PARADISE LOST

ABOUT THE AGE-

• The Literature of the Seventeenth Century may be divided into two periods—The Puritan Age or the Age
of Milton (1600-1660), which is further divided into the Jacobean and Caroline periods after the names of
the ruled James I and Charles I, who rules from 1603 to 1625 and 1625 to 1649 respectively; and the
Restoration Period or the Age of Dryden (1660-1700).
• John Milton’s career as a writer of prose and poetry spans three distinct eras: Stuart England; the Civil
War (1642-1648) and Interregnum, including the Commonwealth (1649-1653) and Protectorate (1654-
1660); and the Restoration.
• After the death of James I in 1625, the new monarch Charles I took religious persecution to a new level.
He was asked by the Parliament to sign the petition of rights but he continued to show open disregard to
Parliament and people
• After the Civil War in 1642, there was a division into the Cavaliers or Royalists (Clergy, nobility etc, those
in favour of the King) and Roundheads or Parliamentarians (middle class etc those were in favour of the
Parliament).
• The Civil War helped the Puritans to set up the Commonwealth. Oliver Cromwell was able to galvanize a
military dictatorship during Protectorate up until 1660 when Monarchy was restored.
• The common themes include religious and political idealism. There is also an insistence
on practicalism and pragmatism of day to day life.
• There is heavy usage of symbolism, especially, from the religious scripture.
• The writing style of the Puritan Age was predominantly plain with simple sentences and language.
Metaphorical constructions were in limited use and excessive ornamentation or dramatic appeals were
discouraged.
• Puritans believed that literature should not be used for entertainment. It must be used in the service of
religious discourse.
• The Puritans struggled for righteousness and liberty.
• In his prose works Milton advocated the abolition of the Church of England and the execution of Charles I.
From the beginning of the English Civil Wars in 1642 to long after the restoration of Charles II as king in
1660, he espoused in all his works a political philosophy that opposed tyranny and state-
sanctioned religion.
• As a civil servant, Milton became the voice of the English Commonwealth after 1649 through his handling
of its international correspondence and his defense of the government against polemical attacks from
abroad.
• Puritan writers like Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop wrote extensively about spirituality.
• There was Samuel Daniel, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Carew, Robert Herick, Sir John Suckling,
Sir Richard Lovelace, John Bunyan, Robert Burton, Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, Jeremy Taylor,
Richard Baxter, Izaak Walton among other important writers of the age.

ABOUT THE POET-

1. Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. 2. Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.

• John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608.

• served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later
under Oliver Cromwell.
• Designated the antiepiscopal or antiprelatical tracts and the antimonarchical or political tracts, these
works advocate a freedom of conscience and a high degree of civil liberty for humankind against the
various forms of tyranny and oppression, both ecclesiastical and governmental.
• The classical influences in his work can be clearly delineated: Homer, Ovid, and especially Virgil.
there are some references to Shakespeare’s works in Milton's own poetry.
• The English poet John Milton was a champion of liberty. As a Protestant, he believed that the
individual reader should interpret the Bible.
• Milton was a Puritan who believed in the authority of the Bible, and opposed religious institutions like
the Church of England, and the monarchy, with which it was entwined.
• Milton’s poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self-
determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day.
• Since Milton was famous for his unique style of blank verse and sonnets, he won the praise of the
romantic poets for his skills.
• Milton was a mixed product of his time. On the one hand, as a humanist, he fought for religious
tolerance and believed that there was something inherently valuable in man.
• As a Puritan, however, he believed that the Bible was the answer and the guide to all, even if it
curbed man's freedom. Where the Bible didn't afford an answer, Milton would turn to reason.
• Milton's themes were both particular and universal. In Lycidas (1637) he deals with why God allows
the good to die young.
• . Specifically, Thomas Hardy and George Eliot of the Victorian Age were greatly inspired by his
poetry. Similarly, Milton was a great influence to Ezra Pound and T.S Eliot – two of the most famous
20th century critics
• William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author",[1] and he remains generally
regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language"
• William Wordsworth opens his popular sonnet with “Milton! thou should’st be living at this
hour.<” John Keats was also a great admirer of Miltonic verse and advocated that, “Miltonic verse
cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist’s humor”
• John Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English.

LITERARY MOVEMENT-

An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily involving a time beyond living
memory in which occurred the extraordinary doings of the extraordinary men and women who, in dealings
with the gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the moral universe for their descendants, the
poet and his audience, to understand themselves as a people or nation.

Written, or secondary, epics made up for the lack of the bardic setting through heightened style and
formal structures. These epics were always serious, involving important events, crucial to the culture of the
author and his audience. Similarly, the poem dealt with public, even national, concerns rather than the
private world of the artist. In terms of style, the epic was written in elevated, soaring language

Milton's epic shares many of the conventions of earlier epics, such as those by Homer and Virgil. Though
Milton wrote in English rather than in a classical language such as Latin or Greek, Paradise Lost, like the
earlier epics, starts in medias res (in the middle of the action) and concerns itself with the interaction
between gods and mortals. It is a poem written in an expansive, majestic verse, with a serious tone (that
is another requirement of an epic). It is long (epics usually are, although that is not their defining
characteristic!) and addresses the collective imagination of his culture -- the identification of Christians
with their own foundations myths as described in Hebrew Scripture.

