Milton uses many evil comparisons and similes as another literary device for those who fail to catch the sense of horror, e.g. “fierce as ten furies.” By mentioning the furies Milton continues his theme of carrying over characters, themes, and locations from Greek mythology, giving the scene a mystical effect. The mythological characters are products of primitive man’s subconscious. By linking his descriptions of evil and terror to mythological characters, Milton is evoking within the reader his basic subconscious experiences of monsters as terror and horror. Take for example the description of the dogs with “wide Cerberean mouths.” Linking the dogs with Cerberus, Milton is turning his character into a contemporary and evoking within man the same fear induced by Cerberus himself. Milton knew this fear because the most horrifying thoughts and circumstances of primitive man express themselves through the multiple-headed dog-monster Cerberus.
The vile image of the “woman to the waist” is the most important. The description starts about a beautiful, fair woman, who at the waist becomes a sick, vile, blanket of scaly, repulsive “foul folds”. “Voluminous and vast,” are these serpent-like scales. The connotative words help create this large, boundary less form, “voluminous and vast,” without a drawn-out manner. However, the scales must have an opening for the dog offspring of this half-woman, half-snake, to crawl into her womb and start gnawing away at it from the inside. This gives the reader an impression of almost scaly cannibalism with a sexual innuendo theme. Almost like pleasurable sex gone disgustingly bad and unnatural. Having read this description, the reader feels uncomfortable and sickened; Milton has taken societies deepest taboos and tried to fit them into the every day lives of his characters giving a horror-filled effect.
With regard to Spenser, in this part of “The Faerie Queene,” Spenser starts describing despair in the form of an empty existence. Spenser has extra meaning and depth to many of his words, taking them beyond face value. In doing this, he uses similar techniques to Milton. Like Milton (“hell-bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof.”) Spenser alliterates words to impress the deeper meaning. Examples of such emphasis include the “the wicked wight,” when describing despair as a man, and a “craggie clife,” when describing despair (the whole poem is a description of despair emerging in different forms: e.g. a wicked man, a hollow cave…) in the form of a cliff. The emphasis encourages the reader to imagine the man as wicked and the cliff as craggie, rather than having his eyes just purely drift over the paper. The alliteration causes the reader to focus more on the words and thus discover more meaning and imagery. While describing despair in the form of gloomy carcasses underneath the cliff, Spenser also uses certain words such as “Darke, doleful, drear”. Again, the connotative words tell the poet these words mean gloom and despair. The technique Spenser uses here is picking words pertaining and only pronounced in a gloomy and despairing, slow, perhaps slightly sinister, tone of voice. The sounds help create the atmospheric conditions of the poem as well as the meaning behind the words. (Milton, voluminous and vast…)
Spenser commonly used unneeded adjectives to emphasize meaning. Even though the cave’s hollowness is apparent, due to their definition, Spenser adds the adjective to help the reader imagine gloomy, fearful emptiness and dark uncertainty of lays in the cave. Spenser also uses adjectives to create evil, to make something innocent seem pure evil, i.e. he refers to the Owlet as ghastly, trying to make the point that the owl is not innocent but evil. It is something to be feared, a herald of death, shrieking in contrast to a sleepy peaceful hoot! The owl instills fear, terror and despair at the release of its heart-piercing shriek.
The “wondering ghostes,” shows that despair has no respect for the dead, leaving the bodies to rot “scattered on the greene, and thrown about the cliffs.” Throughout history, the burial of a person marks the ability for his/her soul to depart the body and leave for heaven. The soul cannot leave the body until its put underground. Spenser uses this religious theme showing how the man is unmerciful and utterly disgusting, refusing to let the rot reach its final resting place, causing the soul to wander aimlessly across the face of the earth.
The man has reached such a low spiritual level that human kindness is void; he might as well be dead! However, he is allegorically dead, representing despair, the fruit, and seed of death. His existence is empty and everywhere he exists, death surrounds him, almost as if he is in debt to death. Spenser also mentions the feelings of the knight, who is indeed extremely fearful for himself due to the situation he was entering (“dread and doleful teene.” A region of sorrow,) also saying he would have turned back if not for his friend forcing him to stay. This demonstrates that even courageous knights, are filled with the utmost fear of hollow existence. When the knight finally reaches the den of despair, Spenser has an outburst of detail and description, trying to use language to create the most tangible image.
Regarding the man, Spenser emphasizes everything about his low status. In Spenser’s mind, the man is filthy. Spenser portrays this by saying “…low sitting on the ground”. This shows Spenser associates the man with being low, soulless bound to the ground forever. He has “greesie locks,” which are “long growen an unbound”. This implies the man’s extreme filth, as he has not washed, cleaned, or groomed himself.
Spenser ends describing a dead person, bringing new filth and hopeless despair into the atmosphere. The “drearie coarse,” which is “all wallowed in his own yet luke-warme blood,” the thought of the “rusty,” knife, is also disgusting because the rust would cause a heavy infection, therefore, no chance for recovery equaling despair.
Milton uses language more effectively because he understands the character he is describing on a deeper level. This in turn benefits the reader by letting him/her picture the allegorical figure, fear, more clearly and with more character.