When working through Samson Agonistes (from here on, SA) one exercise I used to ask of students was to look through the play and find a “moment of illumination,” a moment when Samson suddenly became aware of a sense of purpose or duty within his transformed state (lines 1381-83, discussed below, were usually the winner).  The presumption behind the exercise is that such a moment exists, both within the play and within the dynamics of reformed Protestant (or “puritan,” if you like) faith.  There are certainly plenty of moments in Protestant narratives that insist a sudden sense of God’s grace comes over one like a bolt of lightning.  But what’s interesting about SA—and I would argue that this is true of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained—is that what Milton portrays is much more of a gradual awakening to a sense of divine presence and self-purpose than a sudden illumination.

    Take, for example, the moment that sets forward the narrative of PR: the proclamation of Jesus of Nazareth as the Son (and so messiah).  It is simultaneously public and private, and would seem to be a perfect example of a narrowly defined moment of spiritual self-discovery.  And yet, what does the Son do?  He wanders into the desert, a place metaphorically void of any worn ways or guideposts.  The Son begins to think back about himself and his youth, how he wound up here, what others had said to him, and to search about in his knowledge of self and scripture to figure out just what he’s supposed to do.  Conflict eventually comes, and Satan’s temptations—in the form of tests, “advice,” and seeming offers of assistance—form trials against which the Son can gather and articulate his patience, self-mastery, and faith.

    SA, we might say, is structured similarly, though obviously its hero has tumbled into a kind of spiritual desert rather than been guided there by an inner prompting.  Either way, we begin with a conviction of a relationship with God and now a “darkness” about what to make of it at present.  Obviously Samson’s blindness and enslavement are more intense than the Son’s desert; Samson has already given into temptation in a way unimaginable in the Son.  But the process of rhetorical trial that ensues is similar: Samson is offered certain comforts, all of which he turns away with an unyielding exercise of mind.  The chorus reflects, with magnificent concision,

This idol’s day hath been to thee no day of rest,

   Labouring thy mind

More than the working day thy hands…. (1297-1299)

It has been a day of reflection indeed!  Samson has turned away his father’s effort to ransom him and take him home, where Samson might seek pardon and further hope for some kind of restoration.  We discussed in class our ambivalence over Samson’s response: he accepts full responsibility and “implores” God’s pardon (521), but his disdain for life suggests a despair over any future sense of purpose.  Delila similarly offers Samson comfort, “leisure and domestic ease” (917) and asks for pardon.  Initially, Samson offers a highly ironic pardon (825-26), but later he softens and extends forgiveness “at distance” (954).  As to returning to her care, however, he is resolute: the domestic bond she broke cannot be repaired.  Some may be squeamish.  Perhaps this is another form of despair.  But in rejecting a life of dependency on his enemy (one at odds with the biblical prescription of domestic hierarchy), Samson transforms his current condition:  “This jail I count the house of liberty / To thine whose doors my feet shall never enter” [that is, compared to your jail, which I’ll never enter] (949-50).  It’s a relative claim: this place is less of a jail than your home, which indicates that Delila’s home is in everyway a prison.  But it’s also an absolute claim: there’s a kind of liberty to be found here, a liberty of mind and spirit that comes of the aggressive introspection that, when he had physical freedom, Samson never undertook.

    Sampson’s third “temptation”—though much better to say trial—comes in the form of the giant Harapha.  It’s not exactly clear why he’s come: seemingly, merely to gloat.  But he gets much more than he has expected.  The blind Samson challenges the giant to a physical combat, each man serving as champion of his respective god.  Again, you might see this as an act of despair.  Samson has spoken a number of times of death as a relief from his guilt.  But the rhetoric exudes faith in God’s power to ennoble through forgiveness.  (Take a close look at 1168-1177.  I mean that; open your book and look at it, now.  If we were in class I’d ask one of you slackers to read it aloud.)  In passages that follow Sampson thinks of himself as failing God, but also of his countrymen as failing to follow a man inspired by God (1211-19).  He is imagining possibilities, and even the necessary responses to those possibilities, more clearly than he has before.

    Thus, when we reach the climax of the poem, which I consider Samson’s choice to go to the temple of Dagon (1368-79) as much as the description of the havoc there, it comes not as a sudden whim but as the culmination of a process of spiritual and intellectual resistance.  Consider how Samson describes his inspiration:

… I begin to feel

Some rousing motions in me which dispose

To something extraordinary my thoughts.  (1381-83)

That is, the awakening sense of purpose acts on his thoughts, which then frame the possibility of some great but unimagined (or not imagined precisely) “act” (1389).  The real field of battle is the mind.  Having overcome there, Samson’s heart is open to the Spirit again, and then the body follows.  He is again moving in an antinomian direction, since visiting the temple of Dagon on the fishman’s feast day (and I’m looking at you, Starbucks) would clearly break the Hebraic law.  But Samson insists he intends no violation of the spirit of the law, and indeed his action there celebrates his God in the most heroic of terms.  In many ways, then, he has discovered the old Samson beloved by and devoted to God—“Samson hath quit himself / Like Samson,” Manoa declares (1709-10).  “Quit” here means both “requite,” to repay or avenge, and also “to leave.”  He vanquished two of God’s enemies in one blow: the Philistines and a man who irresponsibly flouted God’s gift.  But I would argue that the real work was done through Samson’s acts of rhetorical exchange; the felling of the temple was merely an exclamation point.