Milton's Paradise Lost is a long, narrative poem told in a serious manner, using elevated language, featuring
characters of a high position. All of these characteristics suggest the work is an epic poem. The
speaker also invokes, following the custom of the Greeks, help from the supernatural to inspire and guide
him in the telling of the tale.
In the end, Milton chose not to copy Homer and Virgil, but to create a Christian epic. His creation is still a
work of great magnitude in an elevated style. Milton chose not to write in hexameters or in rhyme because
of the natural limitations of English. Instead he wrote in unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, the
most natural of poetic techniques in English.
 ABOUT THE POEM-

• The first version, published in 1667, consists of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. A
second edition followed in 1674, arranged into twelve books (in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid) with
minor revisions throughout.
• The poem concerns the biblical story of the Fall of Man: the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen
angel Satan and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to
"justify the ways of God to men."[6]

SUMMARY-

Book 1
Book 1 begins with a prologue in which Milton states the purpose of Paradise Lost: to justify the ways
of God to humans and to tell the story of their fall. Following the epic tradition, Milton invokes a
heavenly muse to help him tell the tale. The muse he calls upon is the same one who inspired Moses to
write part of the Bible, he claims. Milton uses the gift of the muse to explain what led to the fall of man,
and he introduces the character of Satan, a former great angel in Heaven known as Lucifer. Satan tried
to overthrow God's rule and banded together with other rebel angels to begin a civil war. They were
defeated by God and cast out of Heaven and into Hell.

The story begins with Satan and the other rebel angels waking up to find themselves floating on a lake
of fire in Hell, transformed into devils. Upset, Satan gathers the fallen angels together. They work to
build a capital in Hell for themselves, Pandemonium, and form a council to debate waging more warfare
against God. Satan and the other angels don't seem to recognize that it is only through God's
permission that they were able to loosen the chains that bound them upon their arrival in Hell. God
allowed it because he is all-knowing and all-seeing and intends to change their evil intentions into
goodness.

Book 2
With Satan sitting on an elaborate throne, the council convenes to debate the next move. One devil,
Moloch, makes the case for an all-out war against God and Heaven, arguing that they have nothing to
lose because they are already in Hell. Another devil, Belial, disagrees, suggesting that they do nothing.
He believes that God may eventually become less angry and dispense with their suffering. Mammon, a
third devil, says that trying to return to Heaven would be useless. He suggests that they make Hell a
domain that would be comparable to Heaven. Finally Beelzebub, Satan's second-in-command,
suggests that the devils find God's new world and either conquer it for themselves or corrupt its
inhabitants, mankind. The idea is actually Satan's, but he has Beelzebub suggest it so that he can
volunteer and look heroic to the other devils. The council agrees and decides to use God's new
creation, man, as a tool in their war. Satan sets out to find the new world where man resides. He flies
out of the Gates of Hell with the help of his children, Death and Sin.

On the other side of the Gates of Hell are Chaos and Night, the "dark materials" that God uses to
create worlds. They give him directions to Earth after Satan promises to turn the universe back over to
them to control. Satan approaches Earth with God watching him all the while. Even though God has
ordained that man has free will, he knows that Satan will succeed in corrupting man. God warns that
although man can be saved, he must accept that death is a just punishment for his sins.

Book 4
Now that Satan has gained entrance to Paradise, he stands on a nearby mountain and views it for the
first time. He has a moment of doubt as he beholds its beauty and pristine landscape. He thinks about
his relationship with God, who had only shown him kindness and fairness until he rebelled. He laments
the fact that God had made him a powerful angel in Heaven, because it gave him the yearning for more
power. Satan considers repenting to God but still feels too bitter over everything that has transpired for
it to be an honest confession. He also realizes that because he lives separated from God and thus in
despair, he is unable to escape Hell even in this new Paradise. Hell is in his mind.

Newly determined, Satan recommits to his plan to corrupt man and overthrow good with evil. Satan
enters Paradise and disguises himself as a bird, roosting in a tree in the Garden of Eden. From his
perch he notices two beings that look different from all the other animals in the Garden. He watches
them eat and drink and is filled with envy and rage. Satan experiences another pang of guilt as he
contemplates what he is about to do to these two humans, but his resolution to corrupt them remains.
He leaves the tree and approaches them.

The story shifts to Adam and Eve, who are discussing how blessed they feel to be in the Garden and
how they must remain obedient to God's order that they not eat any fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Adam and Eve have no concept of death, but they agree that it must be bad and they know they will
suffer it if they disobey God. Eve recalls how she first met Adam and the story of her earliest
understanding of being alive. She describes encountering her reflection in a pond without realizing she
is seeing herself. She remembers initially turning away from Adam when she met him because she
found herself more beautiful. As Satan eavesdrops on them, he is filled with jealousy at their happiness.
He decides to use the Tree of Knowledge as the tool of his corruption because God has forbidden it.

Uriel has been watching the disguised Satan from afar and realizes that he has been fooled. He tells
one of the guardian archangels of Eden, Gabriel, that he suspects a fallen angel has entered Paradise.
Gabriel sends two angels to search for the being that Uriel described, and they find Satan disguised as
a toad. They force him to shape-shift back into his true form, and they bring him to Gabriel, who
recognizes him as Satan. Gabriel questions him, and Satan tries to lie about his motives. Gabriel sees
through him and tells Satan he will bring him back to Hell and seal the gates so he can never leave.
They prepare to battle each other, but God puts a stop to it, sending up a pair of Golden Scales in the
sky. The scales show that if Satan tries to fight, he will be defeated. Convinced that he would be on the
losing end of a battle, Satan leaves for Hell.

Book 9
Book 9 details the climax of Adam and Eve's story, the fall of man. The story begins with Satan, who
has been in hiding after being banished from the Garden of Eden. Satan sneaks back into the Garden
disguised as a mist. Once inside the Garden, he transforms into a snake. He experiences one final
moment of hesitation over what he's about to do to Adam and Eve, but his resentment of them prompts
him to continue.

Adam and Eve arise in the morning and argue over whether to work in the Garden together or
separately. Adam experiences a sense of foreboding at Eve's suggestion that they work separately,
believing that they are more likely to give in to temptation if they aren't by each others' side. However,
Eve points out that there is a lot of work to be done and argues that she can't really be considered
virtuous if she is always being protected and her virtue is never actually tested. So they separate,
unaware that this will be their last innocent experience together in the Garden.

