By Faith Field (Fall 2022)
John Milton is regarded as one of the greatest English poets for his works like Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes. He has cultivated a community that not only loves his works but is actually more interested in Milton as the hidden subject: it’s not uncommon to find Milton fans speculating about the secret inner workings of his mind or fantasizing about his home and his private life. The odd fixation followed him even in death – a group of men broke into his coffin and stole his teeth, his hair and even his bones. The next day, a grave digger and some workmen put his remains on display. He’s inspired many influential figures, from Malcolm X to Helen Keller. Milton seemed to be taken by prose from a very young age: he attended Christ’s College in Cambridge at 16 where he showed that he was gifted in composing Latin verse. The political climate during his time was evolving, from Christianity to Protestantism and then eventually Puritanism, which Milton aligned himself with. He believed that the Bible was the ultimate authority, above all institutional hierarchies. He familiarized himself with the Hebrew bible, which radicalized his beliefs and has a clear influence on many of his works.
One of the most defining periods of Milton’s life is the tragedies that followed him after he served for the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell and began spending his days holed up in the Tower of London, fearing he would be persecuted. His wife Mary died in childbirth, his son passed away a month later, and then 6 years later, his second wife and his daughter died as well. Additionally, all throughout this time Milton was slowly going blind. It was in the year of Mary’s death that he went completely blind. He had been planning Paradise Lost, his most notable work, for years by this point and published Paradise Lost in 1667. He soon got to work on his next piece, Paradise Regained, which included the play Samson Agonistes.
The play begins with Samson, who is being held prisoner in the Philistines but is free from doing hard labor that day because the Philistines are celebrating a festival. However, Samson is plagued by regrets: he feels like he betrayed his religion and his people by ending up captured even though he was supposed to help Abraham’s race with his power gifted from God. He desperately calls out for answers because he doesn’t understand why someone who was allegedly chosen by angels is blind and working as a slave for the Philistines. Samson shifts his frustration away from God and instead back on himself, cursing the fact that he told a woman his secret – which readers will come to find out that the woman is his ex wife Dahlia, and that he told her he would lose his power is his head was shaved – and decides that maybe his poor fate is all his own doing. Samson’s biggest struggle is his blindness. He believes himself to be more worthless than even the lowest animal, and laments that he can no longer see God’s creation.
The Chorus, all made up of members from the Tribe of Dan, come to try and comfort Samson. They reassure him not to question God’s plan and not to be so hard on himself. He explains to his friends that he only married a Philistine woman, Timna, because God told him he must create an alliance with the Philistines to save Israel. When that marriage failed, he married another Philistine woman, Delilah, in the hopes that the effect would be the same and that the plan would continue. Samson tells the Chorus that he blames Israel for this failure because they ignored his warnings about the Philistines and sent him to fight to defend Israel without enough troops, and the Chorus agrees.
The next person to visit Samson in prison is his father, Manoa, who is appalled to see that his once great and powerful son stands before him weak and suffering. He tells his father that his predicament is all his fault because he told Delilah his secret. Manoa informs his son that the Philistines are celebrating their god Dagon today, and not God. Samson blames himself for creating this situation, where people would worship someone other than God and that atheism is gaining strength. However, Samson’s father has come with good news: he believes that he could negotiate with the Philistines to let Samson free. Samson declines the offer and says that he deserves this punishment for all the problems he’s caused. They argue back and forth but Samson concludes that after being abandoned by God, all he wishes for is forgiveness. He says that betrayed God by being so prideful and telling Delilah that his power was in his hair, which then caused her to cut his hair, leaving him powerless. And if he can’t be forgiven, all he wishes for is death.
Another person approaches, a woman described as being extravagant and ornate, who is revealed to be Delilah. She comes to him crying, apologizing and begging for forgiveness. Samson denounces her and wants nothing to do with her. Delilah explains that she only told his secret because the Philistines’ leaders convinced her to do it for the glory and honor. She says that the only thing that kept her from betraying him sooner was because she really did love him, but ultimately she knew she needed to choose her country and her religion. Even after this, she still pleads with him to let her help, but he refuses to even let her touch his hand. Delilah gives up on trying to convince him, but goes on a speech about how she will be revered by her country and leaves.
Harapha from Gath, a giant, comes to see Samson next, because he’s been told that Samson is the only worthy opponent against him in a fight. Harapha brags to Samson that he’s disappointed that he’ll never be able to actually beat Samson in a fight on the battlefield because now that Samson is blind, he would have too much of an unfair advantage. Samson challenges Harapha, saying that they should just fight in a place where Harapha wouldn’t have much of an advantage with his sight. Harapha suggests that Samson’s strength comes from magic, and they bicker back and forth about whether or not Samson’s power comes from magic or God. Samson dares Harapha to fight him once more, and calls Harapha a coward after he declines.
An officer arrives at Samson’s cell and tells him that he’s actually been summoned for the celebration of Dagon to perform. Samson is shocked by this and says that he will only end up at this Philistine ceremony if he is forced to go. Suddenly, though, Samson inexplicably feels like this day is going to be a big day for him. So, when the officer returns and says that he’s been given strict orders requiring Samson to come to the celebration, he agrees wholeheartedly. Samson goes to the event alone, telling the Chorus that he doesn’t know how the Philistines would react to a big crowd.
