Milton’s speaker begins Paradise Lost by
stating that his subject will be Adam and Eve’s disobedience and fall from
grace. He invokes a heavenly muse and asks for help in relating his ambitious
story and God’s plan for humankind. The action begins with Satan and his fellow
rebel angels who are found chained to a lake of fire in Hell. They quickly free
themselves and fly to land, where they discover minerals and construct
Pandemonium, which will be their meeting place. Inside Pandemonium, the rebel
angels, who are now devils, debate whether they should begin another war with
God. Beezelbub suggests that they attempt to corrupt God’s beloved new
creation, humankind. Satan agrees, and volunteers to go himself. As he prepares
to leave Hell, he is met at the gates by his children, Sin and Death, who
follow him and build a bridge between Hell and Earth.
In Heaven, God orders the angels together for
a council of their own. He tells them of Satan’s intentions, and the Son
volunteers himself to make the sacrifice for humankind. Meanwhile, Satan
travels through Night and Chaos and finds Earth. He disguises himself as a
cherub to get past the Archangel Uriel, who stands guard at the sun. He tells
Uriel that he wishes to see and praise God’s glorious creation, and Uriel
assents. Satan then lands on Earth and takes a moment to reflect. Seeing the
splendor of Paradise brings him pain rather than pleasure. He reaffirms his
decision to make evil his good, and continue to commit crimes against God.
Satan leaps over Paradise’s wall, takes the form of a cormorant (a large bird),
and perches himself atop the Tree of Life. Looking down at Satan from his post,
Uriel notices the volatile emotions reflected in the face of this so-called cherub
and warns the other angels that an impostor is in their midst. The other angels
agree to search the Garden for intruders.
Meanwhile, Adam and Eve tend the Garden,
carefully obeying God’s supreme order not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
After a long day of work, they return to their bower and rest. There, Satan
takes the form of a toad and whispers into Eve’s ear. Gabriel, the angel set to
guard Paradise, finds Satan there and orders him to leave. Satan prepares to
battle Gabriel, but God makes a sign appear in the sky—the golden scales of
justice—and Satan scurries away. Eve awakes and tells Adam about a dream she
had, in which an angel tempted her to eat from the forbidden tree. Worried
about his creation, God sends Raphael down to Earth to teach Adam and Eve of
the dangers they face with Satan.
Raphael arrives on Earth and eats a meal with
Adam and Eve. Raphael relates the story of Satan’s envy over the Son’s
appointment as God’s second-in-command. Satan gathered other angels together
who were also angry to hear this news, and together they plotted a war against
God. Abdiel decides not to join Satan’s army and returns to God. The angels
then begin to fight, with Michael and Gabriel serving as co-leaders for
Heaven’s army. The battle lasts two days, when God sends the Son to end the war
and deliver Satan and his rebel angels to Hell. Raphael tells Adam about
Satan’s evil motives to corrupt them, and warns Adam to watch out for Satan.
Adam asks Raphael to tell him the story of creation. Raphael tells Adam that
God sent the Son into Chaos to create the universe. He created the earth and
stars and other planets. Curious, Adam asks Raphael about the movement of the
stars and planets. Eve retires, allowing Raphael and Adam to speak alone.
Raphael promptly warns Adam about his seemingly unquenchable search for
knowledge. Raphael tells Adam that he will learn all he needs to know, and that
any other knowledge is not meant for humans to comprehend. Adam tells Raphael
about his first memories, of waking up and wondering who he was, what he was,
and where he was. Adam says that God spoke to him and told him many things,
)n#luding his order not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. After the story,
Adam confesses to Raphael his intense physical attraction to Eve. Raphael
reminds Adam that he must love Eve more purely and spiritually. With this final
bit of advice, Raphael leaves Earth and returns to Heaven.
Eight days after his banishment, Satan
returns to Paradise. After closely studying the animals of Paradise, he chooses
to take the form of the serpent. Meanwhile, Eve suggests to Adam that they work
separately for awhile, so they can get more work done. Adam is hesitant but
then assents. Satan searches for Eve and is delighted to find her alone. In the
form of a serpent, he talks to Eve and compliments her on her beauty and
godliness. She is amazed to find an animal that can speak. She asks how he
learned to speak, and he tells her that it was by eating from the Tree of
Knowledge. He tells Eve that God actually wants her and Adam to`eat`from the
treel and that`his`order`is merely`a`test of`their`couragen She is`hesitant
at`first`but`then reaches for a fruit from`the`Tree
of`Knowledge`and`eats.`She`becomes`distraught and searches`for`Adam.`Adam has
been`busy making`a`wreath of flowers for Eve. When Eve finds Adam, he drops the
wreath and is horrified to find that Eve has eaten from the forbidden tree.
Knowing that she has fallen, he decides that he would rather be fallen with her
than remain pure and lose her. So he eats from the fruit as well. Adam looks at
Eve in a new way, and together they turn to lust.
God immediately knows of their disobedience.
