In several ways, Book X is the culmination of the plot of Paradise Lost, with Books XI and XII being an extended denouement or resolution. Milton constructs Book X as a series of short culminating scenes that provide the final appearances for a number of major characters. After Book X, Satan, Sin, Death, the rebellious angels, and, for the most part, God and the Son, will be gone from the story.
The technique Milton uses in Book X contrasts with the stagy-dramatic nature of Book IX, which contained many long soliloquies or monologues by various characters. Book X contains more brief scenes with fewer speeches. The nature of epic writing allows for these shifts in style, focus, and point of view. Because the epic is conceived on such a grand scale, many different styles and even genres can be incorporated within the single work. Book IX contains all the elements of a tragedy, but Paradise Lost is not a tragedy. A tragedy would end with the fall of Adam and Eve and the arrival of Death in the world, not with the regeneration of the two humans and a promise of ultimate triumph. An epic can contain a tragedy within its structure but still be much more than just a tragedy. Likewise, an epic can contain sections of long set speeches linked to other sections where the action moves with movie-like speed. The epic structure puts demands on both reader and writer, but it also allows for more variety for both as well.
