Paradise Lost

One of those rare books that feels absolutely complete, that feels like supreme art. Paradise Lost manages to be in harmony with its Biblical roots, its Classical forebears (blank verse epics like those of Homer and Virgil) and also with those of a more modern disposition. His reading of the character of Satan is particularly fascinating; the Adversary is charismatic and (whisper it) speaks a lot of sense regarding faith, reason and deference to power.

This reading is particularly bold when you consider when the book was written. People were being imprisoned and killed for heresy and for blasphemy (Milton went over to Florence at one point and met with Galileo), and lines regarding the righteous overthrow of rulers were particularly show more dangerous at a time when Charles II had ascended to the restored throne of England after a period of civil war. The story behind the book shows the importance of physical and moral courage for a writer who wants to write honestly, who is principled in his art, and you cannot but respect Milton for that.

But for all the subversive energy which Milton's lines contain, particularly in the early Books of Paradise Lost, the book also works just as well – if not better – with a straight reading. Milton's conceptualization of Hell as a place where you end up if you are bitter and resentful and unwilling to accept (and then transcend) your limitations – a conceptualization expanded on through Satan's soliloquizing – is one that shows why the Christian mythos remains one of enduring utility. Milton's Satan is attractive and modern, but Milton also shows you why it is dangerous to follow him down, turning your back on God.

In addition to getting its philosophy harmonious, Paradise Lost also works exceptionally well as story. There are some arresting dramatic scenes, from the imperial fury of the battle for Heaven between Satan's rebels and the loyal angels, to Satan's lonely moment of lust for Eve, and Adam's wide-eyed exploration of Paradise. Adam's decision to knowingly follow Eve down into Sin – a decision made out of love – aches with poignancy, as does the perfect ending in which the angel Michael takes Adam and Eve by their hands and gently leads them out of Eden into their exile. Milton's conceptualization of the cosmos is also fascinating to explore, and extraordinarily prescient. He brings to us concepts such as the void of space, infinity, alien worlds ("Space may produce new worlds" (pg. 19)), and perhaps even – this is my own personal reading – an early conceptualization of dark matter ("Things not revealed, which th' invisible King, Only omniscient, hath suppressed in night, To none communicable in earth or Heaven." (pg. 153)).

Admittedly, the blank verse poetry can be difficult, and you can tire easily when reading the book, but it is also incredibly rich, with lines that have become iconic ("Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n," for example (pg. 9)), a wealth of allusion (the endnotes to my Penguin Classics edition are almost as long as the book itself) and a cultural imprint shared by precious few books. The use of the word 'space' to describe the cosmos comes from Milton, and much of what we think we know as the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, and of the rebellion of the angels under Satan, comes not from Genesis but from here. You're reading a book of phenomenal influence when you read Paradise Lost, a fundamental exploration of the Western cultural conceptualization of life. Like the new Adam addressing the sun, you marvel that there can be such sublime magnificence brought into the world. show less

TL;DR: Distractingly misogynistic and promoting an authoritarian and paternalistic view of religion which has always driven me away from it.

I've just finished reading Book X of *Paradise Lost*, and I need to start putting down my thoughts about what the book appears to selling as its lesson. First off, I want to note that I was sold on *Paradise Lost* by it being described as the origin of the suave, charismatic bastard version of Satan that is usually adopted in the modern day, in contrast to the pathetic and monstruous Satan seen in *The Divine Comedy*. To clarify: this is not what the book is about, at least not most of it. Only Books I, II and VI touch on the fall of Lucifer and his grand plan to take revenge against Heaven. The show more rest thus far has centered on the titular paradise, The Garden of Eden where the human forefather and foremother reside, Adam and Eve. And it's within these two characters that I have my most revulsion to the themes of the book. It isn't surprising that a 17th century epic poem based on Christian mythology is misogynistic, and I was willing to wave it off for the most part early on (even if the afore mentioned *Divine Comedy* never fell into the same trap and was written prior to the Renaissance).