Then, Manoa returns hurriedly and tells the Chorus that he may have found a way to convince the Philistines to free Samson. Manoa declares that he is not leaving without his son safe. A loud, awful scream is heard from Gaza where the celebration is taking place and the Chorus hypothesizes that God’s vision has been restored and Samson is enacting revenge on the Philistines. A messenger approaches the Chorus and Manoa very upset, saying that he will never be able to get the horrors he just witnessed out of his mind. He explains that Samson pulled the building down, killing himself and all of the Philistines. Manoa is devastated and asks for more detail. The messenger says that Samson performed and cooperated just as he was supposed to, until he suddenly pushed two pillars holding up the building together, causing the roof to cave in and crush everyone underneath it.
Samson: Agonistes is a self-proclaimed tragedy, and Milton wants readers to know it. Aristotle claimed that a tragedy is defined by three characteristics: hamartia, anagnorisis, and peripeteia. Hamartia is the hero’s fatal flaw, anagnorisis is a realization which triggers action, and peripeteia is the “reversal of fortune” in the plot. From the very beginning, Samson tells readers exactly what his hamartia is: it’s his blindness, his pride, and his separation from God. Samson himself is very aware that these flaws have brought him to his downfall – stuck doing labor for the enemy after telling his secret to a woman he couldn’t trust and rotting in a cell, unable to see God’s creation. The anagnorisis in Samson: Agonistes is the moment where Samson suddenly gets the unshakeable feeling that he needs to go to the celebration because the day will be very important for him. However, the peripeteia in this story could be up for debate, depending on the reader’s interpretation. Is Samson a hero, and is his death truly a reversal of fortune if it got him everything he ever wanted? If Samson sacrificed himself to kill all the Philistines to restore God’s vision, one can assume he did this because he believes restoring God’s vision because he wants God’s forgiveness. And surely, by killing all the Philistines and securing the outcome that God wanted, he would be finally receiving God’s forgiveness. Despite this, though, Milton views this play as a tragedy and Samson: Agonistes is generally regarded as a tragedy.
Samson: Agonistes in current day holds a lot of relevance for the black community. Samson, a character originally from the Bible who Milton interpreted for his play, has an ambiguous appearance in the Bible. Candida Moss writes in her article “The Complex and Fascinating History of Black Samson,” for the Daily Beast, “It was not inevitable that African-Americans would identify with Samson, but they did, just as it was not inevitable that Jesus be conceived of as white.” Because Samson was blinded, held captive, and treated as a slave in the story of Samson: Agonistes, caused enslaved Africans to identify with his character. From this, Samson started to be conceptualized as a black man, and started to appear more and more in pop culture as a black man. Some of his modern depictions have caused great controversy, like the History Channel series The Bible, which cast Delilah as a white woman and Samson as a black man, reinforcing a stereotype of black men being brutish and having an affinity for white women. Samson’s story has been referenced by many influential black thinkers, such as Malcolm X, who saw him as a martyr, or Marcus Garvey who called upon black people to be like Samson and shake down the pillars of the systems that oppressed them. When Douglas Miranda, a captain for the Boston chapter of the Black Panthers, was arrested, the Black Panther newspaper wrote that the police were probably caught up in the fable of Samson. They wrote, “The police officers’ abuse of the arrested Panthers would not dissuade their commitment to the revolutionary cause any more than Samson’s haircut had stopped his actions against the Philistines.” The controversial idea of the “Samson complex” began to emerge and was used by authors like Toni Morrison, who said “Ain’t no Samson never come to a good end.”
Black interpretations of Samson obviously vary, as would any character or concept within any community, but it stands that the tale of Samson in the play Samson Agonistes has had a vast impact on the Black community. Samson has been used to encourage Black people to fight for their rights, or advertised as a cautionary tale, to not position themselves as a martyr in an effort to seem heroic like Samson. In terms of Milton, Samson: Agonistes stands as a window into the man’s mind. It’s clear that Milton identifies himself with Samson – they are both blind, have a list of rocky marriages and have a cult following around them. Part of the reason the piece has lived on is because of how much Milton fans love to dissect this work, searching for more of the man in every corner of every page. As with Milton’s other famous works, Samson: Agonistes will go down as a work that was embraced by black culture and media, and also a time capsule which was emblematic of Milton’s mind.
Works Cited
Moss, Candida. “The Complex and Fascinating History of Black Samson.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 4 Feb. 2021, https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-complex-and-fascinating-history-of-black-samson.
“The Importance of Tragedy.” Oxbridge Applications, 9 June 2020, https://oxbridgeapplications.com/blog/the-importance-of-tragedy/#:~:text=Aristotle%20defined%20three%20key%20elements,ultimately%20leads%20to%20their%20downfall.
Markle, Bradley. “Milton’s Samson Agonistes.” Enlightenment and Disability, 26 Apr. 2012, https://enlightanddis.wordpress.com/sensory-impairments/blindness/john-miltons-samson-agonistes-1671/.
GAUNT, SIMON. “The Significance of Silence.” Paragraph, vol. 13, no. 2, 1990, pp. 202–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43151718. Accessed 13 Dec. 2022.
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