Satan finds Eve alone and speaks to her in the form of a serpent. Eve asks him how he learned to
speak, and Satan tells her about eating fruit that gave him the power to speak and understand
everything. He offers to show her where to find the fruit and leads her to the Tree of Knowledge. Eve
recognizes it as the tree from which God has forbidden her and Adam to eat. Satan tries to persuade
her that the knowledge the fruit gave him revealed that Eve should, in fact, disobey God to show Him
that she is able to think for herself. Satan points out that he ate from the tree and is still alive. He
reassures Eve that God would never punish her for something as trivial as eating fruit. Satan also
flatters Eve, saying that if she eats the fruit, it is likely that she will gain the knowledge required to
become a goddess.
Eve considers Satan's argument and takes into account that the snake ate it and did not die. She's
tempted by the fruit's beauty and taste, and, attracted by the idea of having greater knowledge and
intelligence, she finally takes a bite. Satan slithers away into the forest, and Eve continues to feast on
the fruit. Eve considers offering Adam some of the fruit because she believes that eating it has raised
her up to his level and she treasures the idea of being his equal. Eventually she decides to share the
fruit since if she must die for her disobedience, she wants Adam to die with her. She finds Adam and
explains what has happened and how she came to eat the fruit. Adam is shocked and upset but
resolves to eat the fruit as well because he does not want to live without Eve. He eats the fruit, and he
and Eve consummate their newfound knowledge, having sex because of physical lust rather than
marital love. They wake later only to lament what they have done and feel shame. They begin to fight,
blaming each other for what has transpired.

THEME-
The Importance of Obedience to God

The first words of Paradise Lost state that the poem’s main theme will be “Man’s first Disobedience.”
Milton narrates the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, explains how and why it happens, and
places the story within the larger context of Satan’s rebellion and Jesus’ resurrection.
While Adam and Eve are the first humans to disobey God, Satan is the first of all God’s creation to
disobey. His decision to rebel comes only from himself—he was not persuaded or provoked by others.
Also, his decision to continue to disobey God after his fall into Hell ensures that God will not forgive
him. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, decide to repent for their sins and seek forgiveness. Unlike
Satan, Adam and Eve understand that their disobedience to God will be corrected through generations
of toil on Earth.

God, being God, was by definition superior to every other thing in the universe and should always be
obeyed. In Paradise Lost, God places one prohibition on Adam and Eve — not to eat from the Tree of
Knowledge. The prohibition is not so much a matter of the fruit of the tree as it is obeying God's
ordinance. The proper running of the universe requires the obedience of inferiors to their superiors. By
not obeying God's rule, Adam and Eve bring calamity into their lives and the lives of all mankind.
When Eve eats the fruit, one of her first thoughts is that the fruit "may render me more equal" (IX, 823)
to which she quickly adds, "for inferior who is free?" (IX, 826). Her reasoning, from Milton's point of
view, is incorrect. Freedom comes precisely from recognizing one's place in the grand scheme and
obeying the dictates of that position. By disobeying God, Eve has gained neither equality nor freedom;
she has instead lost Paradise and brought sin and death into the world.

The Hierarchical Nature of the Universe

In his 17th century view of the cosmos, Heaven exists above, Earth below, and Hell and Chaos below
that. Within this geographically ordered cosmos, the most important hierarchy of Heaven is that
of God as supreme monarch, the creator and ruler of the universe, and his “only begotten” Son as
equal in rank, a separate person but of the same essence as God. Below these are the Archangels and
Angels, arranged in different categories depending on their proximity to God’s light – these include
Thrones, Powers, Dominions, and Cherubim, among others. When God creates Earth, he
sets Adam and Eve in rank above the animals, and he sets Adam above Eve in terms of authority and
wisdom. The devils of Hell are the lowest ranked of all, as they have been totally cast away from God.

Paradise Lost is about hierarchy as much as it is about obedience. The layout of the universe—with
Heaven above, Hell below, and Earth in the middle—presents the universe as a hierarchy based on
proximity to God and his grace. This spatial hierarchy leads to a social hierarchy of angels, humans,
animals, and devils: the Son is closest to God, with the archangels and cherubs behind him. Adam and
Eve and Earth’s animals come next, with Satan and the other fallen angels following last. To obey God
is to respect this hierarchy.

Satan refuses to honor the Son as his superior, thereby questioning God’s hierarchy. As the angels in
Satan’s camp rebel, they hope to beat God and thereby dissolve what they believe to be an unfair
hierarchy in Heaven.

The Fall as Partly Fortunate

After he sees the vision of Christ’s redemption of humankind in Book XII, Adam refers to his own sin as
a felix culpa or “happy fault,” suggesting that the fall of humankind, while originally seeming an
unmitigated catastrophe, does in fact bring good with it. Adam and Eve’s disobedience allows God to
show his mercy and temperance in their punishments and his eternal providence toward humankind.
This display of love and compassion, given through the Son, is a gift to humankind. Humankind must
now experience pain and death, but humans can also experience mercy, salvation, and grace in ways
they would not have been able to had they not disobeyed.

Conversation and Contemplation

One common objection raised by readers of Paradise Lost is that the poem contains relatively little
action. Milton sought to divert the reader’s attention from heroic battles and place it on the
conversations and contemplations of his characters. Conversations comprise almost five complete
books of Paradise Lost, close to half of the text. Milton’s narrative emphasis on conversation conveys
the importance he attached to conversation and contemplation, two pursuits that he believed were of
fundamental importance for a moral person. As with Adam and Raphael, and again with Adam and
Michael, the sharing of ideas allows two people to share and spread God’s message. Likewise,
pondering God and his grace allows a person to become closer to God and more obedient.

Sin and Innocence

Paradise Lost is basically a dramatization of the “original sin,” the explanation of how evil entered a
world that began as God’s perfect creation. For a Christian like Milton, sin is everything that breaks
God’s laws, including acts that do harm to other humans and acts that upset the hierarchy of the
universe. God’s Heaven of good Angels and the original Paradise are both innocent places, free from
any sin and unhappiness, and Milton tries to describe this pure innocence (though he is using “fallen
language”) in terms of natural joy, worship of God, and even a kind of blissful ignorance –
as Adam doesn’t know what death is except that it is bad, and Raphael warns Adam about wondering
too much about the cosmos. The original sin of Adam and Eve is then the ultimate fall from innocence,
as their act introduces sin into the world, along with a host of other evils like some animals becoming
carnivores.

