John Milton was born, in London, England on December 9th and he died on November 8thin the same place that he was born. He was alive during the Restoration Era of King Charles II, that’s when he decided to begin to write Paradise Lost and the poem was an epic poem. Paradise Lost which talks about Satan’s desire of Adam and Eve to corrupt them and their journey from the Garden of Eden and what happens to them next. This poem is known as one of his greatest works of art in world English literature of today. The character that I will be analyzing with you for further information is, the character of Satan in John Milton’s Paradise Lost Books. The locations of the poem that are mentioned are, Heaven, Hell and also on earth.
Also the reader is introduced to that God and his son are watching Satan from heaven, that death and sin have a complex relationship together that sums up craving desire of what he wants and how it effects what is going on the world. Satan is the main speaker in the poem and when the angels fell from heaven God already knew what was going on down on earth. Satan is the head of the angels that disfavors God as the lord and savior and are angles that just fell out of heaven because, they don’t agree with what was happening or trying to take over heaven.
In the poem Satan is the creator of sin and the first angel to be unfaithful to God and his blessings. Basically Satan is apart if the angels that have fallen from heaven’s grace and the angel Lucifer (Satan) is the light that was loved by God. In the poem Milton uses the idea of light to represent nature. The light is used to describe God and his son Jesus Christ, with his glory, grace, knowledge on how the world works. Heaven is place with a lot of light and love involved in it. But there is also an invisible light called the light of wisdom that man cannot discover in the same manner as the physical light but.
It works in the same way as God wanted it to work. So then Satan goes on a mission to earth, he eventually meets up with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as a snake/toad by tricking them and by also, going into Eve’s dreams and communicating with her but, in doing so he makes his punishment worse by, using the snake/toad to corrupted Eve to eat a piece of an apple from the tree of knowledge good and evil. Eventually Eve gave a piece of the apple to her husband Adam to eat as well. Adam did eat a piece of the apple because, he was in love with Eve and he will follow her to the depths of the earth. Satan’s character does change throughout the poem.
In the poem he can’t keep his thoughts straight and narrow or to be balanced. Sometimes the thoughts in his mind become twisted. He can take any form he wants to become, he can be a valuable person or he can be a heartless person. Satan does a lot of things in the Paradise Lost Books to show that he is either a corrupt individual or a person who is trying to do write his life in a different way. A quote to show what Satan is all about when he meets up with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is, “Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe” (Lines-1-3).
What is basically being said here is that, Satan has just been banished from heaven by god and with doing so, now death has followed and came up Adam and Eve and everyone else who shall inhabit the earth after Adam and Eve eat the piece of fruit from the forbidden tree. Another quote in the story that will shed more light into what Satan is doing next on earth is, “Hath lost us Heav’n, and all his mighty Host In horrible destruction laid thus low, As far as Gods and Heavenly Essences Can perish; for the mind and spirit remains” (Lines-136-139). This quote is basically saying that even though Satan is out of heaven and now is in this low level palace with fire and such.
God’s essence of ultimate power still remains over him even though he is fighting against it. So even though there is a war still going on in the world of today against God vs. Satan or Light vs. Darkness, in the end the Lord our God still gets the job done and keeps on sending Satan back to with he came from. Also, in Book 1 they talk about Satan, Hell, God, Jesus Christ, the difference between Heaven and Hell, a Some of the themes of the story/poem are, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, God vs. Satan, corruption, salvation, sins, the fall from heaven. The fall that is mentioned about Satan coming down from heaven and into the Garden of Eden is important because, it shows the effects of what Eve and Adam did and what will happen to them for the rest of their lives and to their family member’s generation after generation. Some wonderful things will happen for them and some dreadful things will happen as well to them.
The background of the poem is from the Bible and John Milton is a very religious man. In addition, the characterization of God and Satan seem to be seemed as a cause of distress because, of the ongoing feud between the both of them. God is shown as a major authority figure, that if don’t follow his rules then your punishment will be sever and come back to get you. While Satan is seen as an obstacle in God’s way what is right and what is wrong. Satan was once the angel called Lucifer, at first he long to be good to be accepted back into God’s good graces but, then he starts to embrace the hate and evil powers.
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