However, at this point I can no longer look past the paternalistic themes ingrained in the nature of God creating Man to worship him, then birthing Eve from Adam's rib as a submissive and subservient mate. Eve here is always, always depicted as either: a) wrong and incapable of grasping current situations, or b) actively playing into Satan's tricks and treated as some sort of tool to be used by Sin. Book X is by far the worst offender, in this chapter Satan gloats over his success in perverting Eve and through her wheedling, Adam, we also see God reaffirm Jesus' role in taking blame for humanity's sins, and lastly how Adam and Eve try to amend their failure to ignore Satan's perversions. But the details of this tame description reveal a shocking moral framework which the book appears to hold.

Naturally we're meant to view Adam, and certainly God, as the "good guys" of this story, and yet we're treated to a thoughtless Creator who places a mousetrap in front of a child and is surprised when the get hurt, and to an emotionally abusive husband who asks why God didn't keep all femininity out of mankind like he did in his angels. Maybe that's what people meant when they called *Paradise Lost* the inspiration for the romantic Lucifer, that he's by comparison no worse than God and Man themselves.

I want to single out the view that God holds on Adam and Eve's failure because it's a truly nihilistic take on human existence. In his conversation with his angels and with Jesus, God declares that the punishment of death that he'd emphasized to Adam and Eve was not fit, and instead that their seed be "like lead". This idea is parroted by Lucifer, Sin, and Death in their conversation and with Adam and Eve in theirs. The three takes vary slightly:
- God implies that the mere existence of free will led to an inevitable downfall met with the temptation of Satan.
- Sin and Death rejoice at the idea that the lineage of humanity following Adam and Eve will be weakened to Satan's temptations, which plays up to his ego.
- Eve suggests willful abstinence to defeat the will of Lucifer, and is shot down by Adam because it goes against God's gifts.
Ultimately though all of these come from God's (ironically) lack of faith in his creation. So I have to ask: are we meant to agree with God here? Are we meant to think that the point of *Paradise Lost* is that when faced with temptation humans will always falter, and are therefore beyond hope? He serves the role of a jailor, someone who condemns all humanity to death and continued subjection to sin for one Original Sin. It reminds me of that part of the episode "Mac Day" of *It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia*, where Mac describes God as someone people live in constant fear of, like he's breathing down their back every second, whereas Country Mac describes the beauty of our world and the miracle of our lives. For a book like this, failing its moral framework and the ethical implications that it holds up feels antithetical to its purpose. If the point isn't to investigate and reaffirm the moral victory of God and Jesus over Satan and his rebellion, then what is the point? Is it really just John Milton playing with action figures? show less

I get it now. I get why people like Satan in this book so much. Even I fell for his spell, good lord.

With that out of the way, let me actually start reviewing what I thought about the book. Because goddam, did it take me forever to read. I'm not joking! I've read plenty of classics in my time that had taken a bit of my brain power to get through, but I did it at a decent pace. I finished "Frankenstein" in about a week, "Camilla" in about 3 days, and even read several from antiquity and completed them in less than a week. "Interview With The Vampire" was a gothic brick of a book where paragraphs ran for several pages, and "chapters" that went on for hundreds of pages, and I still completed it in around a week and a half.

But this? I felt show more like I needed this book open in one tab, Cliff Notes in another, and a YouTube Essay on it in another, and I still got lost in the narrative a dozen times and had to reread passages several times before I figured out what was going on. "Paradise Lost" and its sequel, "Paradise Regained", is one hell of a tome to parse through, which took me Three Months to read through!

Yeah, you heard me. THREE MONTHS!