Love and Marriage

Love is one of the Christian God’s most important attributes, and Heavenly love also takes center stage
early in the poem as the angels ceaselessly worship God and commune with each other in joy, and
the Son offers himself as a sacrifice for humankind out of love for them. Then when Adam and Eve are
created, the poem partly shifts its focus to mortal love and the idea of marriage.

Milton creates a picture of marital love that is innocent and pure and still involves sexuality, mostly as a
form of obedience to God’s command to “be fruitful.” Milton also emphasizes the hierarchy in marriage,
which relates to the general ideas about women at the time. Adam is created to be superior to Eve,
communing with God directly, while she communes with God through him, and while Eve is more
beautiful, Adam is wiser and stronger. Along with this marital hierarchy, there is also a proper order for
love itself.
 Characters
Satan
• God’s greatest enemy and the ruler of Hell. Satan (his original name is erased; “Satan” means
“Adversary”) was one of the most powerful Archangels, but then became jealous of God and
convinced a third of God’s angels to rebel with him.
• Satan is cast into Hell, which he proudly rules until he realizes Hell is inside his soul and he can
never escape suffering.
• Satan is meant to be the antagonist of the poem, but he is also the most dynamic, interesting
character.
• Satan is an egoist. His interests always turn on his personal desires.
• Unlike Adam, who discusses a multiplicity of subjects with Raphael, rarely mentioning his own
desires, Satan sees everything in terms of what will happen to him.
• Writers and critics of the Romantic era advanced the notion that Satan was a Promethean hero,
pitting himself against an unjust God.
• . Satan is magnificent, even admirable in Books I and II. By book IV, he is changed. In his soliloquy
that starts Book IV, Satan declares that Hell is wherever he himself is.
• Away form his followers and allowed some introspection, Satan already reveals a more conflicted
character
• . In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to
himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth
again, he believes that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on
Earth after all. Satan, removed from Heaven long enough to forget its unparalleled grandeur, is
completely demented, coming to believe in his own lies.
• He is a picture of incessant intellectual activity without the ability to think morally.
• Ironically, he also borders on comedy. The comic element associated with Satan derives from the
absurdity of his position. As a rebel, he challenges an omnipotent foe, God, with power that is
granted him by his foe. God simply toys with Satan in battle.
• Satan, formerly known as the archangel Lucifer in Heaven, is cast into Hell after waging a battle
against God with the other fallen angels he has convinced to join his rebellion.
• Satan is deeply arrogant, albeit powerful and charismatic.[ Satan's persuasive powers are evident
throughout the book; not only is he cunning and deceptive, but he is also able to rally the fallen
angels to continue in the rebellion after their agonizing defeat in the Angelic War.
• At times conflicted about his intentions in the face of an all-powerful God, he ultimately realizes he
is doomed to suffer eternally.
• The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n…
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.

God the Father

• God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, but he demands total obedience from his creatures.
• While God allows angels and humans to have free will, he also is eternal, existing outside of time,
and so foresees all future events.
• Therefore even Satan’s rebellion and the Fall of Man fit into God’s overarching plan, which brings
good out of evil.
• God comments on scenes and actions, he explains what will happen and why, he gives the
philosophical / theological basis for ideas like free will, but he does not truly participate in the action.
• God is aloof, almost emotionless.
 • He embodies pure reason, and consequently his responses often seem cold.
• In the war in Heaven, God limits the power of the faithful angels and in the final moments sends
only the Son to conquer the rebels.
• God is also pure justice. He may see his plans for Man dashed by Satan's trickery, but through
divine justice, he will put everything to right and conquer Satan.
• From evil, God will produce goodness. God gave Man free will. From Man's free will, sin and death
came into the world, but God will see that goodness rules in the end.

God the Son

• The second person of the Trinity, equal to God and of the same essence, but a different person. In
the traditional Christian Trinity the Son is eternally “begotten” of the Father, but in Milton’s cosmos
the Father begets the Son at a specific point and then elevates him to divinity.
• The Son is more active than the Father in Paradise Lost, creating the Earth, volunteering to die for
humanity’s sake, and entering Eden to punish Adam and Eve.
• The merciful, compassionate side of God is presented in the Son,
• Finally, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the Son goes to Earth at God's request and passes
judgment on the serpent, Adam, and Eve. Beyond telling the humans what their punishment will be,
the Son also pities them and clothes them in skins.
• The Son later becomes incarnate as Jesus, who dies and rises from the dead,
defeating Death and Satan.

Adam
• Before the fall, Adam is as nearly perfect a human being as can be imagined
• . The first human and the father of mankind. Adam is created as perfect – beautiful, innocent, and
wise – but even in his unfallen state he is eager for forbidden knowledge and attracted by Eve’s
physical beauty
• . He has an enormous capacity for reason, and can understand the most sophisticated ideas
instantly. He can converse with Raphael as a near-equal, and understand Raphael’s stories
readily.
• Adam’s greatest weakness is his love for Eve. He falls in love with her immediately upon seeing
her, and confides to Raphael that his attraction to her is almost overwhelming.
• Milton saw men as inherently superior to women, so Adam is greater than Eve in wisdom, strength,
and closeness to God.

