While he believes in a grand plan, Milton also tells us how important freedom and choice are; there is no such thing as fate or predestination in the world he describes. Now, to review for a moment essays about grandmothers, predestination is an idea held by some Protestants which claims that everyone is already predestined for salvation (Heaven) or damnation (that would be Hell) when they're born. So the idea is that people are either born good or bad. According to this belief, there is nothing a person can do to escape his or her fate in the next life (good works, charity, penitence and the like won't get anybody into Heaven because everything has already been decided). For Milton, God doesn't predestine anybody, and his God's "ways" turn out to be just reactions to human decisions: God banishes Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden and evil enters the world because Adam and Eve broke the rules. Simple as that. In Paradise Lost the point is not that Adam and Eve were unlucky or unjustly treated; they knew the rules and were given the gift of freedom of choice; they were "free to fall," as Milton's God puts it. As you might expect, Charles II wasn't too happy about his dad's death and he executed many of those responsible. While Milton wasn't directly involved in the beheading, he was still a wanted man. He spent some time behind bars, and almost found his way to the chopping block, but, thankfully, he was eventually pardoned with the help of influential friends like fellow poet Andrew Marvell. (Check out Andrew Marvell's poem "To His Coy Mistress .") But Milton didn't just write Paradise Lost because he was upset and felt that he had lost his own paradise; he had been planning the poem for quite some time. Actually, Milton always saw himself alongside the greatest poets of Western literature – Homer (Greek), Virgil (Roman), Dante (Italian), and Spenser (English), among others. Milton, being Milton, also realized that to be a full member of the Cool Writer Club he had to write an epic. But, whereas most of those other poets wrote epics celebrating martial heroism (i.e. being a good soldier, winning wars cheap essays to buy, etc.), Milton's poem explores a more spiritual heroism. When viewed as two parts of a whole, Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained give a very consistent message. That message is this: Doubt is evil. Critical thinking is evil. Reason is to be denied and denigrated. Seeking to understand the world is at best unprofitable and pointless and at worst a straight road to eternal torment. Instead, virtue consists of absolute obedience and blind belief: as Satan mused, ignorance is indeed “the proof of [our] obedience and [our] faith”. Adam accedes to this and changes the subject, expressing a desire to tell his visitor of the day he was created. Raphael agrees to this, and Adam begins to tell a story of how he first awoke in Eden, fully cognizant and aware of himself, but not knowing how he had come to be there. He explores the Garden, but does not have long to wait before God manifests himself, identifies himself as the creator of all this, brings the animals before Adam so that he can name them, and tells the first man he has given him Paradise on the one condition that he not eat from the tree of knowledge. Adam expresses his fear of loneliness, being solitary among all the animals with no one to talk to, and so God puts him to sleep, removes a rib from his side and creates Eve from it. Adam loves her on sight (so much so that he says the following: “For well I understand in the prime end / Of Nature her the inferior, in the mind / And inward faculties, which most excel; / In outward also her resembling less / His image who made both, and less expressing / The character of that dominion given / O’er other creatures”). Raphael agrees that Eve is very beautiful, but warns Adam that he must be in charge at all times and not allow her beauty to sway his decisions. Admonishing Adam one final time to obey God, he rises and departs. The poem begins with its author John Milton calling for the aid of the Holy Spirit (the “Heavenly Muse”) to assist his writing in order that he may “assert Eternal Providence / And justify the ways of God to men”. His subject matter explained, he then proceeds to begin his story. Satan flies over the coast of Hell and reaches its gates, which are massively fortified and soundly locked. Two guards await him: Sin, a grotesque half-woman, half-snake who regularly gives birth to a litter of hellhounds that tear her body from the inside, and Death, a dark, terrible shadow wearing a “kingly crown” and carrying a deadly spear. Death demands he return to his punishment, but an unafraid Satan scorns him and demands he move aside. However, just before they come to blows, Sin rushes in between them. She identifies herself as Satan’s daughter essay world, born of his rebellion in Heaven, and Death as her son. They were both cast out along with the rebel angels, but God entrusted the keys of Hell to her care, and though he forbade her to unlock the gates, she feels she owes him nothing, and