In “Paradise Lost” it starts off with the story of Adam and Eve just like how it does in Genesis. In “Paradise Lost ” it talks about how Sin brought Death to the human race for the first time ever. This happens because Adam and Eve decide to eat off of the Tree of Knowledge. This caused them to realize they were naked and this had gone against God’s plan. God then punished Adam and Eve. I couldn’t help but wonder, why was the serpent against God? Starting with why is the serpent against God in Genesis it says “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die” (Genesis 3:3-4). This shows that God clearly has a law that needs to be obeyed and the serpent told Eve that it’s not a true law. One may wonder why good is trying to be portrayed as evil. In “Lost as Paradise” it gives us a great descriptive background on the Devil and the devil angles. The devil angels are all from angels that were under God that got punished. So this shows that there is a tension and anger towards God since they were sentenced to go to the fire lake. The serpent is a very manipulative angel, as shown in “Paradise Lost”, he is able to successfully get Adam and Eve to go against God and Sin. But when he realizes that he was able to do this so easily he doesn’t want to stop. He wants to start a war with God but the idea of having a more violent war with him is brought up. A meeting with the devil angels is called in the Pandemonium Temple. Many different ideas about what should happen are brought up but they come to their idea when they find out that God has a plan to start a new life with Man, they want to turn good to evil, make people sin. This is out of jealousy. Everyone knows that God is an untouchable force and they will never win in a war. They also don’t want to get an even worse punishment since God decided to unchain them from the lake in hopes to help turn them to good, but Satan is able to manipulate everyone onto his side with the help of Beelzebub. Satan even offers himself up to go up and scout God’s plan to try and copy God and his sacrifice for Man. It is said that they will never bow down to God because they don’t want to follow him.
This is known to be a horrible and devilish idea. Milton when writing about this in my opinion is trying to get the reader to feel sympathy for Satan and the angels. Is this because he wants the reader to have an open and no biased mind while reading this story? This is very opposite in the way that the story of God is talked about in “In the Beginning”.
Leave a Reply