Short summary of my review: It is beautifully written and made, and while it is technically classical fanfiction, I feel it is in the same way that The Divine Comedy is. It takes a part of the Bible that isn't really fleshed out and actually gives the characters in the story characterization. All of the characters - from God, to Satan, to the Demons, to the Angels, to Adam and Eve - are fleshed out with motivations for what they do rather than just being the archetypes telling fables and theological lessons. It leaves little wonder why it's been such an impactful story throughout the centuries, even to the modern day, and I believe it also does a great job of humanizing the devil. We come to understand his reasons for becoming evil and corruptive, and while I certainly can't agree with his decisions (as pride was certainly what led to his fall), I can understand why others would sympathize with him and even like him.

With that said, let me get into my longer review to accurately put down my thoughts on a book I've spent so much damn time trying to get through.

Positives

So, the best parts of the poem.

For starters, I see why it is an epic. It took what otherwise were a few passages of the Bible and expanded upon it to show how Lucifer had fallen, taken on the mantle of Satan, took command of the legions of hell, and then sought to corrupt God's project in creating the new world. It even gives context as to why God created the Earth and man, and upon the nature of what evil and Sin even is.

I mean that as well. In the Bible, Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and suddenly gain knowledge of good and evil, and that's it. They broke a commandment and pissed off God, and now they have to suffer for it. In "Paradise Lost", it's a lot more overt in what knowledge of good and evil even is. Before they ate, all they knew was that they had to obey God, live well like pets, and that their innocence made them rulers of the Paradise that was created for them. After they had eaten the fruit, they come to understand that they can break Gods commandments for their benefit, what Death was, how to have sex (in fact one of the first things they do is have sex with one another and then post nut clarity hits them like a truck), and then they argue, grow spiteful and angry with one another, and even have darker thoughts before they forgive one another for their flaws.

While the poem is thick with aliteration, similes, and of course, anachronistic words and phrases where the characters speak and never get to the point, there's just a lot that's there. Plus, one of my favorite parts of the poem is when Satan, upon thinking of his fall and his reasons for corrupting Adam and Eve, concludes that he could just ask God for forgiveness and he would be forgiven, but then decides not to because his pride prevents him from admitting he was wrong. In fact, he does this several times. It even angers him when Adam and Eve ask for forgiveness near the end, and God does, but with caveats.

Negatives

Goddamn, is this book dense with descriptions.

That's not an exaggeration either. In modern times we're told as writers to keep our prose and dialogue sparse so as to move the story along at a decent pace and not bore readers, but in this, characters will talk on and on and on, often circling around their points to make them either clearer, or make it intentional to what they're trying to say, which often makes it feel like they never really catch their breathe. On top of that, the descriptions for characters, scenes, and more are so vivid that it often becomes hard to parse what we're actually supposed to be visualizing in our heads.

As an example: Pandemonium, the demon city. The demons erect the city in the hour of their fall, and are holding a conference on what to do. Instead of writng "The city was erected of brass and studded in the gems of the earth, and in its epicenter was a vast confrence hall where all the fallen seraphims and cherubs met" we instead get pages about the tall monuments, pillars that held aloft the ceilings, and callbacks to ancient greek gods and more (who are also demons in this story).

It's beautiful, but because it's written in an epic poem style, it also makes it hard to tell who is talking, what is description, what is Satan's (or our other PoV characters like Adam or Eve) memory, and what really is happening. At least for me, and is what necessitated a few re-reads of certain pages just to understand.

For a lot of people, this might be a major turn-off. Had I not a keen interest in theology, and wanting to understand this book, then I would have turned away from it after Book 1 because I don't know if I would have been willing to put my time into it. I can't say for sure that I had FUN with "Paradise Lost", but I do feel better for having read it and come to understand it in the first place.

Basically, if you're looking for fun, skip; if you're looking for literary understanding, read.

Overall Thoughts

Mesmerized and glad I dove into it. I just wish that I hadn't spent as much time with it as I did, because 3 months is just... It's a lot to take in. Normally, I read classic books quickly, but this one just pulled me in and didn't want me to let go, and I still find myself looking over summaries and more, just in case there was something deeper there that I wasn't able to grasp because of how dense it was.