Eve
• ,The first woman, Eve is created out of Adam’s rib.
• While she is beautiful, wise, and able, she is superior to Adam only in her beauty.
• From the time of her creation, when she looks in the water and falls in love with her own reflection,
Eve is linked to the flaw of vanity, and Satan as the serpent will use this defect against her.
• Eve does have a tendency now and then to question Adam, but she does so in a rational, respectful
manner. In Book IX, such questioning leads to temptation. Eve tell Adam at the start of Book IX that
they can do more work if they work separately. Adam knows that Eve is more likely to be tricked by
Satan if she is alone and argues against separation.
• She is slightly inferior to him and must “submit” to his will.
• As soon as she is created Eve shows a fascination with her own beauty, gazing at her reflection.
• Eve is the first to be tempted by Satan and the first to eat the fruit that causes the Fall.
• Eve is certainly not a feminist heroine. Like so many characters in the epic, she has an assigned
role in the hierarchy of the universe. Milton does not denigrate women through the character of Eve;
he simply follows the thought of his time as to the role of women in society.
Sin
• Satan’s daughter who sprang from his head when he first conceived of disobedience, and then
Satan incestuously impregnated her.
• When she is cast into Hell, Sin becomes a monster with the lower half of a serpent and a circle of
hell-hounds around her waist, constantly gnawing at her.
• God gives her the keys to Hell, but she immediately gives them to Satan.
• She gives birth to Death and then enters Earth after the Fall, infecting all humans with sin.
•.

Death
• A black, terrifying figure with an insatiable hunger. Death is the product of Satan and Sin’s
incestuous union, and after his birth he immediately pursues his mother and rapes her, fathering
the dogs that torment her.
• Death enters Earth after the Fall and causes all life to succumb to him.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS-

• Milton divides the universe into four major regions: glorious Heaven, dreadful Hell, confusing
Chaos, and a young and vulnerable Earth in between. The opening scenes that take place in Hell
give the reader immediate context as to Satan’s plot against God and humankind.
• Blake famously wrote, "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at
liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing
it."[40] This quotation succinctly represents the way in which some 18th- and 19th-century English
Romantic poets viewed Milton.
• Milton’s uses imagery of light and darkness to express all of these opposites.
• Angels are physically described in terms of light, whereas devils are generally described by their
shadowy darkness.
• Milton also uses light to symbolize God and God’s grace. In his invocation in Book III, Milton asks
that he be filled with this light so he can tell his divine story accurately and persuasively. While the
absence of light in Hell and in Satan himself represents the absence of God and his grace.
• The wreath that Adam makes as he and Eve work separately in Book IX is symbolic in several
ways. First, it represents his love for her and his attraction to her. But as he is about to give the
wreath to her, his shock in noticing that she has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge makes him drop
it to the ground. His dropping of the wreath symbolizes that his love and attraction to Eve is falling
away. His image of her as a spiritual companion has been shattered completely, as he realizes her
fallen state. The fallen wreath represents the loss of pure love.
• In itself the fruit gives knowledge of good and evil, which Adam and Eve lack in their innocent
ignorance, but the importance of the fruit is that they eat it despite God’s commandment. The
knowledge the Tree gives is not inherently sinful, but disobeying God by eating of the Tree is sinful.
The fruit that Eve and Adam eat then becomes the ultimate symbol – a single small thing that
represents the cause of all the evil and suffering in the world.
• When Satan is discovered in Paradise and confronted by Gabriel, God causes a pair of golden
scales to appear in the sky, the scales on which God weighs the outcomes of every event. On one
side of the scales is Satan running away, and on the other side is the result of him staying and
fighting. This second side flies up, showing its emptiness and worthlessness. Satan accepts the
inevitable truth of this outcome and chooses to run away. The scales represent God’s supreme
power over both his Angels and the rebellious devils, as he exists outside of time and knows all
possible futures.
• The Garden of Eden symbolizes the innocence and ignorance of Adam and Eve. It is a peaceful
and bountiful place, full of gentle animals and food. Nothing bad ever happens, and Adam and Eve
 are happy there. Yet the Garden also contains the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, from
which God has instructed Adam and Eve not to eat. This symbolizes that even in innocence
temptation lurks, as does the potential for disobedience and sin

CRITICAL COMMENTS

• Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the
first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human
mind"
• Milton genuinely considered God in need of a defense'--Empson on Milton's faith
• Milton 'Seeks to redefine classical heroism in Christian terms'-- Chloe Batt on the Epic for
• Satan is superior in character to Milton's God"
"Milton's effort to encapsulate evil in Satan was not successful."-- John Carey
• Blake: "the reason Milton wrote in fetter when he wrote of Angels and God, and at Liberty when
of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it"

"Justifies the ways of God to men."

This idea then is the final point of Milton's theme — the sacrifice of the Son which overcomes Death gives
Man the chance to achieve salvation even though, through the sin of Adam and Eve, all men are sinful.

As Adam says, "O goodness infinite, goodness immense! / That all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil
turn to good" (XII, 469-471). The fall of Man, then, turns evil into good, and that fact shows the justice of
God's actions, or in Milton's terms, "justifies the ways of God to men."

Son is more heroic because he is willing to undergo voluntary humiliation, a sign of his consummate love
for humankind. He foreknows that he will become incarnate in order to suffer death, a selfless act whereby
humankind will be redeemed. By such an act, moreover, the Son fulfills what Milton calls the “great
argument” of his poem: to “justify the ways of God to man,” as Milton writes in Book 1. Despite Satan’s
success against Adam and Eve, the hope of regeneration after sinfulness is provided by the Son’s self-
sacrifice. Such hope and opportunity enable humankind to cooperate with the Godhead so as to defeat
Satan, avoid damnation, overcome death, and ascend heavenward.

Satan’s wiles, therefore, are thwarted by members of a regenerate humankind who choose to participate in
the redemptive act that the Son has undertaken on their behalf.

Milton’s depiction of the concept of free will performs a major role in understanding the justification of the
“ways of God to men”. The free will of man causes his own down fall. Man was given free will by God, not to
use unwisely or either against God’s wish. God mentions that man is “sufficient to have stood though free to
fall” (III: 99). He more over states obedience or “true allegiance constant faith or love” would lead an
individual to his or her damnation (III: 104). In Paradise Lost two separate groups of offenders are judged
and punished, Satan and his cohorts, and Adam and Eve.

