The Muting of Satan: Language and Redemption in Paradise Regained

Abstract

So much has been made of Jesus' passivity in Paradise Regained that few readers recognize the action he takes decisively and takes often. To stress the interiority of the poem, the psychological drama of Jesus' free choice not to engage in action as Satan presents it, is to lose sight of the fact that Milton deliberately places the reader outside of Jesus' consciousness and thus outside of such drama. After Satan's arrival in the wilderness, when the conflict properly begins, Milton provides only sixteen lines of the Son's interior monologue; our assessment of Jesus depends entirely upon his external behavior, his willingness to act in the normal sense of the word and to adopt means that may at first seem earthly and tainted-namely, his willingness to speak. Stanley Fish has noted that speech is an action,1 but he assumes that Jesus must therefore eradicate speech on his way toward a perfect passivity and obedience embodied in silence. Exactly the opposite is the case. Although his style remains temperate and succinct, the Son steadily speaks at greater length and in the process of debate consistently renders Satan mute until the adversary's final silence is the emblem of nonexistence, spiritual substancelessness. What happens in the desert, which the narrative commentary celebrates again and again, serves to differentiate the divine word from the fallen word and so redeem language as the means by which the Son can go about his Father's business. Jesus enters the wilderness not to discover his identity, but to learn how he may best execute his office as Messiah; by the time he leaves, he has demonstrated the spiritual efficacy of an action previously immersed in corruption. The Son enters the desert obscure, / Unmarked, unknown,2 and though he returns to his mother's house in private, he is ready to embark on his public ministry.3