rather would obey Satan, her father. Satan promises them both that if they unlock the gates and show him the way to God’s newly-created Earth, he will bring them there along with him so that they can feast. Sin agrees to this and unlocks the gates of Hell. Beyond is the void of primordial Chaos, and Satan flies out into it. Struggling through the winds of Chaos, he beholds in the distance Heaven’s glorious walls, and beneath them the Earth, hanging from the foundations of Heaven by a golden chain. Motivated by mischief and revenge, he flies toward it. Satan listens to Adam and Eve’s conversation and soon learns that, despite their bliss, there was one law given to them which they may not break, one tree in Paradise from which they may not eat. His reaction to this is worth quoting in full: Throughout the night, Adam mourns his fate, wishing to die then and there and make an end of it. Finally, Eve approaches him; he dismisses her with scorn, blaming her for his current misery, and she falls at his feet and sobs, expressing her wish to take all this punishment on herself if she could. Moved by pity, Adam forgives her. Eve suggests that they not have children so that there are no descendants to suffer (but why should their descendants be held responsible for what they did? Again, the text does not attempt to justify this). Adam replies that doing so would doubtless provoke God to even greater anger, and so they have to have children, regardless of what suffering those children will undergo, in order to turn away worse punishment from their own head. Finally, at Adam’s recommendation they both return to the place where God initially judged them and fall prostrate to beg his forgiveness. Paradise Lost is the famous epic by 17th-century English poet John Milton. Published in 1667, the poem tells the story of Satan’s rebellion against God, his expulsion from Heaven along with the rest of the rebel angels, and how he tempted Adam and Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit and fall from grace (hence the title). Its sequel, Paradise Regained. tells the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness by Satan and how he resisted the Devil’s blandishments, thereby passing on humanity’s behalf the test which Adam and Eve failed. Meanwhile, Satan, slithering through Paradise, wishes that he might find Eve by herself, fearing Adam but supposing her to be easier prey – and find her he does. He approaches her, still clad in the form of the Serpent, and bows down to her and speaks, praising her beauty. Eve expresses amazement that one of the formerly silent animals can speak and asks how this is possible, and Satan replies that he ate one of the apples of a certain tree, and that this fruit gave him reason and speech. “Our credulous mother” asks to see this tree, and Satan leads her to the tree of knowledge. Eve is shocked to see it, realizing that it is the one tree they were forbidden to eat from on pain of death. At this, Satan launches into an eloquent speech, claiming that he ate from the tree and is not just alive and healthy, but better than before, and scorning the idea that God will punish her for doing likewise with a very reasonable argument: “…wherein lies / The offence, that Man should thus attain to know? / What can your knowledge hurt him, or this Tree / Impart against his will, if all be his? / Or is it envy? and can envy dwell / In Heavenly breasts?” In fact, he suggests, God has forbidden them to eat because he wants to keep them “low and ignorant”, and if they eat they will end up becoming gods themselves. Even John Milton seems to recognize the illogic of his beliefs by this point. This chapter opens in Heaven, where God sees Satan flying to Earth and attempts to rationalize why the fall of man (which he omnisciently sees coming, and does nothing to prevent) is not his fault. He begins by, astoundingly, disclaiming responsibility for Satan’s escape from Hell: “whom no bounds / Prescribed, no bars of Hell, nor all the chains / Heaped on him there, nor yet the main Abyss / Wide interrupt, can hold” – notwithstanding the fact that he only escaped because God allowed him to. God then foresees humanity’s giving in to temptation and disclaims responsibility for that as well interesting college essays topics, on the grounds that Adam and Eve could have resisted but chose to transgress: “Whose fault? / Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me / All he could have; I made him just and right, / Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” Satan comes to the Garden of Eden, a hill forested with cedar, pine, fir and palm trees, surrounded by a high wall with only one gate. However, Satan easily leaps over the wall (which raises the question of what it was there for in the first place) and lands within. Perching atop the Tree of Life, he surveys the beauty of the Garden and sees its first two human inhabitants. They are noble and godlike – but, as the text makes clear from the first, not equal. From the very first time we meet Adam and Eve, it is stated explicitly that she is inferior and was made to be