Adam and Eve’s disobedience allows God to show his mercy and temperance in their punishments and his
eternal providence toward humankind. This display of love and compassion, given through the Son, is a gift
to humankind. Humankind must now experience pain and death, but humans can also experience mercy,
salvation, and grace in ways they would not have been able to had they not disobeyed. While humankind
has fallen from grace, individuals can redeem and save themselves through continued devotion and
obedience to God. The salvation of humankind, in the form of The Son’s sacrifice and resurrection, can
begin to restore humankind to its former state. In other words, good will come of sin and death, and
humankind will eventually be rewarded. This fortunate result justifies God’s reasoning and explains his
ultimate plan for humankind. Milton justifies God’s action of punishment at evil and redemption to true
repentance. God’s wrath is directed towards Satan whereas God’s forgiveness is revealed in Adam’s and
Eve’s repentance.
 Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it."
William Blake's statement that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." While Blake may have
meant something other than what is generally understood from this quotation (see "Milton's Style" in the
Critical Essays), the idea that Satan is the hero, or at least a type of hero, in Paradise Lost is widespread.
However, the progression, or, more precisely, regression, of Satan's character from Book I through Book X
gives a much different and much clearer picture of Milton's attitude toward Satan.

The reader's introduction to the poem is through Satan's point of view. Milton, by beginning in medias
res gives Satan the first scene in the poem, a fact that makes Satan the first empathetic character. Also,
Milton's writing in these books, and his characterization of Satan, make the archfiend understandable and
unforgettable.

In essence then, Milton's grand poetic style sets Satan up as heroic in Books I and II. The presentation of
Satan makes him seem greater than he actually is and initially draws the reader to Satan's viewpoint.
Further, because all of the other characters in the poem — Adam, Eve, God, the Son, the angels — are
essentially types rather than characters, Milton spends more artistic energy on the development of Satan
so that throughout the poem, Satan's character maintains the reader's interest and, perhaps, sympathy —
at least to an extent.

In the end, Satan calls to mind the Macbeth of Shakespeare. Both characters are magnificent creations of
evil. Both are heroic after a fashion, but both are doomed. Both are fatalistic about the afterlife. Satan
knows that he must remain in Hell; Macbeth says that he would "jump the life to come," if he could kill
Duncan with no consequence on Earth.

. In Books I and II, his ability to reason is strong, but now in Book IX he can hardly form a coherent
argument. Ironically, Satan has proved the truth of his own earlier statement that the mind can make a
heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. Satan intended to make a heaven out of Hell, where he would be an evil
version of God. Instead, he has brought his torture with him, and made a hell out of the earth that, but for
him, would be heavenly.

The discussion in Heaven is moving and theologically interesting, but the parts of the poem treating the evil
designs of Satan are written with more potency and rhetorical vigor. The characters in Heaven play a
relatively passive role, watching the story unfold, while Satan actively and endlessly devises his evil
machinations. Moreover, the sinful, evil characters hold our attention more easily than the pure and
virtuous ones. Satan appears to be the active hero, struggling for his personal desires, and God may seem
rather dull

in the first two books of the poem Satan is pictured as a magnificent, heroic figure. He is endowed with
splendid qualities of head and heart which raise him about the level of other characters in the epic. He is
noble, selfless, enterprising, taking upon himself the responsibilities of bold and perilous leadership. He is
the uncompromising champion of liberty, defiant of God the tyrant. “To bow and sue for His grace” is an
idea which he spurns even after his disastrous defeat. All these have led critics to think that Milton, in
spite of himself, has been of the Devil's party. Moreover the traditional idea of the epic hero as a great
warrior and leader lends support to Satan as the hero of the poem.

No doubt Satan appeals to human feelings as a great tragic character. But he “is not only wicked but
utterly and irretrievably damned, like Marlowe's Faustus and Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”

Moreover, Satan's heroic grandeur is not seen so much in action as it is seen in his speeches. One should
always remember that Milton was a Puritan. For a Puritan, anything flashy and glamorous is necessarily evil.
After all, evil has to be attractive if it aims to tempt people away from goodness. What is magnificent,
glamorized and beautiful need not be good, desirable or heroic, especially if it is steeped in hypocrisy and
deceit.
 Milton can claim that his epic surpasses Homer’s and Virgil’s

Milton observed but adapted a number of the Classical epic conventions that distinguish works such
as Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid.

The Iliad and the Aeneid are the great epic poems of Greek and Latin, respectively, and Milton emulates
them because he intends Paradise Lost to be the first English epic. Milton wants to make glorious art out of
the English language the way the other epics had done for their languages.

Also, while Homer and Virgil only chronicled the journey of heroic men, like Achilles or Aeneas, Milton
chronicles the tragic journey of all men—the result of humankind’s disobedience. Milton goes so far as to
say that he hopes to “justify,” or explain, God’s mysterious plan for humankind. Homer and Virgil describe
great wars between men, but Milton tells the story of the most epic battle possible: the battle between God
and Satan, good and evil.

Milton’s muse is the Holy Spirit, which inspired the Christian Bible, not one of the nine classical muses who
reside on Mount Helicon—the “Aonian mount” of I.15. He says that his poem, like his muse, will fly above
those of the Classical poets and accomplish things never attempted before, because his source of
inspiration is greater than theirs

By invoking a muse, but differentiating it from traditional muses, Milton manages to tell us quite a lot about
how he sees his project. In the first place, an invocation of the muse at the beginning of an epic is
conventional, so Milton is acknowledging his awareness of Homer, Virgil, and later poets, and signaling that
he has mastered their format and wants to be part of their tradition. But by identifying his muse as the
divine spirit that inspired the Bible and created the world, he shows that his ambitions go far beyond
joining the club of Homer and Virgil. Milton’s epic will surpass theirs, drawing on a more fundamental
source of truth and dealing with matters of more fundamental importance to human beings.

