Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Light and Dark
Opposites abound in Paradise Lost, including
Heaven and Hell, God and Satan, and good and evil. Milton’s uses
imagery of light and darkness to express all of these opposites.
Angels are physically described in terms of light, whereas devils
are generally described by their shadowy darkness. Milton also uses
light to symbolize God and God’s grace. In his invocation in Book
III, Milton asks that he be filled with this light so he can tell
his divine story accurately and persuasively. While the absence
of light in Hell and in Satan himself represents the absence of
God and his grace.
The Geography of the Universe
Milton divides the universe into four major regions: glorious Heaven,
dreadful Hell, confusing Chaos, and a young and vulnerable Earth
in between. The opening scenes that take place in Hell give the
reader immediate context as to Satan’s plot against God and humankind.
The intermediate scenes in Heaven, in which God tells the angels
of his plans, provide a philosophical and theological context for
the story. Then, with these established settings of good and evil,
light and dark, much of the action occurs in between on Earth. The
powers of good and evil work against each other on this new battlefield
of Earth. Satan fights God by tempting Adam and Eve, while God shows
his love and mercy through the Son’s punishment of Adam and Eve.
Milton believes that any other information concerning
the geography of the universe is unimportant. Milton acknowledges
both the possibility that the sun revolves around the Earth and
that the Earth revolves around the sun, without coming down on one
side or the other. Raphael asserts that it does not matter which
revolves around which, demonstrating that Milton’s cosmology is
based on the religious message he wants to convey, rather than on
the findings of contemporaneous science or astronomy.
Conversation and Contemplation
One common objection raised by readers of Paradise
Lost is that the poem contains relatively little action.
Milton sought to divert the reader’s attention from heroic battles
and place it on the conversations and contemplations of his characters.
Conversations comprise almost five complete books of Paradise
Lost, close to half of the text. Milton’s narrative emphasis
on conversation conveys the importance he attached to conversation
and contemplation, two pursuits that he believed were of fundamental
importance for a moral person. As with Adam and Raphael, and again
with Adam and Michael, the sharing of ideas allows two people to
share and spread God’s message. Likewise, pondering God and his
grace allows a person to become closer to God and more obedient.
Adam constantly contemplates God before the fall, whereas Satan
contemplates only himself. After the fall, Adam and Eve must learn
to maintain their conversation and contemplation if they hope to
make their own happiness outside of Paradise.
