Paradise Lost is one of the most relevant masterpieces in English literature because:

• Milton said he was trying to justify the ways of God to man
• Milton looked at the way the world is constituted with its suffering, malevolence and corruption and analyzed why it was still acceptable
• Milton focused the attention on the tension between the political, ideological and rational constructions of the mind
• Satan is the highest angel in God’s kingdom and is a personification of the rational tendency to produce totalitarian systems
• The poem is a poetic drama and a prophetic visualization of what was going to happen in the centuries
• According to Milton, suffering is an integral part of human existence:

1. personal identity is influenced by everything that surround us (people are fragile)
2. society’s arbitrary judgment (people understand to be imperfect, insufficient for themselves and for society)
3. people’s responsibilities

• in order to limit suffering and mitigate social relations, human beings should refuse to participate in the lie and orient themselves towards the truth, taking their responsibilities (philosophic function of the poem)