Milton conveys the gravity and seriousness of this catastrophe for all of humankind, but he also situates
Adam and Eve’s story within the literary conventions of tragedy, in which a great man falls because of a
special flaw within his otherwise larger-than-life character. The fall paves the way for humankind’s
ultimate redemption and salvation, and thus Milton can claim that his epic surpasses Homer’s and Virgil’s
because it pertains to the entire human race, not one hero or even one nation.

Moreover, even as an epic, Milton says that he was attempting something different in Paradise Lost. He did
not want to glorify warfare as in earlier epics like the Iliad. Instead, in his only description of warfare (Book
VI), he creates parody rather than magnificence. Rather Milton's goal was to write a Christian epic,
specifically a Protestant Christian epic with a new sort of hero, one who wins ultimately through patience
and suffering

In Book 6 Milton describes the battle between the good and evil angels; the defeat of the latter results in
their expulsion from heaven. In the battle, the Son (Jesus Christ) is invincible in his onslaught
against Satan and his cohorts. But Milton’s emphasis is less on the Son as a warrior and more on his love for
humankind The Son’s selfless love contrasts strikingly with the selfish love of the heroes of Classical epics,
who are distinguished by their valour on the battlefield, which is usually incited by pride and vainglory.
Their strength and skills on the battlefield and their acquisition of the spoils of war also issue from hate,
anger, revenge, greed, and covetousness. If Classical epics deem their protagonists heroic for their extreme
passions, even vices, the Son in Paradise Lost exemplifies Christian heroism both through his meekness and
magnanimity and through his patience and fortitude.

Throughout Paradise Lost Milton uses a grand style aptly suited to the elevated subject matter and tone. In
a prefatory note, Milton describes the poem’s metre as “English heroic verse without rhyme,” which
approximates “that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin.” Rejecting rhyme as “the jingling sound of like
endings,” Milton prefers a measure that is not end-stopped, so that he may employ enjambment (run-on
lines) with “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another.” The grand style that he adopts
consists of unrhymed iambic pentameter (blank verse) and features sonorous rhythms pulsating through
and beyond one verse into the next. By composing his biblical epic in this measure, he invites comparison
with works by Classical forebears.

Adam as Christian hero

Milton presents his hero as a morally powerful person—Adam’s strength and martial prowess are
entirely irrelevant. Milton voices doubts about whether his society will appreciate a real Christian hero,
or whether he himself is still skilled enough or young enough to complete his literary task, balancing his
confidence in his own ability with the humility appropriate to a Christian poet.

Adam, for one thing, does face a conflict, a choice and decides to transgress. However, his
transgression is not the wilful transgression of Satan for personal grandeur but to act as a comrade, a
participant in his beloved's fate (at least that is how Milton presents him). He chooses, makes a mistake
and eventually realizes it. Of course he does try to shift the blame to Eve upon being confronted, but
nonetheless, accepts his lot. Adam is not just one individual, but is a metaphor of the entire human
race, its failings and its glory.

. Adam is a noble hero, but as Milton notes in this prologue, he is not a hero like Achilles, Aeneas, or
Odysseus. He is, in Milton's words, a hero of "Patience and Heroic Martyrdom" (33). Ultimately too,
Adam is regenerated and reconciled rather than just killed. Paradise Lost will end on a hopeful — even
joyful — note, since through Adam's fall, salvation and eternal life will come to Man through God's
mercy and grace. This felix culpa or "happy fault" is not the stuff of tragedy.

Compare nature of fall presented in book 4 and 9

Referring back to Book IV, where it is inferred that they were having sex all along, one can see the
difference in sex in pre-fall uncorrupted mankind and post-Fall irrational man. Pre-Fall Adam and Eve were
guided by reason and order and so therefore all acts, even acts of love, brought him closer to God. Post-Fall
Adam and Eve are using his animal appetites which brought him closer to animals than God. One can see in
the language where post-Fall Adam grabs Eve's hand and pulls her to their bed, where before it was Eve
who gently took Adam's hand.

Book 4 -In the same way, love, and, it is arguable, even sex has taken place in the Garden between Adam
and Eve. But they a pure, uncorrupted love and love making. It is untainted by lust, the animal instincts, and
free from ego. In the same way that the work in the Garden is a joy because Adam and Eve are in constant
praise of God, love and love making in the garden are pure and a joy because the couple is practicing
unselfish, rational love.

Book 9- The physical descriptions of Adam and Eve have changed as well. They no longer glow with joy,
they are less angelic in their nature, and, within hours of eating the apple, they are prone to new, irrational
emotions ranging from anger to deep depression. As well, they see each other differently as well.
Specifically, they are more interested, and worried, about their genetalia than ever before. The
reproductive organs suddenly take on a value (they are evil in that they lead to lust) which was hereto
unheard of when Adam and Eve lacked knowledge.

For Milton, the interior state of the soul is displayed visibly in the physical. Sin is always visible.

Book 4 -- Milton also provides insight into the characters of Adam and Eve. At line 411, Adam reminds Eve
of the one charge God has given them — not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. While
this short speech reminds the reader of what will happen when Satan gains access to Adam and Eve, it also
hints that Adam may think too much about God's proscription concerning the Tree, since there is no
particular reason for him to bring the warning concerning the tree up at this point in the poem.
 Description of eve in book 4

Eve tells Adam of her first awakening as she came to life and how she wondered who and where she was.
She found a river and followed it upstream to its source. Her path led to a clear, smooth lake, and Eve
looked into the lake, seeing an image in its surface, which she soon discovers is her own.

Eve describes how she fell in love with her own image when she first awoke and looked in the water. Only
the voice of God prevented this narcissistic event from happening.

As Eve narrates her first waking moments after her own creation, we are immediately introduced to Eve's
weakness, vanity. She awakes near a lake and sees an image of herself and thinks the images beautiful.

he often alluded to Ovid's Metamorphoses, as he does in Book IV when Eve first comes to life. Like
Narcissus in the Metamorphoses she is attracted to her own reflection in the water, foreshadowing how her
vanity will be her—and Adam's—undoing.