submissive: “He for God only, she for God in him” as Milton puts it. This blatant sexism will recur throughout the text. Meanwhile Satan, approaching Earth, flies through a realm called the Limbo of Vanity, a sphere near the Moon where doers of vain deeds end up (not in Hell, apparently). (Milton supposes that the Moon itself is a home for “Translated Saints, or middle Spirits… / Betwixt the angelical and human kind”). Milton uses his description of this realm to slip in a peroration against the Catholic priesthood. Meanwhile, Uriel realizes he has been tricked and sends word to Gabriel, another archangel, to keep watch for evil spirits. The sun is setting in Paradise, and as night comes, Adam and Eve retire from their daily gardening (in another appallingly sexist passage, Eve says to Adam: “My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst / Unargu’d I obey; so God ordains, / God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more / Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise”). Saying their evening prayers, the first couple retire to their bower to sleep. Soon afterwards, a squad of angels patrolling Paradise finds Satan, in the form of a toad, sitting and whispering into Eve’s ear. They capture him and take him to Gabriel, where Satan remains defiant (“let him surer bar / His Iron Gates ending a cover letter, if he intends our stay / In that dark durance,” he says how to write my college essay, quite reasonably). The confrontation almost comes to battle help me write a thesis free, but God will not allow such to take place in Paradise, and Satan flees. This first section also presents Milton’s justification for why God allowed Satan’s rebellion to continue, claiming that he would never have been able to raise his head from the burning lake, With the story now having come full circle, Milton proceeds to man’s inevitable downfall. It is night in Paradise, and Satan enters through the Tigris River, which heads underground for a distance before rising up as a fountain at the foot of the Tree of Life. Like a mist, Satan rises from the water, and searches Paradise for an animal in which to conceal himself. He, of course, chooses the serpent and enters into its slumbering body. (It should be noted that the Book of Genesis itself never blames Satan for possessing the snake – and indeed has no conception of such a being – but puts the blame for humankind’s temptation on the serpent itself, which was no demon but merely the subtlest of all God’s beasts. What follows is Milton’s invention.) Paradise Lost is an epic in every sense of the word: vast and ambitious in scope academic essays writing, powerful and moving in its language, vivid in its depictions, its plot proceeding inevitably from the first couple’s initial bliss to their ultimate tragic fall. Milton’s Satan is one of the most three-dimensional characters in anything I have ever read. As a work of fiction, it is superb. God sends the Son, his agent of creation, out into Chaos, and Milton provides a retelling of the six-day Genesis creation story. More specifically, he tries to provide a harmonization of the two divergent creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, but Milton’s version leans more heavily on Genesis 1 in having plants created on the third day, fowl on the fifth day, and man on the sixth, as opposed to Genesis 2 in which man’s creation precedes that of all other living things. Night falls, and the rebels withdraw and regroup. Satan rallies his troops and proposes a new strategy, and throughout the night they mine the heavenly soil for minerals and ore. With the coming of daybreak, the rebels show off their new weapons: batteries of cannons, which catch the loyal angels completely off guard and mow them down with volleys of fire. However, they are discomfited for only a brief time, then recover and counterattack by uprooting entire hills and hurling them on top of the rebels, burying and crushing them and their cannons alike. The second day again ends with a victory for God’s forces. In the council of Pandemonium, the rebel angels debate their next move. They conclude that repentance is out of the question, and thus their war must go on. Several plans are debated and rejected, but ultimately a decision is reached: prophecy in Heaven predicted the creation of Earth and of a new race of beings called humans to inhabit it. Satan proposes that they may be able to strike a blow against God either by destroying this world or seducing it to their cause. This is agreed, but the potential danger of the journey dismays the others, and finally he himself volunteers to go, as their leader, and departs to much praise and applause. Satan alights on the Sun, which Milton supposed to be a world like ours, though one where everything glows brilliantly, as might be expected. There he encounters the Archangel Uriel, warden of the Sun. Disguising himself as a lesser angel, Satan pretends to be interested in exploring God’s new creation and inquires where he might see for himself the beings called humans. Uriel directs him, and he flies down to Earth and lands on the peak