ANALYSIS OF THE PARADISE LOST- JOHN MILTON

DAD. WEEK 22^ND TO 29^TH MARCH

Paradise Lost is a literary epic poem written by John Milton in 1667. Milton is an English writer, poet, philosopher, essayist, public official and theologian.                                                                                                                                                                                           It is about Satan’s rebellion against God. He believed God was a tyrant. It retells the story of the loss of the Garden of Eden as narrated in the book of Genesis and deals with one great theme: the rebellion against God. It consists of two dramas linked with the failure of the Puritan Revolution: the divine drama of the fall of the Angels and the human drama of the fall of Adam and Eve. The whole meaning of the divine drama is summoned up in the figure of Satan. The character who utters such a dialogue is explained in the second verse, where a specification by the narrator allows the reader to understand the identity of the speaker. The expression lost Arch Angel is a clear reference to the figure of Satan, the archangel who, followed by others, went to meet the divine curse after bringing the first man and the first woman to disobey the will of God taking the apple of knowledge. Satan is called lost because his arbitrary action led him to the loss of something that belonged to him, because heaven was his home of law. The first judgment of Satan is also composed of a rhetorical question. This questioning refer to the feelings experienced by the archangel at the time of the expulsion from paradise, to the surprise at the decision of God and because of the place where he now stands. The presumption of a listener is confirmed, always in the first sentence, by the presence of the first person plural (we). The discussion continues with a short description of God by the archangel. He is seen as the current ruler and the now preceding the adjective lets assume a willingness of the speaking voice to subvert the order. Despite this hidden desire God is completely positively connoted by Satan, who calls him the only one who can recognize right from wrong and the upper among his equals (the archangels). Lucifer then realizes and admits his inferiority to the Lord. The first person plural returns then when Satan, after having devoted a part of his speech to the divine figure, turns to hell itself. At this point he mentions some happy friends, presumably the other archangels who followed him at the time of the fall in hell, while at the same time he speaks turned to hell itself, identified in the horrors and dangers of the deep. After this part of the dialogue Satan describes himself referring only to moral characteristics and completely ignoring his own physical appearance. Satan defines himself free, a mind subject only to the his control and not to the time or place in which the being is  “A mind not to be chang 'd by Place or Time”. These two features refer to two basic elements of the Protestant culture: the free will given by God to man, which provides for the autonomy of decision and therefore the freedom, and individuality, the control of their decisions and the full understanding of their capacity and of their talents. Satan is the real hero of Paradise Lost; he shows all the characteristics that Milton admired: courage, pride, oratorical power, self-confidence, ambition and so on. He is great in the self-assurance of his strength and in his contempt of the pain that has been inflicted on him. He also embodies Milton’s Puritan ideals of independence and liberty since he is seen as a rebel fighting against the absolute power of a tyrannical God, just as Milton, defender of liberties, struggles his battle against a despotic king. As Blake said, “Milton is on the Devil’s party without knowing”. He feels equal to God in reason and inferior only in power. When God banishes him from Heaven, he feels himself injured and wants to take a revenge against him, corrupting His new creation: man. He succeeds in his task and in the form of a snake, he persuades Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden tree of knowledge. Satan is ambitious. He is very proud and his boundless pride makes him believe that it “is better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven. In the last part of the speech he also continues the negative connotations of hell “oblivious pool - unhappy Mansion” as opposed to a positive addressed to God “greater – almighty”. In addition to this, it emerges for the first time the will of Lucifer to subvert the natural order.

Even if Satan is the central figure in the passage, the presence of God is always felt. Satan never directly names him, but God is always in his thoughts. He feels to be equal to God in reason; he is inferior to him only in the power because God possesses the strength:” what reason has equalled, thunder hath made greater”. He considers himself to be only “less than he”. Satan despises the pain inflicted on him, but he seems frustrated because he is aware of God’s superiority: he refers to God calling him “ the Almighty” ,he admits that “ he who now is Sovran can dispose and bid what shall be right”.                                                                         

The language of the passage, direct and forceful, has the characteristics of the best oratory full of memorable phrases