He tells the angels in Heaven that Adam and Eve must be punished, but with a
display of both justice and mercy. He sends the Son to give out the
punishments. The Son first punishes the serpent whose body Satan took, and
condemns it never to walk upright again. Then the Son tells Adam and Eve that
they must now suffer pain and death. Eve and all women must suffer the pain of
childbirth and must submit to their husbands, and Adam and all men must hunt
and grow their own food on a depleted Earth. Meanwhile, Satan returns to Hell
where he is greeted with cheers. He speaks to the devils in Pandemonium, and
everyone believes that he has beaten God. Sin and Death travel the bridge they
built on their way to Earth. Shortly thereafter, the devils unwillingly
transform into snakes and try to reach fruit from imaginary trees that shrivel
and turn to dust as they reach them.
God tells the angels to transform the Earth.
After the fall, humankind must suffer hot and cold seasons instead of the
consistent temperatures before the fall. On Earth, Adam and Eve fear their
approaching doom. They blame each other for their disobedience and become
increasingly angry at one another. In a fit of rage, Adam wonders why God ever
created Eve. Eve begs Adam not to abandon her. She tells him that they can
survive by loving each other. She accepts the blame because she has disobeyed
both God and Adam. She ponders suicide. Adam, moved by her speech, forbids her
from taking her own life. He remembers their punishment and believes that they
can enact revenge on Satan by remaining obedient to God. Together they pray to
God and repent.
God hears their prayers, and sends Michael
down to Earth. Michael arrives on Earth, and tells them that they must leave
Paradise. But before they leave, Michael puts Eve to sleep and takes Adam up
onto the highest hill, where he shows him a vision of humankind’s future. Adam
sees the sins of his children, and his children’s children, and his first
vision of death. Horrified, he asks Michael if there is any alternative to
death. Generations to follow continue to sin by lust, greed, envy, and pride.
They kill each other selfishly and live only for pleasure. Then Michael shows
him the vision of Enoch, who is saved by God as his warring peers attempt to
kill him. Adam also sees the story of Noah and his family, whose virtue allows
them to be chosen to survive the flood that kills all other humans. Adam feels
remorse for death and happiness for humankind’s redemption. Next is the vision
of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel. This story explains the perversion of pure
language into the many languages that are spoken on Earth today. Adam sees the
triumph of Moses and the Israelites, and then glimpses the Son’s sacrifice to
save humankind. After this vision, it is time for Adam and Eve to leave
Paradise. Eve awakes and tells Adam that she had a very interesting and
educating dream. Led by Michael, Adam and Eve slowly and woefully leave
Paradise hand in hand into a new world.
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Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Importance of Obedience to God
The first words of Paradise Lost state that
the poem’s main theme will be “Man’s first Disobedience.” Milton narrates the
story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience, explains how and why it happens, and
places the story within the larger context of Satan’s rebellion and Jesus’
resurrection. Raphael tells Adam about Satan’s disobedience in an effort to
give him a firm grasp of the threat that Satan and humankind’s disobedience
poses. In essence, Paradise Lost presents two moral paths that one can take
after disobedience: the downward spiral of increasing sin and degradation,
represented by Satan, and the road to redemption, represented by Adam and Eve.
While Adam and Eve are the first humans to
disobey God, Satan is the first of all God’s creation to disobey. His decision
to rebel comes only from himself—he was not persuaded or provoked by others.
Also, his decision to continue to disobey God after his fall into Hell ensures
that God will not forgive him. Adam and Eve, on the other hand, decide to
repent for their sins and seek forgiveness. Unlike Satan, Adam and Eve
understand that their disobedience to God will be corrected through generations
of toil on Earth. This path is obviously the correct one to take: the visions
in Books XI and XII demonstrate that obedience to God, even after repeated
falls, can lead to humankind’s salvation.
The Hierarchical Nature of the Universe
Paradise Lost is about hierarchy as much as
it is about obedience. The layout of the universe—with Heaven above, Hell
below, and Earth in the middle—presents the universe as a hierarchy based on
proximity to God and his grace. This spatial hierarchy leads to a social
hierarchy of angels, humans, animals, and devils: the Son is closest to God,
with the archangels and cherubs behind him. Adam and Eve and Earth’s animals
come next, with Satan and the other fallen angels following last. To obey God
is to respect this hierarchy.
Satan refuses to honor the Son as his
superior, thereby questioning God’s hierarchy. As the angels in Satan’s camp
rebel, they hope to beat God and thereby dissolve what they believe to be an
unfair hierarchy in Heaven. When the Son and the good angels defeat the rebel
angels, the rebels are punished by being banished far away from Heaven. At
least, Satan argues later, they can make their own hierarchy in Hell, but they
are nevertheless subject to God’s overall hierarchy, in which they are ranked
the lowest. Satan continues to disobey God and his hierarchy as he seeks to
corrupt mankind.