of Mt. Niphates (which in Paradise Regained becomes the mountain where he carried Jesus to show him all the kingdoms of the world). With humanity’s sin complete, the angelic guards of Paradise sorrowfully return to Heaven. God excuses their failure, telling them that they could not have prevented what happened. (So why were they there in the first place? Did God erect a defense that he knew would fail?) God sends the Son down to Earth to judge the humans for what they have done. When Jesus concludes that it is wrong to seek glory, Satan gives a compelling rebuttal: When the Son arrives in Eden, Adam and Eve try to hide, but are compelled to come forth at his decree and explain themselves. Though not denying his own culpability, Adam says of Eve, “from her hand I could suspect no ill… She gave me of the Tree, and I did eat.” God the Son rebukes him for obeying her, saying she was made to obey him and not the other way around: his “perfection far excelled / Hers in all real dignity”. He then asks Eve why she did it, and she confesses that the serpent tricked her – at which point, bizarrely, God punishes the serpent! Still curious for knowledge, and desiring to detain his angelic guest in order to longer enjoy his company, Adam asks Raphael why all the innumerable stars of the vast cosmos were created for no reason other than to revolve around the Earth, which is a tiny, seemingly insignificant point in comparison. Raphael swiftly responds that it is unwise to ask such questions; that God made the enormous universe for his own purposes which we cannot hope to know, and that instead of trying to understand God’s creation, we should simply admire the one who made it. The angel says that even the knowledge of whether the Earth moves or is stationary is something mortals should not try to figure out: “This to attain, whether Heaven move or Earth / Imports not, if thou reckon right; the rest / From Man or Angel the great Architect / Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge / His secrets mark twain essay, to be scanned by them who ought / Rather admire.” He suggests that perhaps God made the cosmos so vast for no other reason than to laugh at the “quaint opinions” of those who try to model it, or perhaps by its magnitude to show God’s greatness and man’s relative insignificance (although the creation of humanity seems to play a central role in Milton’s theology). In any event, Raphael concludes, we should not presume to try to figure these things out; we should just believe, and be content to be ignorant. “Be lowly wise; / Think only what concerns thee and thy being; / Dream not to other worlds, what creatures there / Live, in what state, condition, or degree / Contented that thus far hath been revealed”. Plot and Major Characters Milton's stated purpose in Paradise Lost was to “justify the ways of God to man.” Central to this project was defining the nature of obedience, free will, and just authority. Satan provides a foil for God, setting up an illegitimate kingdom in hell that contrasts with the natural and just rule of God in heaven. Satan's arguments are often compelling: he claims the angels have liberty in hell, if not comfort my personal values essay, and he opposes the hierarchies of heaven. The contrast compels readers to judge the true nature of liberty and the true source of authority, and encourages them to distinguish between genuine freedom and mere lawlessness or chaos, while firmly asserting humanity's free will with respect to God. Among the hierarchies of greatest interest to Milton in Paradise Lost is that found in marriage. As some critics have noted, Milton spends a large amount of time establishing and reinforcing an idea that almost no one in his age would have seriously contested: the inferiority of women to men. The extent to which the poem actually portrays women as inferior has long been a matter of debate, but it clearly states, more than once, that women must be in a mediated position: Eve relates to God through Adam; she is in the background when Adam talks to the angels; she is expected to follow Adam's lead. Nonetheless, despite the repeated stress on Eve's lower position with respect to Adam entrance essays for college examples, the poem also describes in detail the ideal nature of wedded love as ordained by God. In long passages discussing love and marriage, Milton portrays the model relationship as an equal partnership of shared labor. God creates Eve to provide Adam with a companion worthy of him, after Adam complains that the beasts are not enough. While she is not Adam's equal in reason, she has merits he lacks, and enough reason to be fit for mutual conversation and work. Among the most fascinating of Adam and Eve's conversations are those in which they discuss their creation and self-recognition. The development of selfhood and the recognition of others as distinct from the self is a crucial part of Milton's creation story. In particular, Eve's awakening and subsequent introduction to Adam is a model for the gradual human development of self-awareness.
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