a firing cannon that they can use to attack good angels with gun powder, which is a natural resource of heaven found in the rocks of the heavenly hills. The next day, Satan’s forces surprise God’s army with the fire cannons. A huge number of good angels are knocked down by gun powder cannons, but they cannot die. God’s army soon explores a way to retaliate. All the good angels run away to the hills of heaven and as they realize that the rocks of hills are the main resource of gun powder that the devils are using, they start throwing big rocks and hills back at Satan’s army. This creates a lot of confusion, and hazardous pollution. The peaceful heaven soon starts appearing like a heap of debris. The second day of war ends with no clear winner and everyone goes back to their respective camps at night.
God realizes that the war will bring no result in the manner it is going on. God persuades His Son to go to the battlefield and defeat Satan’s army comprehensively. On day three, the Son of God addresses God’s army and tells them to care for their wounds and relax while he will go to the battlefield and will defeat the army of rebels. He rides forward in his charismatic chariot to face the army of Satan alone. As he rides towards the battlefield, the hills and rocks that were uprooted the previous day start settling back to their original position and heaven start attaining its normal self in peaceful glory. As the Son of God faces Satan’s army, Satan gets confused as he has no inkling of the powers and abilities of the Son of God. The Son soon starts charging them with a thunderous lightning bolt which is much more powerful than the gun powder cannons that were used the previous day. All the soldiers of Satan’s army get frightened. They see an opening occurring on the wall of heaven. Soon the Son of God surrounds these rebels and pushes them towards the opening in heaven’s wall. All the evil angels including their leader, Satan fall through that opening and they cascade down to that fiery lake in hell.
Raphael concludes this war story while ascertaining that Satan is powerless against the might of the Almighty. He then warns Adam that now Satan wants to corrupt mankind by tempting man to commit disobedience. Raphael says that Man should use his rational faculty properly and not allow himself to fall. As Satan is already a Fallen Angel, away from the mercy of God, he wants other creatures and especially, Man, the most loved creation of God to get corrupt. He warns him not to yield to temptations.
Analysis of Book 6
Milton classically described the war of Heaven. It shows the influence of classical epics such as Aeneid and Iliad. He graphically presents war scenes and wounds while stressing individual battles between characters and offers massive scenes of chaotic violence. Raphael tells the story of the war of heaven in such a manner that offers many moral lessons to Adam. The first lesson is that disobedience leads one to blindness where he fails to see the obvious. On the first day of battle, Michael easily overpowers Satan and slices him up in two parts. It is clearly a devastating failure and defeat of Satan. Yet, Satan fails to accept it. Rather, he convinces his supporters that it was actually a victory for his side. He simply fails to see the sign while his pride is being hurt. Before Satan decided to disobey God, he was the most powerful, best warrior angel of God who could be defeated by none. While Lucifer took pride in it, he failed to accept that his success and abilities are gifts of God and he holds all that power because God is on his side. Once, Satan disobeys God, while he continues to have that pride of being invincible, he loses that strength of God that used to make him invincible. As a result, a much less strong angel Michael easily defeats him as now Michael represents God’s might.
Milton presents the war of heaven in a hilarious cartoonish manner. Since no angel could die, they continue to attack and harm each other while they cannot die. Satan devotes all the powers and resources of his army to the war while only a portion of God’s angels fight against his war while others are just spectators. Everybody realizes that Satan is fighting for a losing cause and he can never win yet, Satan is adamant to continue the war.
Milton expresses gunpowder as a resource of heaven that was used by the Devil for evil purposes. He represents canon as a weapon of Satan. Guns were recently developed in Milton’s time and they were actually considered a disgusting weapon inspired by the devil. One could use a gun to cowardly attack a person without facing him and this made war more impersonal. Guns increased the efficiency of wars as many soldiers could be easily killed on both sides. Generally, guns were considered evil and harmful just like nuclear weapons are now considered weapons of complete destruction of everything good.
Furthermore, Milton offers a relation between the war of heaven and the real story of Christ. The war of heaven continued for three days. Christ was resurrected on earth on the third day. Christ rose from death while defeating Death, Son of Satan. In heaven, the Son of God defeats Satan on the third day. The Son of God goes to fight against the army of Satan alone without any help from other angels of God. Christ also faced the brutal powers on earth alone and nobody stood by him. As the Son of God rides his chariot towards the battlefield, the torn hills and rocks resettle themselves in order and the chaos ceases to exist as heaven regains normalcy. Similarly, it is suggested that Christ brought rationality, peace, calmness, and order back to mankind. The Son of God then creates an opening in the wall of heaven through which all the evil angels fall out of heaven to hell. The story alludes to the story from the Gospel of Mark which suggests Jesus casting the devil into a Gaverene swine that is pushed towards a cliff from where it falls.
Raphael tries to warn Adam while informing him about Satan.
So this is it about Book 6 of Paradise Lost. We will continue to discuss the remaining parts of this epic by John Milton. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
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