Likewise, humankind’s disobedience is a
corruption of God’s hierarchy. Before the fall, Adam and Eve treat the visiting
angels with proper respect and acknowledgement of their closeness to God, and
Eve embraces the subservient role allotted to her in her marriage. God and
Raphael both instruct Adam that Eve is slightly farther removed from God’s
grace than Adam because she was created to serve both God and him. When Eve
persuades Adam to let her work alone, she challenges him, her superior, and he yields
to her, his inferior. Again, as Adam eats from the fruit, he knowingly defies
God by obeying Eve and his inner instinct instead of God and his reason. Adam’s
visions in Books XI and XII show more examples of this disobedience to God and
the universe’s hierarchy, but also demonstrate that with the Son’s sacrifice,
this hierarchy will be restored once again.
The Fall as Partly Fortunate
After he sees the vision of Christ’s
redemption of humankind in Book XII, Adam refers to his own sin as a felix culpa
or “happy fault,” suggesting that the fall of humankind, while originally
seeming an unmitigated catastrophe, does in fact bring good with it. Adam and
Eve’s disobedience allows God to show his mercy and temperance in their
punishments and his eternal providence toward humankind. This display of love
and compassion, given through the Son, is a gift to humankind. Humankind must
now experience pain and death, but humans can also experience mercy, salvation,
and grace in ways they would not have been able to had they not disobeyed.
While humankind has fallen from grace, individuals can redeem and save
themselves through continued devotion and obedience to God. The salvation of
humankind, in the form of The Son’s sacrifice and resurrection, can begin to
restore humankind to its former state. In other words, good will come of sin
and death, and humankind will eventually be rewarded. This fortunate result
justifies God’s reasoning and explains his ultimate plan for humankind.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts,
and literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major
themes.
Light and Dark
Opposites abound in Paradise Lost, including
Heaven and Hell, God and Satan, and good and evil. Milton’s uses imagery of
light and darkness to express all of these opposites. Angels are physically
described in terms of light, whereas devils are generally described by their
shadowy darkness. Milton also uses light to symbolize God and God’s grace. In
his invocation in Book III, Milton asks that he be filled with this light so he
can tell his divine story accurately and persuasively. While the absence of
light in Hell and in Satan himself represents the absence of God and his grace.
The Geography of the Universe
Milton divides the universe into four major
regions: glorious Heaven, dreadful Hell, confusing Chaos, and a young and
vulnerable Earth in between. The opening scenes that take place in Hell give
the reader immediate context as to Satan’s plot against God and humankind. The
intermediate scenes in Heaven, in which God tells the angels of his plans,
provide a philosophical and theological context for the story. Then, with these
established settings of good and evil, light and dark, much of the action
occurs in between on Earth. The powers of good and evil work against each other
on this new battlefield of Earth. Satan fights God by tempting Adam and Eve,
while God shows his love and mercy through the Son’s punishment of Adam and
Eve.
Milton believes that any other information
concerning the geography of the universe is unimportant. Milton acknowledges
both the possibility that the sun revolves around the Earth and that the Earth
revolves around the sun, without coming down on one side or the other. Raphael
asserts that it does not matter which revolves around which, demonstrating that
Milton’s cosmology is based on the religious message he wants to convey, rather
than on the findings of contemporaneous science or astronomy.
Conversation and Contemplation
One common objection raised by readers of Paradise
Lost is that the poem contains relatively little action. Milton sought to
divert the reader’s attention from heroic battles and place it on the
conversations and contemplations of his characters. Conversations comprise
almost five complete books of Paradise Lost, close to half of the text.
Milton’s narrative emphasis on conversation conveys the importance he attached
to conversation and contemplation, two pursuits that he believed were of
fundamental importance for a moral person. As with Adam and Raphael, and again
with Adam and Michael, the sharing of ideas allows two people to share and
spread God’s message. Likewise, pondering God and his grace allows a person to
become closer to God and more obedient. Adam constantly contemplates God before
the fall, whereas Satan contemplates only himself. After the fall, Adam and Eve
must learn to maintain their conversation and contemplation if they hope to
make their own happiness outside of Paradise.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and
colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Scales in the Sky
As Satan prepares to fight Gabriel when he is
discovered in Paradise, God causes the image of a pair of golden scales to
appear in the sky. On one side of the scales, he puts the consequences of
Satan’s running away, and on the other he puts the consequences of Satan’s
staying and fighting with Gabriel. The side that shows him staying and fighting
flies up, signifying its lightness and worthlessness. These scales symbolize
the fact that God and Satan are not truly on opposite sides of a struggle—God
is all-powerful, and Satan and Gabriel both derive all of their power from Him.
God’s scales force Satan to realize the futility of taking arms against one of
God’s angels again.
Adam’s Wreath
The wreath that Adam makes as he and Eve work
separately in Book IX is symbolic in several ways. First, it represents his
love for her and his attraction to her. But as he is about to give the wreath
to her, his shock in noticing that she has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge
makes him drop it to the ground. His dropping of the wreath symbolizes that his
love and attraction to Eve is falling away. His image of her as a spiritual
companion has been shattered completely, as he realizes her fallen state. The fallen
wreath represents the loss of pure love.
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