Modern readers, especially coming from a feminist perspective, might view Eve's admiration of herself not
as vanity or a weakness, but rather as a gesture of self-confidence and independence from man (especially
as she finds her own image so much more beautiful than Adam's ).

he hears a voice explaining to her that she was made out of Adam, and with him she will become the
mother of the human race. This self confident independence, however, is quickly lost. It is quite clear
Milton believes in the traditional patriarchal system, complete with the gender stereotypes of 17th century
Europe.

Eve’s story about seeing her reflection in the water hints that her vanity may become a serious flaw—and
weakness—later on. Her curiosity is sparked by her lack of understanding about who she is and where she
is. She traces the river back to its source just as she wishes to trace herself to her source, through emotional
self-reflection, in search of answers to her difficult questions. Also, her willingness to listen and believe the
voice she hears, which tells her about her identity, also foreshadows that she will trust another voice she
will hear later—Satan’s.

Milton’s presentation of Adam and Eve is controversial in our own time because the discourse between
Adam and Eve strikes many modern audiences as misogynistic. Milton portrays Adam as her superior
because he has a closer relationship to God. The idea that Adam was created to serve God only, and Eve is
created to serve both God and Adam, illustrates Milton’s belief that women were created to serve men. The
narrator remarks of Adam and Eve that their difference in quality was apparent—“their sex not equal
seemed” (IV.296). Milton implies that she is weaker in mind as well as body than Adam. Eve herself freely
admits her secondary and subordinate role. When she explains her dependence on him she explains to
Adam that she is created because of him and is lost without him. Having Eve herself possess and verbalize
these misogynistic, submissive views adds a peculiar and somewhat disturbing power to the conversation.
Milton’s views on the relations between men and women were certainly common,

Paganism in book 1
Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top:

The Muses: (The nine daughters of Zeus) in Greek mythology, poetry and literature, are the goddesses
of the inspiration of literature, science and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge,
related orally for centuries in the ancient culture that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths.

As whom the fables name monstrous size,

Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,:

The monstrous size Titans: In Greek mythology, the Titans were a primeval race of powerful deities,
descendants of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky), that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. They were
immortal giants of incredible strength and were also the first pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses.

Jove: In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods and the god of sky and thunder
. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial
eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology,he negotiates
with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as
sacrifice.

The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus,and in Latin literature and Roman art, the m
yths and iconography of Zeus are adapted under the name Iuppiter. In the Greek-
influenced tradition, Jupiter was the brother of Neptune and Pluto.

Milton provides a catalogue of the most powerful fallen angels in keeping with the epic tradition, and
proleptically proclaims them to be the deities of three future pagan religions, namely the Semitic, Egyptian and
Greek. Christianity has a long history of the diabolization of the pagan gods, and Milton may have been simply
following that very tradition,

The catalogue of devils in Book-I of Paradise Lost implies also the evils which Milton personally detested in
reality-the violence, noise and cruelty of Moloch, the lust associated with Chemos, whose temple is significantly
close to that of Moloch, for lust and murder coexist, and vice itself as personified by Belial. It is Milton’s personal
hatred for wealth and avarice which finds expression in the attack of Mammon who is associated with the love
of gold. Milton’s denunciation of idolatry is inspired greatly by his Protestantism and rejection of what he
considered to be the corruption in Roman Catholicism

Apart from fraudulence, deceit and presumption, Milton accuses the pagan gods on specific grounds, which may
be summarized under a few heads, namely, the “wandering” nature of the gods, rites and rituals, and bestial
associations.

Milton speaks of the pagan gods as “wand’ring” and “roaming to seek their prey on earth”. This vacillating
connotation attached with pagan deities appears to differentiate them clearly from the high and immovable
seat of Jehovah. Yet, this may have been an unconscious nod to the overlapping identities of all these deities.

Contrast life in hell and heaven

In Book I, we are shown that the most prominent thing about hell is its darkness, whereas heaven is full of
luminous light. As well, the fallen angels, previously glorious and beautiful, are now ugly and disfigured.

Hell itself is described as a belching unhealthy body, whose "womb" will be torn open to expose the "ribs"
of metal ore that are necessary to build Satan's temple. Natural occurrences in hell, such as the metaphor
of the eclipsed sun, are symbols of natural, and therefore spiritual, decay.

BOOK 2 - Hell is described. It has a geography like earth, with rivers and mountains, but "where all life
dies, death lives and nature breeds, perverts, all monstrous, and all prodigious things." Hell is all the worst
of nature: natural disasters, violent streams and volcanoes, unfriendly seas, darkness.

The description of hell as a geographical place has physical properties that we find in our own world, and we
will later find in the description of heaven. There are mountains, valleys, rivers, and seas. The difference
between hell and earth, and especially hell and heaven, is that hell has the worst of nature. Milton
emphasizes the awful, inescapable smells of hell, the raging "perpetual storms," the rivers with their "waves
of torrent fire."

BOOK 3-

Light here is associated with the eternal good and stands in contrast to the darkness associated with Hell
and evil in Books I and II.
 From stanzas 1-55, Milton uses the idea of light to represent this nature. Alternately, light is used to
describe God himself, the first born Son, the immortality of God, the glory of God, grace, truth, wisdom,
and physical light. Heaven is a place, then, full of light but much of it is an invisible light, i.e. the light of
wisdom, that man cannot perceive in the same manner as physical light but which works in the same way.

Compare heaven's council with the one Satan had in hell. Heaven's council is a peaceful, rational
conversation between God and his Son, both of whom seem to see and understand the same things.
Decisions are made rationally given the circumstances that God's all-seeing eye can predict. Hell's council,
on the other hand, argued and debated, their opinions clouded by the distance from goodness, which is here
equivocated with reason. A path motivated by revenge, Milton is saying, is not one of right reason, and
therefore is unpredictable.