Overall, it did make me feel smarter to finish it, which... yay!(?) I don't really consider myself scholarly when it comes to my reading of classic literature, because to me, as a writer, I want to start at a foundational level and work my way up into understanding the history of the written word, and how things are put together from older times to now. Yet now that I finished this, I can understand why so many classics from the 1800s and even early 1900s called upon this poem as a literary masterpiece. Because it is. I might even delve into more of Milton's works just to see what they're like. God help me, though. I'll do that after a brain rest. show less

I'm about to lose some of my cool points here, because this was absolutely dreadful. Long-winded, repetitive, and rambling throughout its entirety, ESPECIALLY the dialogue, almost nothing actually happens here. If you cut out all of the needless fat and just kept what little plot there is it would be, like, a third of its length. I don't need one hundred lines of wordy poetry just to say "Satan to turned into a cormorant". Hell, I tried skipping ahead multiple times just to see if it would pick up and it actually got WORSE as it went on. The "plot" seems to deviate needlessly and it becomes a padded, bloated mess.

You can pull some great lines out of it: "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven", "not light but a darkness visible", show more etc., but if I'm going to be totally honest, this is literally the most mind-crushingly boring thing I've ever tried to read in my life. I was actually getting outwardly angry trying to slog through this thing. Not entertaining in the least. I'll just stick with Homer and Dante for some actually good epic poetry.

Ugh...2/10 show less

I read this as part of what I call "a Book Challenge". I found people to read this with my daughter Diana and my son's girlfriend Maggie. It was interesting to hear their opinions about the book.
In preparation, we listened to several podcasts about the life of Milton. (The History of Literature: episodes 154, 376, and 484.) We learned that he was blind at the time he decided to write Paradise Lost- so he actually dictated the books to an assistant.
We decided that it would be best to read or listen to 2 Books at a time (there are 12). Then discuss them.

So Milton was influenced by his time- the beliefs, the social mores, the politics. Even so, we were able to discuss the plot points and quotations that interested us. Our discussions show more became very philosophical. We often mused whether we were projecting our modern beliefs on Milton's writing. As we were all raised Catholic, we also discussed religious influences as well as our interpretations of what was written as compared to what is in the religious texts. It became very metacognitive at times!

Some quotes we discussed:
"Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven."

"The mind is its own place and in itself
Can make a Heaven of hell, and a hell of Heaven."

"Nor love thy life nor hate, but what thou liv'st
Live well- how long or short permit to Heaven."

It is worth reading. It becomes much more enjoyable to have a small group to encourage each other and to discuss the interesting ideas within the book. As a final enrichment, we all listened to the podcast "This American Life", episode 666- "The Theme that Shall not be Named" which is about
Satan! In his many surprising manifestations, all around us. show less

Paradise Lost is an epic poem, detailing the fall of Satan as well as the fall of Adam and Eve. Milton's purpose, stated in Book I, is to "justify the ways of God to men"

I love the deeper look into this tale, such as showing Adam created a larger sin than Eve, due to the fact Eve was tricked and Adam willingly choose to be with Eve than be obedient to God. It show the arguments Satan has against God, how he convinces angels to follow him, convinces Eve to eat from the tree and other details that makes the account more real. It also show why God choose to deal with the three rebels the way he did.

I loved the conversation between Satan and Beelzebub (Satan's right hand man), when Beelzebub can't comprehend why God did not destroy them, show more Satan's and Adams feeling to losing perfection.

I greatly enjoyed this but at times I got lost who was talking or what was going on and it took some deep concentration considering its in verse.

I look forward to reading Paradise Regained, the sequel. show less

I put off reading this epic poem for years because its length scared me. I wasn’t sure it would sustain my interest for the amount of time it would take to read it. I wish I hadn’t waited so long. I found it engaging thanks to Simon Vance’s narration. Milton expands on biblical stories and themes of Satan’s rebellion and fall, the creation of the world and of Adam and Eve, Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, their disobedience and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and the promise of Satan’s final defeat through the Son. It helped me see a familiar story through fresh eyes.