What is in a name? In the realm of literature, its absence has the power to silence the voice, suppress the identity, and impose passivity upon the character. The anonymous character occupies a negative space, functioning as an “abstract ‘Other’ whose concrete and tangible distinction is unintelligible, unknowable, inarticulable, and inarticulate” (Frye 996). Historically, anonymity has been employed as a tool of oppression in the gender politics of the unnamed character.

I remember the moment exactly. I was sitting on my bed, listening to my iPod when the song “Unfaithful” by Rihanna began to play. Like hundreds of times before, I found myself singing along to the lyrics. However, for some indescribable reason, this time I realized what I was singing about. The lyrics describe a woman having an affair and, not only does she cheat on her boyfriend, she blatantly lies to his face about it. This song promotes infidelity and lying yet, to my surprise, I had never noticed its message before.

For characters that appear only briefly within Paradise Lost, Sin and Death have caused a surprisingly large amount of academic controversy. During the eighteenth century, critics considered them an ‘aesthetic flaw’ (White Jr, 337-341); even today, from whatever lens critics view the pair, they never seem to fit. Those who view Paradise Lost as non-allegorical nonetheless view them as an aberration; as Fallon asks: ‘What are these insubstantial beings, these abstractions, doing in a mimetic epic… why is this extended allegory in an otherwise non-allegorical epic?’ (168).