Serpent Error: “Paradise Lost” X, 216–18

ABSTRACT Milton's simile in Paradise Lost X, 218 carries the reader through a chain of associations at first sight uncomfortable but ultimately redemptive. The similes frequently recapitulate the pattern of the fall, and references to snakes in particular distinguish literal from spiritual meanings. Here Milton echoes the Bible and Ovid in a way that makes the reader s acceptance of allusion an acceptance of grace and the pattern of God's ways. The crucial word is “or.” With it the reader turns from one explanation to another, a miniature of the Christian turn from a death of the old self to a rebirth in both personal and historical terms. In granting the redemptive connotation of the words, “or as the Snake with youthful Coat repaid,” the reader participates in the act of grace that is the repaying of the snake, or, more immediately, the clothing of the first parents. Such an act of participation is characteristic and essential to the experience of reading Paradise Lost.